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CounterPunch Exclusives

How the US is Driving the Rise of the Businessmen-Politician

Photograph Source: US State Department – Public Domain

As his superyacht Boardwalk docked in Venice as part of the “Freedom 250 Coastal Diplomacy Italy initiative” in July, billionaire US Ambassador Tilman J. Fertitta was greeted by protests. Fertitta was traveling across the country to meet “with local business leaders, celebrities and Americans on board the yacht,” according to CNN. The incident captured a growing trend of ultrawealthy business figures in positions of political power.

Fertitta is one of several billionaire US ambassadors, alongside those serving in the UK, Turkey, France and Monaco, and the Organization of American States. Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff and outside adviser Jared Kushner are also billionaires, along with Trump’s commerce secretary, education secretary, interior secretary, head of NASA, and administrator of the small business administration.

The Trump administration includes 57 cabinet members and senior officials with net worths of more than $100 million, according to El País. A more informal integration of billionaires into diplomacy was seen during Trump’s May 2026 visit to China. More than a dozen CEOs and senior executives, including BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Blackstone’s Stephen A. Schwarzman, NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang, and Tesla’s Elon Musk, joined the US delegation.

Businessmen have long been prominent in local American politics. A 2021 study by political scientist Patricia A. Kirkland of more than 3,200 mayors in 263 cities found that nearly a third of mayors have either been business owners or have executive experience, making it the most common prior profession. But Trump’s second term has brought the ultrawealthy into government at a rapid, top-down scale, believing that their experience building companies, managing organizations, and negotiating deals makes them better equipped than established politicians dependent on outside funding.

The ongoing billionaire-politician surge has tapped into a wider anti-establishment mood in the country, and the shrinking of the permanent bureaucracy under DOGE has further elevated political appointees and outside advisers.

But it is neither a new American phenomenon nor confined to the United States. More than 11 percent of the world’s billionaires have held or sought political office, according to a 2023 study in Perspectives on Politics, spanning various government systems. The trend is reshaping international relations as governments adapt to this change.

The Rise and Return of the Politician Businessman

Businessmen were just one of many professions who entered politics in early America, alongside lawyers, landowners, veterans, and merchants. But industrialization allowed some to build enormous fortunes through railroads, manufacturing, banking, and natural resources. Compared with Europe’s more aristocratic systems, American industrialists increasingly found opportunities to buy their way into political power.

By the early 20th century, several businessmen had reached Washington’s inner circles; banking and industrial magnate Andrew Mellon became Treasury secretary in 1921, while banker Jesse H. Jones chaired the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and later became commerce secretary. During World War II, hundreds of executives entered the government as “dollar-a-year-men” to help manage war efforts, including General Motors president William S. Knudsen.

Their direct political influence hit a wall after WWII, as military veterans came to dominate political office. A 1956 Timearticle noted businessmen’s........

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