Companies around the U.S. have faced mounting calls to involve themselves in contentious political issues in recent years and with the 2024 election likely to be particularly charged, executives will have to weigh whether it’s worthwhile to wade into politics.

“I think most CEOs would sooner put their head in an alligator than get involved in politics this year,” Mark Penn, chairman and CEO of marketing firm Stagwell, told FOX Business in an interview. “I think that is in contrast to previous years when there was this growing pressure on CEOs to become involved in politics and not stay silent.”

“They’ve realized that there are two sides to the political equation and if you want to have a brand that’s loved by 80% or 90% of the country, getting involved with something that maybe 40% like can be a pretty precarious position.”

Penn, who worked as the chief strategy officer of Microsoft and co-founded a polling firm that had former President Bill Clinton and ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair as clients, said that when activists from outside a company are trying to pressure a company into taking a position on a hot-button issue, companies should pause and decide if they should respond at all before doing something.

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“Maybe by responding you fan the flames, and they’re trying to get a response from you one way or another, because the activist groups generally want to put a company in a position of having to favor their side,” Penn explained. “They’re looking for a target company that they can then kind of push over to their side.”

“What we say is look, if your company has a long-standing commitment to certain issues aside from your products, then you should stick to those principles and continue. If you’re somebody like a Patagonia and you’ve got a set of principles and you have long-term associations, then that’s core to your image,” he said.

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Penn offered a hypothetical situation in which an airline or hotel had a politically-aligned organization booking a significant number of rooms or seats and how that could force executives into an issue unexpectedly that would force them to develop a consistent policy.

“Is the right issue to throw them out of your hotel or plane? Is it to say, ‘Hey, we’re not going to discriminate on the basis of people’s political views?’ That’s where I think companies go wrong, and they make a snap judgment in a couple of hours, and they pay for it for like years,” he explained.

“What I think companies are learning is that snap judgments like this can really cost billions of dollars in lost business. And I think they also have to realize their own marketing departments have a variety of people, some of whom have a variety of interests and how they market, what they want to market,” Penn added.

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To help business leaders handle those sorts of situations, Stagwell launched a risk and reputation unit with a Democrat, a Republican, a pollster and public relations specialist to serve a given client. Penn explained this format helps ensure that “CEOs do not fall into the trap of having a former Republican or Democratic staffer who is their CCO and then wind up in one of those two political pits.”

“I think the most overlooked thing in CEO decision-making about political issues is not ensuring that they have viewpoint diversity in the advice that they’re getting,” he added.

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Penn said businesses should do periodic reviews of their stakeholders and potential hot-button issues that may arise which could cause activists to target their company for protests. He noted that those are typically social issues rather than economic issues like inflation, immigration and crime that have a more direct impact on the day-to-day and strategic operations of a business.

“The truth is, political explosions have been far more costly than almost any physical event that I can recall. And so I think they have to be better prepared,” he explained. “Sometimes just staying out of it, not commenting, letting it pass is the best solution – but it’s so difficult to implement at the time. It seems impossible to implement, because people are racing into your office and because there are these other forces that whatever decision you make can have some stress and strain on it.”

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“But also you just don’t want to wait until it shows up on your door. You know that this is enough of a potentially costly situation to have a team on your side, to have the resources that you can spring into place just as you have on security, just as you have on physical emergencies,” Penn added. “Political emergencies can be just as costly and powerful.”

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China expert Gordon Chang is lifting the veil on the dark side of the Chinese electric vehicle industry, claiming that it threatens to choke out the U.S automotive industry, will bring with it a whole new data collection apparatus to potentially spy on Americans, and will grow on the back of slave labor.

Chang, the Gatestone Institute senior fellow and author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” spoke to Fox News Digital about what he believes are a whole host of dangers that will come from China’s major splash into the EV market.

The expert’s message comes as Chinese electric vehicle company BYD recently surpassed EV giant Tesla’s production for the second straight year, manufacturing over 3 million vehicles in 2023 compared to Tesla’s 1.84 million.

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Though BYD has yet to sell in America, it has cornered the global EV market by selling its clean energy and hybrid line of vehicles at a cheaper rate than its competitors.

Chang warned the explosion is being driven in part by “extremely predatory” business practices amounting to “trade violations” that threaten to flood the market and kill western countries’ manufacturing jobs.

“China makes 60% of the world’s EVs. It manufactures 10 million more cars per year than it can absorb in its domestic market, which means it must export those additional cars, which means it floods the markets around the world,” he said.

Chang added the Chinese government boosts EV production far and away beyond what many economically responsible countries do, leading to an unfair advantage that could ultimately put American companies out of business.

“And we’ve got to remember the massive subsidies that China puts into its EVs. Those subsidies are about three to four times the size of subsidies in OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, for instance,” he said.

“So basically, we’ve got this massive trade violation, and it’s extremely predatory.” 

He said China has been untrustworthy in trade relations with the U.S. for decades.

“Admission to the World Trade Organization was supposed to sort of integrate China into a global system of rules. That hasn’t worked. China has openly violated its WTO obligations,” Chang said, adding, “We do not want China to own all of our manufacturing capacity so that there are no American manufacturers left. I know that that sounds extreme, but that’s what China wants. And we have the power to stop it because this is our country.”

Chang also commented on other dangers stemming from a burgeoning Chinese EV market, namely spying and data collection on Americans and other citizens from around the world. 

“With an EV – with any Chinese ca, I’m sure the Chinese are going to use it to take information,” he said, adding, “China has been hoovering up information in all areas, and it’s doing that for a number of purposes. But none of them are benign. So, for us, we cannot allow China to collect information from the United States in this or any other fashion.”

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Other auto industry experts have raised similar alarms about Chinese EVs.

Auto guru Mike Caudill previously told Fox News Digital, “Chinese EVs could be equipped with even more powerful spying equipment. They could go anywhere, including military bases, power plants and cellphone towers. EVs would be far more effective than spy balloons at collecting important data, and at far lower cost – because Americans would be purchasing these vehicles.”

Chang also mentioned that the parts used in manufacturing Chinese EVs, and other Chinese products, come from slave labor. 

“The one concern we have with Chinese-made parts is forced and slave labor. So, for instance, we know, from studies that virtually all of the solar panels made in China are made with such labor. And that is completely unacceptable,” he declared.

Chang asserted that Americans shouldn’t want to contribute to the economic growth of a nation hostile to it in general.

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“The point is, we should be focusing on American manufacturing right now,” he declared.

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