Last week, Amazon announced plans to release a “behind-the-scenes” documentary about Melania Trump, produced by the incoming US first lady herself. The tech giant reportedly paid $40 million for the exclusive deal just weeks after donating $1 million to her husband Donald Trump’s inauguration committee and pledging to livestream the ceremony on its Prime service.
Ahead of the November presidential election, the Amazon founder jeff bezos He also canceled plans for The Washington Post, which he owns, to endorse Trump’s Democratic rival. Shortly after the election, he spoke favorably of Trump’s “energy to reduce regulation” and made a personal pilgrimage to dine with the incoming president at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Bezos’s rush to warm up to the Trumps has been matched by corporate executives across America, as tech billionaires, financiers and leaders of some of America’s best-known consumer groups rush to adapt to a spirit of more conservative era after Trump’s electoral victory. and the Republican sweep of both houses of Congress.
Reflecting the 2020 corporate rush to support social justice causes following the police killing of George Floyd, companies Today they are reshaping the way they interact with their customers, employees and society in general.
Some of the measures, such as the parade of CEOs visiting Triumph In Florida, the donations and effort to do business with people in his inner circle seem designed to curry favor with a man famous for attacking companies and executives he doesn’t like.
But the elections have also accelerated a broader shift toward more conservative social and political stances and an embrace of unfettered capitalism.
Companies are discarding diversity, equity and inclusion departments, cutting their support for racially diverse charities and abandoning climate change groups. They are also removing anything that could be perceived as “woke” from public statements, corporate documents and advertising.
The election has allowed some top executives to begin speaking out in favor of conservative policies, from tax cuts to traditional gender roles.
“There are conservative pressures in this political climate and people are just anticipating a change in the administration and… . . align their strategies with these expected policy changes,” said Trier Bryant, former DEI executive at Goldman Sachs and Twitter.
Last week, the social media group Meta exemplified all the advances at once. It abandoned its content moderation policies, added longtime Trump friend and Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White to its board, moved its chief diversity officer to a new role and abandoned its goals of boosting racial and gender diversity. gender among its managers and suppliers.
Founder Mark Zuckerberg later joined a podcast hosted by Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump in the election and lamented the rise of “culturally emasculated” companies. “I think having a culture that celebrates aggression a little more has its own merits that are really positive,” Zuckerberg said.
Liberal politicians and investment activists are dismayed. “For companies to bow to Trump is deeply troubling,” said Brad Lander, New York City comptroller and sustainable investing advocate. “We have seen too many examples throughout history. This is how, over time, democracy and fundamental rights are weakened.”
But companies, executives and analysts maintain that the reasons driving the changes are complex and reflect much more than a desire to please the incoming president.
The mood among their customers has changed, executives argue, and court rulings and state and federal regulatory investigations, particularly last year’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court banning affirmative action at universities, have undermined the foundation of climate and diversity programs.
For many, the new administration offers a good opportunity to roll back some of the stricter rules enacted during President Joe Biden’s administration and relax tax and regulatory policy in their favor.
David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, recently praised the incoming Trump administration for “executing a growth playbook.”
“I’m quite optimistic that this administration is going to pursue a very pro-growth agenda,” Solomon said at a Reuters event.
Tech leaders have made some of the most notable gestures toward Trump and conservative values, in a preemptive effort to set things right. Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman joined Meta’s Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Bezos in pledging $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, and Pichai also flew to Mar-a-Lago. Trump previously claimed that Google was “rigged” to hide positive coverage about him.
“It’s a statement of the lack of confidence and backbone of technology executives,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean of leadership studies at the Yale School of Management. He described his contributions to Trump’s inauguration as serving as a “tithing plan” for the president-elect.
In the financial sector, there has been the most visible change since Trump’s election. climate change. All major Wall Street banks and several big money managers have resigned from industry groups seeking to use their financial clout to reduce carbon emissions.
BlackRock, the target of conservative state investigations and lawsuits for its past support of sustainable investing, explicitly cited legal and regulatory issues for its exit from the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative last week.
Even the way people on Wall Street talk and interact is changing. Bankers and financiers say Trump’s victory has emboldened those who were irritated by the “woke doctrine” and felt they had to self-censor or change their language to avoid offending younger colleagues, women, minorities or disabled people.
“I feel liberated,” said one prominent banker. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without fear of being cancelled. . . “It is a new dawn.”
Some Wall Streeters also feel able to openly accept making money, without assenting to any broader social goal. “Most of us don’t have to kiss ass because, like Trump, we love America and capitalism,” one said.
Meanwhile, consumer-oriented groups have become increasingly careful to avoid appearing “woke” unless they trigger the kind of boycotts Target and Bud Light faced over marketing that celebrated gay and transgender people. That reaction was already underway long before the elections.
But the shift to the right has been so rapid that some groups have been left out. After the recent terrorist attack in New Orleans, Allstate Insurance Group CEO Tom Wilson sparked a storm of criticism for saying that “we have to be stronger together by overcoming the addiction to division and negativity.”
Conservative activists accused Wilson, whose company was sponsoring a high-profile football game in the city, of downplaying the killings while advancing progressive causes. Allstate attempted to explain that the statement “reflects a broader commitment to fostering trust and positivity in communities across the country.”
The other big corporate shift has come in DEI efforts, particularly since the Supreme Court ruling against the use of race-based college admissions in June 2023. Companies like Harley-Davidson, Ford, and Molson Coors began scaling back its corporate diversity in the following months. decision, and the trickle became a flood after Trump’s election victory.
Walmart stopped considering race and gender when awarding supplier contracts, ended racial equity training for staff and will not renew funding for the Center for Racial Equity, which it created with a $100 million pledge after of the George Floyd protests. Last week, McDonald’s eliminated percentage targets for women and non-white managers, stopped asking suppliers to sign a DEI pledge, and said it would now refer to its diversity team as a Global Inclusion Team.
Both companies pointed to legal issues but also changing circumstances. McDonald’s cited “an evolving landscape” and said it was committed to inclusivity. Walmart said its changing approach demonstrates that “we are willing to change along with our associates and customers who represent all of America. “We have been on a journey and we know we are not perfect, but each decision comes from a desire to foster a sense of belonging.”
Consultants and other corporate advisers said the changing landscape had also given companies a way to rethink or scrap environmental and diversity goals they weren’t meeting anyway.
“They don’t want to be caught promising and not delivering,” said Richard Edelman, who advises corporate leaders as chief executive of Edelman, a public relations group. “Companies are still committed to diversity and inclusion, but they don’t want to guarantee results.”
It’s unclear whether the conservative turn will outlast the progressive positions companies put forward in 2020. Bryant, the former DEI executive who is now CEO of consulting firm Pathfinder, said many of the policy changes appeared aimed at alleviating political scrutiny rather than substantial policy changes.
“Maya Angelou said, ‘When people show you who they are, believe them.’ When companies show you who they are, believe them too,” he said.
Reporting by Brooke Masters, James Fontanella-Khan, Gregory Meyer, Taylor Nicole Rogers and Patrick Temple-West in New York and Tabby Kinder in San Francisco