Navigating an Unprecedented Election Season

This is part of a series of SBS Comms Briefing Notes about the 2024 U.S. election

To say this will be an election like no other is at once an understatement and an exaggeration. It’s an understatement because the U.S. is increasingly polarized and the presumptive candidates have a vitriolic relationship, making this the most contentious campaign in memory. It’s an exaggeration, however, because November 5 is a rematch between politicians who have spent decades in the public eye and years in the White House, and many of the patterns we witnessed in 2020 will repeat themselves.

For Corporate America, this contradiction can prove confusing, and these complexities muddle efforts to navigate the election season and forecast the kind of White House policies and priorities that will impact their businesses. This also places the onus on Public Affairs and Public Relations teams to prepare executives for what’s to come, in terms of anticipating policy and coaching them on how to react — and not overreact — to the coming campaign season. 

Knee-Jerk Reactions

Knee-jerk reactions to proposed economic and business policies are always dangerous during election cycles, and more so now that polling shows the country split nearly 50:50. Criticize one candidate’s views on budget policy or tariffs and you run the risk of alienating half the country – not to mention a good chunk of your customer base. 

Further, it will prove all too easy in 2024 to confuse campaign rhetoric for actual policy, considering the mounting pressure on both candidates to stand out and differentiate themselves. It may seem counterintuitive, but there’s very little daylight on many of their key economic and business policies. Consider just a few examples:

• Both sides are focused on revitalizing manufacturing, and tout their ability to bring blue collar jobs back to the United States. Their positions are so similar here that it’s hard to imagine Trump spending political capital to roll back Biden’s CHIPS Act and halt construction of semiconductor fabs. 

• On a related note, the two candidates advocate wielding economic statecraft to challenge Beijing. Biden upheld Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports, and both stepped up efforts to block exports of chips and other strategic technology to the Asian country. 

• The two sides are big believers in deficit spending, and respectively hit record expenditures during their administrations.

Tariffs and TikTok

As a result, the two candidates are likely to exaggerate areas where policy differences do exist, and businesses would be wise to view such bluster with skepticism. It’s worth asking: Will Trump make good on plans to hike tariffs to 60% on Chinese imports, or scrap a cornerstone of economic policy and challenge the Federal Reserve's independence? Business groups in industries ranging from tech to retail would howl over the tariffs, as would inflation hawks in his party who value the central bank’s autonomy. It’s questionable at best whether he would carry out these policies

And it’s not just the Republicans who say one thing and possibly mean another. Take Biden’s swift approval of legislation to force the sale of TikTok, which by many accounts will result in its closure in the U.S. If the Biden camp is so concerned about TikTok’s threat to our privacy and security, why is it still campaigning on the platform? Answers to that question suggest the law may have more to do with sending a message on China, or standing apart from Trump, who (now) supports the platform.

Either way, what’s clear is that campaign rhetoric may be little more than rhetoric in 2024, and it will be impossible to predict policy until we have a better sense of who’s in charge in Congress, and who the next president picks for his Cabinet and advisors. Those decisions will do far more to shape policy than pronouncements made in the heat of the campaign.

Cool Heads, Hot Air

Until then, businesses would be wise to gauge their response to policy pledges with care. 

That doesn’t mean sticking their heads in the sand and waiting for November to pass; businesses should thoughtfully consider how their products and services play into the hot button topics of 2024, and engage in thoughtful discussion. And in some cases it may be the right thing for CEOs to speak up about policy, especially on social issues that are important to their customers and employees.

But in a contentious election season, businesses shouldn’t treat every policy pronouncement as gospel and publicly respond. Only cool heads will prevail in an environment full of hot air, and smart Public Affairs and Public Relations teams that can gauge public sentiment and political reality will come out ahead in 2025.