Biden meets with CEOs, business leaders on vaccine mandates

Yahoo Finance’s Jessica Smith reports what to expect from Biden’s meeting on vaccine mandates with top business executives.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I want to hand things over now to our Washington correspondent, Jessica Smith, for a preview of what we might hear from those CEOs. Jess?

JESSICA SMITH: Yeah, well, I think you heard from President Biden there what he is looking for. He's looking to hear from these CEOs about how they are implementing their own vaccine requirements and how it's working for their businesses there. And what they've seen amongst their employees is they have put their own mandates in place. Some of these businesses had their own mandates ahead of the announcement that President Biden made last week.

Others expanded their requirements, made tougher requirements, since President Biden did make that announcement. I know the CEO of Columbia had told the Wall Street Journal that these companies maybe would look to have some safety there, to have some cover if they were able to push their employees to get vaccinated. Hearing that from the government made them feel a little more secure in that decision.

We have heard from the Business Roundtable, the CEO of the Business Roundtable in that meeting now. We've heard from that organization, which represents CEOs of some of the nation's biggest companies, welcoming the requirement. They put out a statement praising that requirement from President Biden last week.

But I think there are others, as you mentioned, who are pushing back against this. We have seen that lawsuit from the Arizona attorney general today. And there will likely be more. We've heard from other Republicans opposing this. But President Biden did say just a few minutes ago that it is about beating the virus and saving lives. That's what this is all about. He says this rule will impact about 100 million workers, as I believe you just said.

And again, he is waiting on the Labor Department on OSHA to finalize this rule. He said it would take some time to get that in place to figure out just what this is going to look like. But we'll be looking for any details about what he hears from these business leaders after this meeting is over. Alexis.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, Jessica Smith, our Washington correspondent, thank you.