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DAVOS, Switzerland • Edmund Burke famously cautioned that "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." I have been reminded of Burke's words as I have observed the behavior of U.S. business leaders in Davos over the past few days. They know better, but in their public rhetoric, they have embraced and enabled our new president and his policies.
I understand and sympathize with the pressures they feel. I used to remind my colleagues in the Obama White House that "caution is the cheapest form of stimulus." There is a clear case for corporate tax reform, for some targeted regulatory relief and a more positive government attitude toward business. Businesses who get on the wrong side of the new president have lost billions of dollars of value in 60 seconds because of a tweet. And you cannot hope to have influence on an administration you go out of the way to condemn.
Yet I am disturbed by (i) the spectacle of financiers who three months ago were telling anyone who would listen that they would never do business with a Trump company rushing to praise the new administration (ii) the unwillingness of business leaders who rightly take pride in their corporate efforts to promote women and minorities to say anything about presidentially sanctioned intolerance (iii) the failure of the leaders of global companies to say a critical word about U.S. efforts to encourage the breakup of European unity and more generally to step away from underwriting an open global system (iv) the reluctance of business leaders who have a huge stake in the current global order to criticize provocative rhetoric with regard to China, Mexico or the Middle East (v) the willingness of too many to praise Trump nominees who advocate blatant protectionism merely because they have a business background.
I have my differences with the new administration's economic policies and suspect the recent market rally and run of economic statistics is a sugar high. Reasonable people whom I respect differ, and time will tell. My objection is not to disagreements over economic policy. It is to enabling, if not encouraging, immoral and reckless policies in other spheres that ultimately bear on our prosperity. Burke was right. It is a lesson of human experience, whether the issue is playground bullying, Enron or Europe in the 1930s, that the worst outcomes occur when good people find reasons to accommodate themselves to what they know is wrong. That is what I think happened much too often in Davos this week.
Lawrence H. Summers, a professor at Harvard, is a former treasury secretary and director of the National Economic Council in the White House.