Tom J. Donohue

Thomas Joseph Donohue Sr. (August 12, 1938 – October 14, 2024) was an American business executive. He served as the president and CEO of the United States Chamber of Commerce located in Washington, D.C. from 1997 to 2021. During his leadership of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Donohue established the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform and was president of the National Chamber Foundation. He was raised in Rockville Centre on Long Island. He worked his way through college as a union truck driver before working as a fundraiser for the Boy Scouts of America and the National Center for Disability Services.

Career

Donohue worked as an administrator at Fairfield University and as a trustee at Marymount University. From 1969 to 1976, he was the US Official Deputy Assistant Postmaster General, where he helped "convert" the Post Office from a government department into the quasi-private U.S. Postal Service. By 1978, his role included running "a grassroots political apparatus" and "relations with the White House and Congress".

In July 2022, Donohue helped found a group of U.S. business and policy leaders who share the goal of constructively engaging with China in order to improve U.S.-China relations.

Chamber of Commerce Donohue (left) with Navy Admiral Michael Mullen in June 2011. In 1997, Donohue assumed the role of president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, replacing Richard Lesher. Under Lesher, the Chamber had endorsed the Clinton health care plan of 1993, angering many conservatives. Congressman John Boehner led a campaign pushing companies to leave the Chamber over its support of the bill. When Donohue took over, the Chamber's power was considered to be at a low ebb. According to The Wall Street Journal, "[Donohue's] most striking innovation has been to offer individual companies and industries the chance to use the chamber as a means of anonymously pursuing their own political ends."

Donohue established the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, which has won significant cases in the courts, at the state and federal levels, and in elections for state attorneys general and Supreme Court judges.

In 2014, Donohue said that if the Republicans did not change their immigration policies then they "shouldn't bother to run a candidate in 2016". During his final years at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, he often clashed with President Donald Trump over his administration's trade and immigration policies.

Donohue resigned as president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2019.

Personal life and death In 1963, Donohue married Elizabeth Schulz in Bayside, New York.

Donohue died from congestive heart failure at his home in Arlington, Virginia on October 14, 2024, at the age of 86.

Honors Donohue was the 2013 recipient of the Horatio Alger Award. In April 2016, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Boy Scouts of America's National Capital Area Council.