President
Business Roundtable (BRT)

John Engler is president of the Business Roundtable (BRT), an association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. corporations with a combined workforce of more than 14 million workers and over $6 trillion in annual revenues.

A former three-term governor of Michigan, Engler assumed the leadership of Business Roundtable in January 2011 after serving six years as president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers.

As BRT president, Engler has helped bring CEO expertise and insights to bear on major challenges facing the United States, including global competitiveness, innovation, economic growth and job creation. BRT-member CEOs lead U.S.-headquartered companies that invest more than $150 billion annually in research and development and generate an estimated $420 billion in sales for small and medium-sized businesses annually.

Business Roundtable has accomplished significant public policy goals during Engler's tenure as BRT president, including enactment of trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea that will expand opportunities for U.S. exports and trade-related jobs. BRT’s leadership on trade has been widely cited by the both White House and Congressional leaders.

Building on its landmark 2010 report and policy document, "Roadmap for Growth," Business Roundtable and Engler have further promoted policies to enhance U.S. global economic leadership, including a restructuring of the nation’s system of taxation to broaden and lower corporate tax rates and move to a competitive territorial tax system.

Under Engler, BRT has also emerged as preeminent voice for regulatory restraint and transparency. CEOs' advocacy helped persuade President Obama to withdraw an overreaching regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency on ground-level ozone that would have been the most expensive regulation in U.S. history, inhibiting investment and hiring. Business Roundtable also took the lead in a successful court challenge to the Securities and Exchange Commission's rule on "proxy access" that would have undermined effective management of U.S.-based corporations.

Engler came to BRT after heading the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) since 2004. As NAM president, he was the leading advocate for the nearly 12 million Americans employed directly in manufacturing, educating the public and policymakers on issues affecting this critical sector of the U.S. economy.