So-called woke capitalism is out of fashion, as evidenced by the rapidly increasing number of corporate leaders bending the knee to Donald Trump.
The most high-profile right-ward pivot has come from Mark Zuckerberg, who has ditched fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram, criticised the Biden administration’s crackdown on misinformation during the pandemic, and called on Trump, who “just wants America to win”, to stop the EU from “screwing with” American companies such as Meta.
Meta has scrapped its DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies, with similar actions taken by Amazon, McDonald’s and Walmart.
Meanwhile, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Ford, General Motors, Pfizer, and stock trading app Robinhood are just some of the firms that donated at least $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee.
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Then there’s Coca-Cola, which hit the headlines after gifting Trump with his very own personalised Diet Coke bottle for the January 20th inauguration – quite the about-turn for a company that described the January 6th attack on the Capitol as “an offence to the ideals of American democracy.”
[ Trump is like the boy who got everything he wished for. What will he do with it?Opens in new window ]
In 2023, Bud Light sales plummeted after a conservative backlash to a campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Today, the danger for companies is that they go too far in brown-nosing Trump. In their rush to court his favour, they risk alienating the consumers they once sought to champion.
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