Trump and the Republican Congress let business groups down

For business groups, these ought to be the best of times.

Republicans have majorities in the House and Senate, and a Republican businessman sits in the Oval Office. Yet, that unified control has been slow to provide the results that they wanted. Meanwhile, other matters they have taken for granted seem to be in trouble.

"Trump is going in the opposite direction of what most in the business world want," said Simon Lester, trade policy analyst with the Cato Institute, a free-market think tank. "His core beliefs do appear to be a type of economic nationalism that is contrary to the broader business community."

Businesses' top goal for the year was tax reform, yet Congress only got around to it at the end of September, by which time there were precious few days left on the year's legislative calendar.

For most of the year, the Republican effort to overhaul the tax code took a back seat to immigration policy and the GOP's repeated, unsuccessful efforts to replace Obamacare. When the tax reform proposal was finally revealed in late September, the Chamber of Commerce called it "long overdue," a widely shared sentiment among businesses.