Mer­ck CEO Ken Fra­zier re­signs from Trump coun­cil in protest, and the pres­i­dent swift­ly bites back

Mer­ck CEO Ken Fra­zier, the on­ly African-Amer­i­can run­ning a top glob­al bio­phar­ma com­pa­ny, has very pub­licly bro­ken with Pres­i­dent Trump, re­sign­ing in protest from the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s man­u­fac­tur­ing coun­cil in the wake of a grow­ing con­tro­ver­sy over the pres­i­dent’s un­will­ing­ness to sin­gle out white su­prema­cy groups in the vi­o­lent protests over the week­end in Char­lottesville, VA.

This move by Fra­zier will put con­sid­er­able pres­sure on the rest of the in­dus­try and its lob­by­ists to sep­a­rate them­selves from Trump — some­thing they’ve been loath to do – and take a more crit­i­cal po­si­tion on Trump’s pres­i­den­cy as well as some of his poli­cies.

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