President Donald Trump (L) greets former General Electric CEO Jack Welch at the beginning of a policy forum in the State Dining Room at the White House February 3, 2017 in Washington, DC.

As corporate chieftains on a White House advisory panel debated on Wednesday on whether to disband, a few spoke up in favor of sticking with President Trump.

They made their case in terms of business self-interest, patriotism and pragmatism.

Jack Welch, the retired leader of General Electric, said the business leaders should not abandon the president, according to a person briefed on the call, who was not authorized to speak about it.

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W. James McNerney Jr., the former head of Boeing, reminded the corporate executives that they wanted a business-friendly administration. Mr. McNerney, the person said, told the group that he was in favor of condemning Mr. Trump's remarks but that the pro-business agenda was too important to justify dissolving the council and losing influence.

But they were lonely voices.

The group ultimately decided to disband to protest Mr. Trump's equating far-right hate groups with the groups opposing them in Charlottesville, Va.

The apparent retreat from Mr. Trump by many corporate executives has added to concerns that chaos in the White House and the president's propensity to inflame crises as opposed to tamping them down are jeopardizing his agenda to overhaul taxes and put in place an infrastructure plan.

Stocks slid on Thursday in part on worries that the president's ruptured relations with business would damage his plans to jump-start economic growth. The decline steepened after the terrorist attack in Barcelona.

The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index closed the day down 1.54 percent, and the Dow Jones industrial average ended down 1.24 percent. The closely watched VIX, the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, better known as Wall Street's fear gauge, soared more than 30 percent.

On Thursday, the White House announced that a presidential advisory group on infrastructure policy and investment was also disbanding.

A number of companies, including Merck, Under Armour, Intel, Pepsi, G.E., IBM and Johnson & Johnson, made public statements this week condemning Mr. Trump's remarks that "many sides" were responsible for the violence in Virginia as being at odds with their corporate values.

Some of his supporters in the business world and several corporate members of the advisory groups, meanwhile, have not said anything publicly about Charlottesville.

One of the more vocal supporters of Mr. Trump's economic agenda, Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of the private equity giant the Blackstone Group, has condemned the events in Charlottesville.