When a victorious Donald Trump proclaimed ‘drill, baby, drill’ it appeared to signal the end for ESG. Likewise, his campaign advert seemed to say the same for DEI: ‘Kamala Harris is for they/them. I am for you.’. The six letters that have so dominated government and corporate behaviours these past few years were destined for the dump truck - the new US President, leader of the free world no less, was saying so. Since then and ahead of Trump’s inauguration, US corporations lined up one by one to publicly announce a scaling back of their wokeness. The wholesale pursuit of environmental, social, governance, diversity, equity and inclusion are dead and buried. Out too can go virtue signalling and the use of alternative personal pronouns.
Some of the biggest and until recently PC names on Wall Street, including JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, are publicly rowing back. Jamie Dimon, head of JP Morgan, arguably America’s and therefore the world’s Number One banker, is to boldly ‘punch back’ on laws in Texas requiring firms that do business with the state to pursue ESG. The backlash is not confined to the financial titans. Mark Zuckerberg is ending fact-checking at Meta and he stepped forward as co-host for a black-tie reception for the new White House occupant. Janelle Gale, Meta’s vice president of human resources, said in a memo that ‘the legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing’. The term DEI, said Gale, has become ‘charged’. Meta will no longer install tampon machines in its men’s toilets, put there for the benefit of nonbinary and transgender staff. Supermarket behemoth, Walmart, is phasing out references to DEI and ending diversity supplier programmes, closing a racial equality centre and withdrawing from a gay rights index. Truly, we are entering a different era, one in which the clock is firmly turned back.
