Last week, Amazon announced plans to release a “behind the scenes” documentary on Melania Trump, produced by the new 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 broadcast the ceremony live on its Prime service.
Before the presidential election in November, the founder of Amazon 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 positively of Trump’s “deregulation energy” and personally made the pilgrimage to dine with the future president at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Bezos’ rush to adapt to the Trumps has been compared by company executives across America, while tech billionaires, financiers and heads of some of the best-known consumer groups in the US are rushing to adapt to a more conservative zeitgeist after Trump’s election victory. and Republican momentum in both houses of Congress.
In a mirror image of the corporate rush in 2020 to support social justice causes following the police killing of George Floyd, companies today they are reshaping the way they communicate with their clients, employees and society as a whole.
Some of the moves, such as the parade of CEO visits Trump in Florida, the donations and efforts to do business with people in his inner circle appear designed to curry favor with a man known for attacking companies and executives he dislikes.
But the election also precipitated a broader shift back to more conservative social and political views and an embrace of unfettered capitalism.
Companies are falling apart diversity, equality and inclusion departments, cutting their support for racial diversity charities and abandoning climate change groups. They also purge anything that could be perceived as “woke” from public statements, corporate documents and advertising.
The election has empowered some top executives to start speaking out in favor of conservative policies, from tax cuts to traditional gender roles.
“In this political climate, there are conservative pressures, and people just expect a change in administration and . . . aligning their strategies with these anticipated political changes,” said Trier Bryant, former managing director of DEI at Goldman Sachs and Twitter.
Last week, social media group Meta showed an example of all the events 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 encouraging racial and gender diversity among its managers and suppliers.
Founder Mark Zuckerberg later joined a podcast hosted by Joe Rogan, who supported Trump in the election, and lamented the rise of “culturally neutered” companies. “I think a culture that celebrates aggression a little more has its benefits that are really positive,” Zuckerberg said.
Liberal politicians and investor activists are appalled. “Corporate caving in to Trump is deeply disturbing,” said Brad Lander, New York comptroller and sustainable investment advocate. “We have seen too many examples throughout history. This is how democracy and fundamental rights weaken over time.”
But companies, executives and analysts say the motives driving the changes are complex and reflect much more than a desire to flatter the new president.
The mood among their customers has changed, executives say, and court rulings and state and federal regulatory investigations, particularly last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling banning affirmative action on colleges, have undermined the foundations of diversity and climate programs.
For many, the new administration offers a welcome opportunity to roll back some of the tougher rules enacted during President Joe Biden’s administration and to turn tax and regulatory policies in their favor.
David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, recently praised the incoming Trump administration for “leading the growth agenda.”
“I’m pretty optimistic that this administration is going to implement a plan that is very, very pro-growth,” Solomon said at a Reuters event.
Tech leaders have made some of the most high-profile gestures toward Trump and conservative values, in a preemptive effort to patch up differences. 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 inaugural fund, and Pichai also flew to Mar-a-Lago. Trump has previously claimed that Google was “rigged” to hide positive news about him.
“It’s a statement about the lack of confidence and backbone of technology executives,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management. He described their contribution to Trump’s inauguration as a “tithe scheme” for the president-elect.
The financial sector has seen the most visible shift since Trump’s election climate change. All the major Wall Street banks and several big money managers have left industry groups seeking to use their financial power to reduce carbon emissions.
BlackRock, the target of conservative government investigations and lawsuits over its past support for sustainable investing, specifically cited legal and regulatory issues for its departure from the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative last week.
Even the way people on Wall Street talk and communicate is changing. Bankers and financiers say Trump’s victory emboldened those who resented the “woke doctrine” and felt they had to self-censor or change their language to avoid offending younger colleagues, women, minorities or people with disabilities.
“I feel liberated,” said the top banker. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘cunt’ without fear of being fired. . . it’s a new dawn.”
Some Wall Streeters also feel able to openly embrace making money, without nods to any broader social goals. “Most of us don’t need to kiss ass because, like Trump, we love America and capitalism,” said one.
Consumer-facing groups, meanwhile, have become increasingly careful to avoid appearing “woke,” lest they spark the kind of boycotts that Target and Bud Light faced over marketing that celebrated gay and transgender people. This reaction was underway long before the election.
But the shift to the right was so rapid that some groups were left out. After the recent terrorist attack in New Orleans, Allstate Insurance Group CEO Tom Wilson sparked a firestorm of criticism by saying that “we must be stronger together by overcoming our addiction to division and negativity.”
Conservative activists accused Wilson, whose company sponsored a high-profile football game in the city, of downplaying the killings while championing progressive causes. Allstate tried to explain that the statement “reflects a broader commitment to fostering trust and positivity in communities across the nation.”
Another major corporate shift relates to DEI’s efforts, particularly after the Supreme Court’s ruling against the use of race-based college admissions in June 2023. Companies including Harley-Davidson, Ford and Molson Coors began reducing their corporate diversity in the months after decision, and the leak became a deluge after Trump’s election victory.
Walmart stopped taking race and gender into account when awarding supplier contracts, ended staff training on racial equality and pulled funding for the Center for Racial Equality, which it established with a $100 million pledge after the George Floyd protests. McDonald’s last week dropped percentage targets for women and non-white managers, stopped asking suppliers to sign the DEI pledge and said it would now call its diversity team the Global Inclusion Team.
Both companies pointed to legal problems, but also to changes in circumstances. McDonald’s cited an “evolving landscape,” saying it was committed to inclusion. Walmart said its changing approach shows that “we are ready to change along with our associates and customers who represent all of America. We’ve been on a journey and we know we’re not perfect, but every decision comes from wanting to foster a sense of belonging.”
Consultants and other corporate advisers said the changing landscape has also given companies a way to rethink or drop environmental and diversity goals they’re not meeting anyway.
“They don’t want to be caught under-promising and under-delivering,” said Richard Edelman, who advises corporate leaders as managing director of Edelman, a public relations group. “Companies are still committed to diversity and inclusion, they just don’t want to guarantee results.”
It’s unclear whether the conservative turn will outlast the progressive positions companies have laid out in 2020. Bryant, a former DEI executive who is now CEO of consulting firm Pathfinder, said many of the policy turns appear to be aimed at easing political oversight, rather than substantive policy changes.
“Maya Angelou said, ‘When people show you who they are, believe them.’ When companies show you who they are, trust them too,” she 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
