Business
Backlash To Woke Corporations
Kid Rock blasts case of bud light
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
It was a warning shot that went unheeded, and now it is costing major corporations dearly. Following a last year’s Supreme Court decision on affirmative action in higher education, 13 Republican state attorneys general fired off a letter to Fortune 100 companies questioning their similar corporate policies. Now, many companies wish they had paid closer attention.
In the past few months, conservative activist Robby Starbuck’s social media campaign has swept through major corporations wreaking so much havoc that companies have begun folding to his demands before they are even targeted. The result? Damaged market capitalizations, tarnished reputations, and ire and frustration from consumers and activists on both the Left and Right. Welcome to the latest manifestation of our post-Bud Light era in which every company remains a Target.
Starbucks’ campaign and the attorneys general’s scrutiny that preceded it are part of the growing right-wing backlash to corporate America’s post-George Floyd embrace of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices. It is just one area in which companies are finding it hard to avoid political pressures in today’s stakeholder economy. Here’s what public affairs professionals need to know to help their companies navigate the increasingly heated culture wars of our tribal era.
The Summer DEI Turned Ugly
Leading this charge is conservative activist Robby Starbuck, whose campaigns against corporate DEI efforts have forced several major companies to quietly retreat. He led a full-blown digital assault against Harley-Davidson, leveraging his social media reach to accuse the company of straying from its core, blue-collar values. Harley-Davidson caved, dialing back its diversity programs. Next in line was John Deere, the agricultural giant known for embodying rural America. Starbuck’s campaign amassed millions of views, and the company retreated on its DEI initiatives. Seeing the wreckage, Molson Coors, Ford, and Lowe’s preemptively reduced their diversity efforts to avoid Starbuck’s crosshairs.
These aren’t isolated incidents. What started as a weak signal—the occasional conservative critique—has now turned into a full-fledged backlash. Tractor Supply, for instance, initially embraced DEI as part of a broader modernization strategy, but scaled back its efforts after being targeted by one of Starbuck’s campaigns. The retreat wasn’t driven by internal concerns over DEI’s effectiveness but by external pressures. Starbuck’s use of social media, dripping out just enough content over time to keep the pressure rising, has been a devastatingly effective strategy leaving companies from every sector fearing that staying the DEI course could cost them dearly.
Companies’ Complicated Embrace of DEI
Companies first leaned into DEI as a response to a profound cultural shift. The killing of George Floyd galvanized a movement for racial justice, and businesses, driven by both moral imperatives and strategic necessity, integrated DEI into their operations. Companies like Harley-Davidson, Nike, and John Deere were among the most visible in championing these efforts, aligning their brands with social progress and gaining public praise in the process.
What many of these organizations failed to foresee was the emergence of a powerful counter-narrative. On the surface, DEI seemed apolitical — focused on long-overdue fairness, inclusion, and representation. However, to conservative critics like Robby Starbuck, these initiatives represented a broader ideological shift that encroached on corporate neutrality. Companies that embraced DEI became vulnerable to accusations of wading too far into progressive politics, opening themselves to opposing pressure campaigns that can significantly damage their reputations and business models.
As we’ve pointed out before, DEI efforts are too often shaped and driven by a broader progressive agenda that itself is not always that inclusive. Plus, for many companies, the embrace of DEI has been more rhetoric than results, with little real progress towards stated goals of elevating under-represented populations in company ranks – particularly at higher levels. That’s left companies stuck between unsatisfied progressives and angry conservatives.
In Politics, Every Action Has An Unequal And Opposite Reaction
Starbuck’s playbook reveals a deeper truth about today’s political dynamics. DEI, which quickly became viewed as a corporate best practice, is now seen by many on the right as synonymous with “wokeness” — a label that carries significant risks in today’s polarized environment. What some companies initially saw as distant concerns have turned into high-pressure reputational crises and many prominent libertarian and conservative voices in the business world are now pushing companies to embrace an alternative: Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence (MEI).
This new reality brings significant legal implications, with lawsuits alleging reverse discrimination on the rise and politicians pushing legislative and enforcement actions. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spearheaded efforts to dismantle DEI with the “Stop WOKE Act” in 2022, which restricted how race and gender topics are taught in schools and workplaces. In 2023, he expanded these efforts by defunding DEI programs in higher education, labeling them as political indoctrination. His actions set a precedent for other Republican governors, with states like Texas, North Dakota, and North Carolina advancing similar policies.
In many ways, DEI has become a proxy for larger ideological battles, and companies are increasingly caught in the crossfire. As Starbuck’s campaigns continue to gain traction, businesses that once felt pressure to do more on a range of social issues from the left are now feeling the same sort or pressure from the right — and not all of them understand how they got here or what it means as our cultural warfare continues.
Navigating The Tribal Divide
As the stories of Harley-Davidson, John Deere, and Tractor Supply illustrate, the decision to step back from DEI initiatives isn’t always about rejecting diversity itself but about managing the complex realities of political and reputational risk. Even firms like Nike, a well-known and ardent supporter of progressive social causes, has tempered its public messaging in recent months.
The DEI blowback we’re witnessing today is a reflection of deeper societal divisions, ones that are now playing out across corporate America. Public affairs professionals need to understand this battle isn’t just about DEI—it’s about the role activists and politicians on both sides of the divide expect businesses to play in shaping cultural narratives.
In this new era, companies must navigate an ever-shifting landscape where political and cultural allegiances can determine success or failure. For those in government relations and public affairs, staying attuned to these tribal dynamics will be critical in helping organizations anticipate and manage the next wave of blowback—or hopefully avoid it all together.
Jeff Berkowitz is the founder and CEO of Delve, a competitive intelligence and risk advisory firm.
From Conservative Party Communications
The Hon. Pierre Poilievre, Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and the Official Opposition, released the following statement on the threat of tariffs from the US:
“Canada is facing a critical challenge. On February 1st we are facing the risk of unjustified 25% tariffs by our largest trading partner that would have damaging consequences across our country. Our American counterparts say they want to stop the illegal flow of drugs and other criminal activity at our border. The Liberal government admits their weak border is a problem. That is why they announced a multibillion-dollar border plan—a plan they cannot fund because they shut down Parliament, preventing MPs and Senators from authorizing the funds.
“We also need retaliatory tariffs, something that requires urgent Parliamentary consideration.
“Yet, Liberals have shut Parliament in the middle of this crisis. Canada has never been so weak, and things have never been so out of control. Liberals are putting themselves and their leadership politics ahead of the country. Freeland and Carney are fighting for power rather than fighting for Canada.
“Common Sense Conservatives are calling for Trudeau to reopen Parliament now to pass new border controls, agree on trade retaliation and prepare a plan to rescue Canada’s weak economy.
“The Prime Minister has the power to ask the Governor General to cut short prorogation and get our Parliament working.
“Open Parliament. Take back control. Put Canada First.”
From the Fraser Institute
Canadian federal politicians are floundering in their responses to Donald Trump’s tariff and annexation threats. Unfortunately, they’re stuck in a 2016 mindset, still thinking Trump is a temporary aberration who should be disdained and ignored by the global community. But a lot has changed. Anyone wanting to understand Trump’s current priorities should spend less time looking at trade statistics and more time understanding the details of the lawfare campaigns against him. Canadian officials who had to look up who Kash Patel is, or who don’t know why Nathan Wade’s girlfriend finds herself in legal jeopardy, will find the next four years bewildering.
Three years ago, Trump was on the ropes. His first term had been derailed by phony accusations of Russian collusion and a Ukrainian quid pro quo. After 2020, the Biden Justice Department and numerous Democrat prosecutors devised implausible legal theories to launch multiple criminal cases against him and people who worked in his administration. In summer 2022, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago and leaked to the press rumours of stolen nuclear codes and theft of government secrets. After Trump announced his candidacy in 2022, he was hit by wave after wave of indictments and civil suits strategically filed in deep blue districts. His legal bills soared while his lawyers past and present battled well-funded disbarment campaigns aimed at making it impossible for him to obtain counsel. He was assessed hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties and faced life in prison if convicted.
This would have broken many men. But when he was mug-shotted in Georgia on Aug. 24, 2023, his scowl signalled he was not giving in. In the 11 months from that day to his fist pump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump managed to defeat and discredit the lawfare attacks, assemble and lead a highly effective campaign team, knock Joe Biden off the Democratic ticket, run a series of near daily (and sometimes twice daily) rallies, win over top business leaders in Silicon Valley, open up a commanding lead in the polls and not only survive an assassination attempt but turn it into an image of triumph. On election day, he won the popular vote and carried the White House and both Houses of Congress.
It’s Trump’s world now, and Canadians should understand two things about it. First, he feels no loyalty to domestic and multilateral institutions that have governed the world for the past half century. Most of them opposed him last time and many were actively weaponized against him. In his mind, and in the thinking of his supporters, he didn’t just defeat the Democrats, he defeated the Republican establishment, most of Washington including the intelligence agencies, the entire corporate media, the courts, woke corporations, the United Nations and its derivatives, universities and academic authorities, and any foreign governments in league with the World Economic Forum. And it isn’t paranoia; they all had some role in trying to bring him down. Gaining credibility with the new Trump team will require showing how you have also fought against at least some of these groups.
Second, Trump has earned the right to govern in his own style, including saying whatever he wants. He’s a negotiator who likes trash-talking, so get used to it and learn to decode his messages.
When Trump first threatened tariffs, he linked it to two demands: stop the fentanyl going into the United States from Canada and meet our NATO spending targets. We should have done both long ago. In response, Trudeau should have launched an immediate national action plan on military readiness, border security and crackdowns on fentanyl labs. His failure to do so invited escalation. Which, luckily, only consisted of taunts about annexation. Rather than getting whiny and defensive, the best response (in addition to dealing with the border and defence issues) would have been to troll back by saying that Canada would fight any attempt to bring our people under the jurisdiction of the corrupt U.S. Department of Justice, and we will never form a union with a country that refuses to require every state to mandate photo I.D. to vote and has so many election problems as a result.
As to Trump’s complaints about the U.S. trade deficit with Canada, this is a made-in-Washington problem. The U.S. currently imports $4 trillion in goods and services from the rest of the world but only sells $3 trillion back in exports. Trump looks at that and says we’re ripping them off. But that trillion-dollar difference shows up in the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts as the capital account balance. The rest of the world buys that much in U.S. financial instruments each year, including treasury bills that keep Washington functioning. The U.S. savings rate is not high enough to cover the federal government deficit and all the other domestic borrowing needs. So the Americans look to other countries to cover the difference. Canada’s persistent trade surplus with the U.S. ($108 billion in 2023) partly funds that need. Money that goes to buying financial instruments can’t be spent on goods and services.
So the other response to the annexation taunts should be to remind Trump that all the tariffs in the world won’t shrink the trade deficit as long as Congress needs to borrow so much money each year. Eliminate the budget deficit and the trade deficit will disappear, too. And then there will be less money in D.C. to fund lawfare and corruption. Win-win.
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