The business world hates chaos. Enter Donald Trump.

(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

President Trump likes to present himself as a friend of business. In fact, when he campaigned for president he frequently cited his business chops as a reason to vote for him. But while he is certainly doing many things business likes, like taking apart Obama-era financial and environmental regulations, business profoundly hates chaos.

And if there is one thing we can say about the tax-reform push underway from Trump and Republicans, it’s that it is becoming first-rate chaos.

Congressional Republicans are now reportedly looking at a gradual introduction of the planned cut in the corporate tax rate to 20 percent. Instead of an immediate change, it would be introduced over several years, decreasing from the current 35 percent by a few percentage points annually till it finally hits 20 percent in 2022.

This change in how the tax cut would be introduced isn’t for any well-thought-out economic reason – there’s lots of evidence that Trump is relying on less than convincing claims of economic gains that would result if it’s passed to promote it. Instead, the phase-in traces back to the same reason Republicans continue to eye changes to Americans’ retirement accounts: the rules of passing the bill through reconciliation, which will allow Congress to avoid a filibuster and pass the bill on a simple majority vote.

But the business world is making it clear it doesn’t like this 11^thhour adjustment to the corporate tax cut. The stock market fell yesterday, and many attributed it to the phase-in. Anyone who knows business knows the typical executive loves tax cuts and doesn’t like surprises.

Enter, stage right, Trump. While the White House volubly recommitted to the all-at-once tax cut the business world wants, they did it in a way that increases the sense of chaos surrounding the process.

The White House, which recently released an estimate from the Council of Economic Advisers claiming the immediate cut would result in result in a 3 to 5 percent boost to the gross domestic product within three years, let it be known they wanted Republicans to go back to the initial plan. But they did it in a way that’s becoming all too familiar. While press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the White House stood behind their no phase-in stance, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was a wee bit more nuanced, saying, “the objective is not to have that phase in, but we will see how that goes.” Just the sort of statement to make anyone feel secure!

Then Trump himself compounded the confusion. While speaking at a White House press event today, Trump said he remained committed to bringing the corporate tax cut down from 35 percent to 20 percent, and quickly. But then, when a reporter asked if the phase-in would come to pass, he responded, “Hopefully not.” As the mom of two teenage boys, I can personally assure you that phrase leaves more than a bit of wiggle room for the speaker.

So what’s going on? On one hand, Trump may be reluctant to embrace the congressional GOP call for a phase-in because he may believe he’s compromised more than enough. He initially wanted a 15 percent rate and then came to embrace a cut to 20 percent instead. But his leverage might be limited here. For one thing, the White House is not writing the bill. For another, Trump may not have public opinion behind him to use against Republicans, since the typical voter doesn’t want an immediate and huge cut in corporate taxes (unless you count a c-suite executive or Wall Street mutual fund manager as a typical voter).

And Trump could get weaker politically in coming weeks. At Politico, Ben White speculated that the ongoing Robert Mueller investigations might reduce Trump’s leverage on this matter: “The vast majority of Americans don’t see cutting taxes for corporations as any kind of priority. Trump may be the best salesman for this idea and if he is knocked off his game, it gets much tougher.”

Making all this still worse from the point of view of the business world, all too often, it’s the deal that matters to Trump, not the details of it. And here, his interests dovetail splendidly with Congressional Republicans. Trump famously doesn’t sweat details. One might, in fact, say they don’t interest him much at all. At the same time, the Republicans very much want to get this tax deal done. But all this could conspire to make the whole process even more chaotic still, because Trump himself is volatile, his demands will likely shift, and Republicans will do anything to get something, anything, passed.

After all, Republicans are desperate for tax reform. Almost all the supposed legislative victories of congressional Republicans and the Trump administration have simply been rollbacks of Obama era initiatives, such as last week’s vote overturning the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s arbitration regulation. Many members of Congress are beginning to think they need to pass something, almost anything, original. Otherwise, they’ll be facing midterm voters next year with no serious accomplishments, even though their party controls the House, the Senate and the White House. Can we say embarrassing?

None of this is good governance. In fact, it’s just the opposite. As a result, we don’t know how bad the shenanigans will get as Trump and Republicans struggle to get the deal done, but if I had to bet, I’d say the answer is: Pretty bad. Business interests better get used to it. And they’d better hope that, at the end of the day, their tax cut is large enough to make it worth all this trouble. Past history tells us it probably will be.

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