“Go Woke, Go Broke” Starting to Choke: Companies That Kept DEI Under Trump 2.0 Fared Just as Well

A new report is proving once again that the tired conservative phrase “go woke go broke” has no truth behind it. Companies that kept their DEI policies in place, even after President Donald Trump put out an executive order in 2025 threatening companies that supported it, have since performed just as well as those who caved to political pressure and abandoned the principles, per a new report in The Guardian. Some of the largest companies mentioned by the report that stuck with DEI initiatives include Costco, Apple, and Delta Air Lines. The report cites new research published by Jacob Grumbach, an associate professor at the University of California, who analyzed corporate stock returns following the January 2025 executive order, which specifically held that DEI policies would be perceived as violations of federal civil rights law. Some of the most prominent companies to cave to right-wing anti-DEI pressures in the early days of the second Trump administration include Amazon, McDonald’s, Walmart, and Boeing.In practice, abandoning DEI often means giving up initiatives that explicitly seek LGBTQ+ candidates and candidates of color to hire for open positions. DEI policies often address issues of access to the application process for open positions and do not, contrary to popular belief, give candidates from marginalized backgrounds any advantage in the hiring process.In the 2020s, however, “DEI” has become a misnomer for any sort of corporate acknowledgment of marginalized people. One of the most high-profile instances of conservative backlash against companies embracing the mere existence of LGBTQ+ people included Bud Light’s brief featuring of trans content creator and actress Dylan Mulvaney, which resulted in a widespread right-wing boycott of the beer brand that cost its parent company billions in market cap. (Trump is seemingly still stuck in 2023, as he even attempted to tell some unfunny jokes about the Mulvaney fiasco at the recent White House Corresp