Once upon a time, America’s CEOs felt free to criticize government policies, often with a familiar complaint. Former Verizon Communications Inc. CEO Ivan Seidenberg explained that “By reaching into virtually every sector of economic life, government is injecting uncertainty into the marketplace.” Cisco Systems Inc.’s then-CEO John Chambers agreed: “Business doesn’t like uncertainty,” he said. This was during the first Obama term, when the administration was trying to steer the economy out of a once-in-a-lifetime global financial crisis.

Today, at a time of full employment and low inflation, the Trump administration has unleashed a tsunami of uncertainty. Tariffs are on, then they are paused, then back on, then they get doubled. And what do business leaders say? Nothing. There are important exceptions: Ken Griffin, Larry Fink, Jamie Dimon and, of course, now Elon Musk.

In the past, business leaders have routinely railed against higher taxes on businesses. Yet today, encountering a raft of new taxes in the form of tariffs, they have mostly stayed quiet. Many CEOs will not even dare mention that their prices will have to rise because of the new taxes on their imported goods. The new 50% tax on steel tariffs, for example, will benefit the steel industry. But studies have shown that for every job saved in that industry, there are 75 jobs endangered in industries that use imported steel in their products (like cars and construction). Have you heard those CEOs complain? I have not.

Consider the hypocrisy surrounding the budget bill. CEOs have long talked about the dangers of budget deficits. And yet, faced with a bill that will almost certainly result in $5 trillion added to the national debt over 10 years, most have taken a pass on objecting. If you look at the numbers seriously, it is obvious that the only way to pare down the deficit is to make cuts in the largest programs like Medicare and defense and allow many of the Trump tax cuts of 2017 to expire. Instead, this bill does basically nothing to rein in Medicare spending, increases spending on defense and expands tax cuts substantially.

What should enrage businesses even more is that the bill “reaches into virtually every sector of economic life” on a scale that is mind-boggling. The best practices for taxes are to keep the rules simple and fair, apply them equally to all taxpayers, minimizing distortions, work-arounds and accounting maneuvers. This bill proclaims no taxes on tips or overtime pay and new deductions for seniors and on car loan interest. So a waiter who makes $50,000 will get a break but not a dishwasher. Workers in jobs that pay overtime get a tax break but not those in jobs that may pay less but just don’t bill it as overtime. Expect lots of people to try to reclassify their income as tips and overtime.

As the nonpartisan Tax Foundation points out, these breaks come “with various conditions and guard rails that, if enacted, will likely require hundreds of pages of IRS guidance to interpret.” And the IRS will have to adjudicate all this complexity with up to 40% of its workforce eventually cut, which means there will be lots of tax cheats who get away with fraud. The Tax Foundation concludes that the “new rules and compliance costs … in many cases probably outweigh any potential tax benefits.”

The American economy is now more politicized than it has ever been. President Donald Trump threatens tariffs on individual businesses like Apple and Mattel. On Thursday, he threatened to terminate government contracts with Musk’s companies. He tells executives who want favorable treatment to ask him personally. This week, his press secretary, Karoline Levitt, boasted that business leaders are “begging to meet with this president and begging to come to the White House.”

Trump has explained how he views the American economy: not as a vast and gloriously complex free market system with hundreds of millions of private transactions; no, to him it is one, big beautiful store. “I own the store,” he explained, “and I set prices, and I’ll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.” Business leaders must deal with America the way they used to deal with Third World dictatorships: Appease the supreme leader. And they are adjusting to this new model quietly without much dissent.

Email: fareed.zakaria.gps@turner.com.