Exxon Mobil CEO Tillerson to Step Down on January 1

“Rex Tillerson’s decades of experience have been widely recognized for forward-looking strategic planning, managing global partnerships and risk, and focused leadership around the world”, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky said in a statement of support Tuesday. Even before Donald Trump tapped him to be the top U.S. diplomat, Rex Tillerson already had his own State Department.

Talking about meetings with foreign leaders, Tillerson told the Texas students, “I’m not here to represent the United States government’s interests”.

“Rex Tillerson has done a fantastic job for Exxon Mobil shareholders”, said Michael McFaul, Obama’s former ambassador to Russian Federation.

Notably, Tillerson comes endorsed by GOP foreign policy grandees from both its realist and hawkish wings, including Robert Gates and Dick Cheney, neither of them especially noted Russophiles, and Condoleezza Rice, whose PhD and early career work is on Russian Federation.

Senator John McCain said he has “concerns about ( Tillerson’s ) relationship with Vladimir Putin, who is a thug and a murderer”.

Republicans hold a thin majority in the Senate, and a few GOP defections could doom the Tillerson appointment.

Now some experts are calling attention to Exxon’s business deals that could affect how Tillerson does business as America’s top diplomat. He called him “a strong man, a tough man”. The company, under Tillerson’s leadership, has questioned the wisdom of limiting offshore oil drilling off the Atlantic coast and Alaska.

Exxon Mobil has billions of dollars in oil contracts that can go forward only if the U.S. lifts sanctions against Russian Federation, and Tillerson’s stake in Russia’s energy industry could create a very blurry line between his interests as an oilman and his role as America’s leading diplomat, according to the report. That changed over the past decade, coinciding with Tillerson’s leadership and shifting energy markets, said David Levy, a management professor at the University of MA in Boston.

With his retirement, Exxon’s board will have 12 directors.

Trump was also poised to add another figure with close ties to the oil industry to his Cabinet.

Backing from former Secretaries of State James Baker and Condoleezza Rice, and former Secretary of Defence Robert Gates carry “considerable weight”, Flake said.

Perry met Trump at Trump Tower in NY on Monday, part of a series of meetings that included rapper Kanye West on Tuesday.

Still, it’s not unheard of for a high-profile businessman to serve as secretary of state.

Trump campaigned and won the presidency on a platform of radically changing how Washington conducts domestic and foreign policy. What does he think about the USA alliance with Israel?

“So what better way to do that than to choose someone who’s been awarded the Order of Friendship by (Russian President) Vladimir Putin to be your secretary of state?” said Earnest.

There also has been controversy over alleged Russian interference in the November 8 presidential election, with the Central Intelligence Agency concluding that Moscow had intervened to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. Tillerson first met Vladimir Putin in 1999, according to Bloomberg, when Tillerson first represented Exxon’s interests in Russian Federation while it was under Boris Yeltsin’s leadership.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it led to questionable US interventions in Central America on behalf of USA companies. But he says such “deals” make it all the more important for the president-elect to explain how his concept of diplomacy really benefits the US.

The problem for oil giants like Exxon and Chevron is they are so enormous that it would take a ton of fracking to really move the needle. “It is extremely complicated”, he told the hearing.

Some of Trump’s picks have come from a more traditional mold.

On Tuesday, Flake issued a statement sounding open to Tillerson’s nomination, citing his support from former secretaries of State and Defencemarshalled by Trump’s team.