Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Leaves President's Business Council -- Update
February 02 2017 - 6:17PM
Dow Jones News
By Greg Bensinger
Uber Technologies Inc.'s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, said
he is stepping down from President Donald Trump's economic advisory
council, saying that his participation has been misunderstood as an
endorsement of the new administration's policies.
The announcement, in a memo to Uber staff Thursday, follows
criticism of the ride-hailing firm over perceptions that it
supports the Trump Administration, with some celebrities and others
using social media to call for people to delete Uber's app from
their smartphones.
Mr. Kalanick was scheduled to join other members of the
president's Strategic and Policy Forum at a meeting Friday in
Washington, D.C. The group also includes CEOs of Wal-Mart Stores
Inc., Walt Disney Co., General Electric Co., and PepsiCo Inc., as
well as technology companies International Business Machines Corp.
and Tesla Inc.
Mr. Kalanick said he had told Mr. Trump he was leaving the
group. "Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the
president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been
misinterpreted to be exactly that," Mr. Kalanick wrote in the memo,
a copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Uber customers and drivers had panned Mr. Kalanick for appearing
to align himself with the new administration, especially since Mr.
Trump on Friday issued an executive order banning travel for
citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations to the U.S. The White
House has said the move was needed to prevent terrorists from
entering the country.
Critics have said that the order is overly broad and unfair, and
many tech executives have complained that it has hurt some of their
employees who are from the affected countries and said it
contradicts American traditions. Mr. Kalanick himself had condemned
the executive order as "unjust" and vowed to press Mr. Trump on the
matter when the advisory group met on Friday.
The backlash against Uber picked up over the weekend when the
San Francisco company tweeted that it was suspending so-called
surge pricing to John F. Kennedy International Airport. At the
time, some drivers of traditional taxis there were halting work to
protest the White House travel ban. Uber's tweet was interpreted as
a means to undermine the work stoppage and drive up Uber sales,
though Uber said it was meant instead to let passengers know it
wouldn't be raising prices during the protest.
The Independent Drivers Guild, a group of New York Uber drivers,
began circulating a petition Thursday to compel Mr. Kalanick to
withdraw from the president's advisory committee. The group also
planned to ask that Uber donate money to the groups fighting the
travel ban.
"The executive order is hurting many people in communities all
across America," Mr. Kalanick wrote in his memo Thursday. "Families
are being separated, people are stranded overseas and there's a
growing fear the U.S. is no longer a place that welcomes
immigrants."
Write to Greg Bensinger at greg.bensinger@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 02, 2017 18:02 ET (23:02 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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