Carlos Gutierrez, who was secretary of commerce under President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2009, says he will be voting for Hillary Clinton in November. “I would have preferred Jeb Bush, but I think Hillary is a great choice,” he said on CNN. “I am afraid of what Donald Trump would do to this country.” When he was asked for specifics about his rejection of Trump, it seems hardly surprising that a former secretary of commerce would name the economy as his top concern.
“The economy’s important to me. His plan, I love the tax cuts, I’m a Republican, but then he has this sort of import substitution strategy, which is a strategy like an underdeveloped country, very poor countries think that way,” Gutierrez said. “[The idea] that we have to substitute our imports. That would be a disaster.”
At the end of the day, Gutierrez said he had to look beyond his party affiliation. “I am not thinking about a Republican,” he said. “I am thinking about a U.S. citizen. I think, at some point, you have to put the party aside and say, what’s best for the country? I don’t want to live in a society that I think Donald Trump will create.”
When asked how other CEOs and top business executives feel about their choice in the election, Gutierrez said that “most of them are totally disgusted … by the Trump nomination. They don’t know what to do.” It’s obvious that many Republicans could never bring themselves to pull the lever for a Clinton, “but they’re not going to vote for Trump,” he said. If Trump somehow wins in November it would amount to “a tactical victory for him and a strategic loss for the GOP.”
Gutierrez is the latest in a long line of Republicans to say they won’t vote for Trump, although many haven’t actually gone all out and endorsed Clinton, including several members of Congress such as Sens. Susan Collins and Mark Kirk. Earlier this week, 50 high-profile Republican foreign policy and national security experts signed a letter warning that Trump “would be the most reckless president in American history.”
