Ex businessman with ideas to 'Make America great again'

Here are some ideas from an ex businessman on how to ‘Make America Great Again’;

• Low business taxes
• Get other countries to share the burden of American defence spending
• Reorganise and lower the cost of Medical Insurance
• Level the playing field in international trade
• Invest in infrastructure projects

Sound familiar?

Leaving the 'wall' and immigration controls aside, it could be lifted straight from Donald Trump’s manifesto. These in fact are all ideas espoused by Lee Iacocca, then President of Chrysler in the 1980s.

I’ve just finished reading Lee’s autobiography, the modestly titled ‘Iacocca’, written more than 30 years ago. It charts his rise to be number 2 at Ford and his fractious relationship with Henry Ford II.

He was eventually unceremoniously sacked when Henry decided they could no longer work together. Within weeks he was recruited to run the ailing Chrysler business. He quickly found this was a poisoned chalice with the financial situation much worse than he had imagined. With guts, drive and sheer force of personality he managed to achieve ‘equality of sacrifice’ with management, workers, suppliers and banks all tightening their belts. With the help of a hard-won government loan guarantee he managed to turn the company around, paying off the loans early and restoring profitability.

Lee was an engineer by training and a marketeer by inclination. The son of Italian immigrants he believed in the virtues of education, hard work and ‘doing’ rather than just thinking. His politics may sound conservative but he was much more nuanced than that. If anything he leaned more to the left politically and was supportive of targeted government support for industry if it was in the national interest. He was also a strong believer in balancing the books and concerted effort to reduce the national deficit.

One of the final chapters of the book is entitled, ‘Making America great again’. In his heyday Lee was seen by some as a potential future president. Politics wasn’t for him though. He preferred the cut and thrust of business and being able to make and implement decisions quickly.

Another ex businessman is now shaking things up at the White House and at least some of his ideas bear a striking similarity to those of his older contemporary.

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