Ending coronavirus shutdown is not one-size-fits-all: Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus
Marcus said the shutdown "can't go on too much longer"
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Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus has one message for President Trump: government should stay out of the way of businesses as the economy reopens, he told FOX Business' Neil Cavuto on Wednesday.
"My advice to the president is open up the government, do the things that government does well. Make sure that … we have enough testing kits to take care of those people who do go to work," Marcus said on FOX Business' "The Ingraham Angle" on Tuesday. "Each industry will have their own way of dealing with it. They’ve done it, building businesses, and government doesn’t do a good job in this area."
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Marcus is among more than 100 leaders named to the "Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups" who will advise the White House on getting Americans back to work.
"The headline should be the president wants to get this country open," Marcus said. "He set up these organizations to ask for advice. He’s going to listen to everybody, and then he’s going to make decisions based on the collective agreement of all these people, which is a smart way of doing it."
President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the Rose Garden of the White House, Tuesday, April 14, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Marcus mentioned possible solutions like allowing businesses to expense all capital ventures immediately and temporarily disallowing the Federal Insurance Contributions Act to allow individuals to build up cash.
"This can't go on too much longer," Marcus said. "Let's say two, three weeks from now, businesses will have to start thinking about how they are going to deal with it. ... A banker versus a retailer, an industrial guy versus a small restaurant, they are totally disparate and the same rules don't work for everybody."
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Marcus said there will be many changes in the United States because of the pandemic and he joked about his preference for fist bumps over handshakes.
"People thought I was crazy," he said, adding that Trump is one of the rare recipients of a Marcus handshake.
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The pandemic is one of the biggest business challenges faced in living memory, he said.
"I've been around 90 years, and I've seen a lot of things come and go in America," Marcus said. "I've watched wars, I've watched inflation, and I've watched deflation, and I must tell you I've never seen anything like what we're involved with today."