U.S. companies are prepping for Trump tweets — like they would for a "natural disaster"

Life
ByJames Dennin

Figuring out what the hell to do when the President of the United States drags down your brand on Twitter has become a booming new cottage industry for public relations and consulting firms, per a new investigation from Quartz.

Companies are frantically preparing to shield against the potential negative effects of a nasty tweet from Donald Trump, reports Quartz, which polled eight major public affairs and communications businesses in Washington, D.C.

All eight had gotten requests for help to preempt fallout from a possible Trump tweet, according to the report, as the president has continued to tweet about specific companies through the month of January.

It's no secret that Trump's tweets are serious market-moving events: One survey found that roughly 60% of young traders had bought or sold stock based on the president's social media targets.  

One firm told Quartz that figuring out how to react to a negative Trump tweet was like preparing for a natural disaster: "A random event, out of the blue, with a really massive cleanup."

That's probably why Boeing head Dennis Muilenburg felt the need to kiss Trump's ring despite the fact that the tweet criticizing the company's Air Force One contract wasn't even accurate.  

Trump's tweets about Mexico have been such a pain for the country's currency traders that it has become an industry joke that it would probably be cheaper for Mexican financiers to scrounge up the $12 billion or so they would need to buy Twitter — just to make him stop — as Bloomberg reports.

Even a positive POTUS Tweet can backfire if a business doesn't have the right response lined up. That was the case with L.L. Bean., which faces a boycott after Trump tweeted favorably about one of its board members — who reportedly contributed $60,000 to a Trump PAC.

That's why so many companies have taken a proactive route, rushing to push out announcements about jobs that may have already been in the works in the first place, like Amazon and Walmart

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