The following editorial appears in The Washington Post:

America’s captains of industry are political orphans. Until relatively recently, both political parties struck a respectful, indeed solicitous, posture toward companies and the chief executives who ran them. The near-collapse of the economy in 2008 shook the legitimacy of both capitalism and its corporate stewards, however, with lasting repercussions — prominent among them a bipartisan swing toward populism.

In 2020, the presidential nominees of both parties could be anti-business in the sense that they may feel little deference to the independent judgment of corporate leaders. That includes President Donald Trump, who has launched a tariff war in defiance of traditional business lobbies and claims the power to “order” U.S. companies to prepare an exit from China. Among Democrats, the top contenders include a socialist and a Harvard University law professor emerita who proposes a new federal corporate charter requiring firms to put unions and environmentalists on their boards.

There is, accordingly, just a trace of anxiety in the Business Roundtable’s newly issued “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation,”an update on the corporate mission statement the influential association of chief executives last put out in 1997. Back then, the Business Roundtable emphasized that “the paramount duty of management and of boards of directors is to the corporation’s stockholders.” Today, “shareholders” don’t rate a mention until about 250 words into a 300-word promise that defines the corporate raison d’être as “an economy that serves all Americans.” It promises diversity and inclusion, environmental sustainability and other laudable objectives usually considered the province of explicitly socially responsible institutions — such as government. Yet the 181 signatories are eager to remind the public of their long-standing sense of responsibility, so as to help restore public trust in capitalism generally and big companies specifically. (Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, was among those who signed, in his capacity as chief executive of Amazon.)

The document might help, depending on how and when it’s translated into action. While there is great potential for mischief when the president bosses companies around based on the ideological or political interest du jour, we see no particular harm if the business community wants to articulate and pursue its own voluntary social impact. Economics even has a name for such by-products of profit-seeking activity: “positive externalities,” an example being the friendly communal meeting place that spontaneously forms along a thriving Main Street. Still, consciously producing social benefits alongside profits might be easier said than done. Society is not a monolith, so what one segment finds beneficial might offend another, and the real test of any company’s social commitment comes when that agenda conflicts with the bottom line. Any firm that consistently favors the former over the latter won’t be a firm much longer.

That’s capitalism. What business leaders can do, perhaps, is to put their lobbying muscle behind actual legislation that empowers government to pursue social objectives more successfully. Income inequality is an inherent hazard of the capitalist system; we might have less of it, though, without the individual tax cuts in the 2017 Trump-backed tax bill, which the Business Roundtable supported because of its corporate reforms. A more humane capitalism would be a more legitimate capitalism and, ultimately, a more secure environment for business, too.

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