4/19/1962 Robert Kennedy's Justice Department continued its anti-trust investigation into the steel companies. U.S. Steel and seven other companies were eventually forced to pay maximum fines in 1965 for their price-fixing activities between 1955 and 1961. The steel crisis defined John and Robert Kennedy as Wall Street enemies. The president was seen as a state dictator. As the Wall Street Journal put it in the week after Big Steel surrendered to the Kennedys, " The Government set the price. And it did this by the pressure of fear-by naked power, by threats, by agents of the state security police. " (Wall Street Journal, April 19, 1962, cited by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. , Robert Kennedy and His Times (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978) , p. 437.)
4/30/1962 U. S. News and World Report gave prominence in its April 30, 1962, issue to an anti-Kennedy article on " Planned Economy " that suggested the president was acting like a Soviet commissar. (Michael Calder, JFK vs CIA: Death to Traitors: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy-An Analysis of the Social, Political, and Economic Factors Which Led to His Assassination by the Central Intelligence Agency ( Los Angeles: West LA Publishers, 1998), pp. 106-7) Attorney General Robert Kennedy became a symbol of "ruthless power " to the business titans he treated so brusquely, whose corporations he then found in violation of the law. Media controlled by the same interests adopted the characterization of RFK as ruthless until his murder six years later.
May 1962 The depth of corporate hostility toward Kennedy after the steel crisis can be seen by an unsigned editorial in Fortune, media czar Henry Luce's magazine for the most fortunate. The editors of Fortune knew the decision to raise steel prices had been made by the executive committee of U.S. Steel's board of directors. It included top-level officers from other huge financial institutions, such as the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, the First National City Bank of New York, the Prudential Insurance Company, the Ford Foundation, and AT&T. (Hoopes, Steel Crisis, p. 17. Also Donald Gibson, Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1994), p. 17.
When Roger Blough handed U.S. Steel's provocative press release to the president, he did so on behalf of not only U.S. Steel but also these other financial giants in the United States. The Fortune editorial therefore posed an intriguing question: Why did the financial interests behind U.S. Steel announce the price increase in such a way as to deliberately " provoke the President of the U.S. into a vitriolic and demagogic assault ? " (" Steel: The Ides of April, " Fortune (May 1962), p. 98) With the authority of an insider's knowledge that it denied having, Fortune answered its own question: "There is a theory-unsupported by any direct evidence-that Blough was acting as a 'business statesman' rather than as a businessman judging his market. " According to "this theory, " Kennedy's prior appeal to steel executives not to raise prices, leading to the contract settlement between the company and the union, had "poised over the industry a threat of 'jawbone control' of prices. For the sake of his company, the industry, and the nation, Blough sought a way to break through the bland 'harmony' that has recently prevailed between government and business. " In plainer language, the president was acting too much like a president, rather than just another officeholder beholden to the powers that be. US Steel on behalf of still higher financial interests therefore taunted Kennedy so as to present him with a dilemma: he either had to accept the price hike and lose credibility, or react as he did with power to roll back the increase and thereby unite the business world against him. His unswerving activist response then served to confirm the worst fears of corporate America: "That the threat of 'j awbone control' was no mere bugaboo was borne out by the tone of President Kennedy's reaction and the threats of general business harassment by government that followed the 'affront. "' Fortune gave Kennedy a deadly warning of its own by the title of its editorial: " Steel: The Ides of April. "
5/8/1962 As John Kennedy became persona non grata to the economic elite of the United States, his popularity increased elsewhere. He said on May 8, 1962, to a warmly welcoming convention of the United Auto Workers: " Last week, after speaking to the Chamber of Commerce and the presidents of the American Medical Association, I began to wonder how I got elected. And now I remember. " I said last week to the Chamber that I thought I was the second choice for President of a majority of the Chamber; anyone else was first choice. " He told the U.A.W. : " Harry Truman once said there are 14 or 15 million Americans who have the resources to have representatives in Washington to protect their interests, and that the interests of the great mass of other people, the hundred and fifty or sixty million, is the responsibility of the President of the United States. And I propose to fulfill it."
After the steel crisis, President Kennedy felt so much hostility from the leaders of big business that he finally gave up trying to curry their support. He told advisers Sorensen, O'Donnell, and Schlesinger, "I understand better every day why Roosevelt, who started out such a mild fellow, ended up so ferociously anti-business. It is hard as hell to be friendly with people who keep trying to cut your legs off. " If Fortune's editors were right in seeing a deliberate provocation of Kennedy, the instigators had succeeded in alienating the business elite from the president, and vice versa. JFK joked about what his corporate enemies would do to him, if they only had the chance. A year after the steel crisis, he learned before giving a speech in New York that elsewhere in the same hotel " the steel industry was presenting Dwight D. Eisenhower with its annual public service award." "I was their man of the year last year, " said the president to his audience. "They wanted to come down to the White House to give me their award, but the Secret Service wouldn't let them do it. " (Schlesinger, Thousand Days, p. 641.; 42. Kenneth P. O 'Donnell and David F. Powers, "Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye " (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 407.)
5/28/1962 US stock market plunged; biggest one-day loss since the crash of 1929. RFK recalled later that his brother complained, "When the market went down, it's the Kennedy stock market; and when it goes up, it's the free enterprise system."
6/8/1962 In mid-1962 the tone of LIFE's examination of Kennedy's domestic policy changed, and he was criticized for treating economic problems as 'technical' problems, thereby giving too little attention to the overall importance of economic 'freedom'. (LIFE, June 8, 1962, 'How to Put More Zing in the Economy', p4) In keeping with its normal rhetoric, LIFE accused Kennedy of interfering with the free flow of international investments with his proposal to increase taxes on purchases by Americans of foreign securities." (Life, August 2, 1963, 'Misery with the Dollar or Happiness?, p.4)
10/11/1962 JFK signed into law the Trade Expansion Act which lowered tariffs. He called it the "most important international piece of legislation since the Marshall Plan."
10/16/1962 JFK signed his investment incentive plan to encourage business to buy more equipment and expand factories. He called it a "good start on bringing our tax structure up to date," though some of his reform ideas had been eliminated by Congress. The same month, there was a sharp increase in orders for machine tools. By the spring of 1963 companies cited his tax plan as an important reason for increased business investment. (Business Week 4/27/1963) Kennedy was able to persuade Congress to pass an act that removed the distinction between repatriated profits and profits reinvested abroad. While this law applied to industry as a whole, it especially affected the oil companies. It was estimated that as a result of this legislation, wealthy oilmen saw a fall in their earnings on foreign investment from 30 per cent to 15 per cent. Kennedy decided to take on the oil industry. On 16th October, 1962, Kennedy was able to persuade Congress to pass an act that removed the distinction between repatriated profits and profits reinvested abroad. While this law applied to industry as a whole, it especially affected the oil companies. It was estimated that as a result of this legislation, wealthy oilmen saw a fall in their earnings on foreign investment from 30 per cent to 15 per cent.
10/15/1963 The Wall St Journal was even more harsh in its condemnation of the president's policies than it had been at the outset. On October 15, 1963 it accused the Kennedy administration of giving 'mere lip service to economic freedom' while pursuing a foreign aid program that favored socialism and a domestic program that led to bureaucratic control of the economy. The paper charged that Kennedy's policies reflected a hostility to 'the philosophy of freedom'. (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 15, 1963, 'Search for a Purpose', p. 16). "Concerning foreign aid, the *Journal* had repeatedly accused Kennedy of encouraging state planning, statism and/or socialism." (Wall Street Journal issues: 8/6/62 'No Cause for Celebration', p. 6; 3/26/63 'Too Much Money, Too Little Thought', p. 18; 8/15/63 'When Friends Become Foes' p8)
11/19/1963 During the final week of Kennedy's life, the Wall St Journal acknowledged that there was general prosperity, but claimed there was an uneasiness about Kennedy attributable to his attempts to control the economy, as well as to excessive spending and the growth of government. (x Wall Street Journal, Nov. 19, 1963, 'The Anti-Business Image', p. 18) In a separate article it said that Kennedy's foreign aid had often fostered 'statist and socialistic institutions.'" (Wall Street Journal, Nov. 19, 1963, 'Blunt Talk on a Blunt Tool', p. 18)."
4/28/1964 LBJ had business leaders over for a black-tie dinner. They included William Battens of J.C. Penney, Roger Blough of US Steel, Gussie Busch of Anheuser-Busch, Henry Ford II, Crawford Greenewalt of E.I. duPont, Frederick Kappels of AT&T, Tom McCabe of Scott Paper, David Rockefeller, James S. Rockefeller, Bob Stevens (formerly in the Eisenhower administration), Walter Touhy of C&O Railway. (White House Diary p127)
4/21/1965 William H. Orrick, head of the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department testified before the Senate that "concentration of industrial power may lead to the police state. Can anyone doubt that the prewar experience of Germany, Japan and Italy have proven the wisdom of the nation's concern over concentration of economic power?"