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TRUMP WAS
REPEATING HIS
TACTIC FROM
THE APPRENTICE:
DIVIDE AND CONQUER
protesting a North Carolina ordinance barring
transgender people from using their preferred bath-
rooms. Similar bills were defeated in Texas and Ar-
kansas. The business leaders who thwarted these ef-
forts weren’t just stereotypically “liberal” corporate
behemoths like Apple, Starbucks and Nike, Son-
nenfeld notes. “It was the bedrock of traditional
American industry in the heartland: UPS, Walmart,
AT&T. They’re the ones who led the charge, saying,
‘This is not America. We don’t want our workforces
divided over this.’ ”
Today, Wall Street firms grade companies on
their climate and diversity initiatives as well as
their balance sheets. In the wake of the 2018 mass
shooting in Parkland, Fla., both Dick’s Sporting
Goods and Walmart announced they would no lon-
ger sell assault weapons or ammunition. Dozens of
companies cut ties with the NRA. In 2019, the BRT
revised its charter to redefine “the purpose of a cor-
poration,” saying companies should be accountable
not only to their shareholders but also to the wider
array of “stakeholders,” including customers, em-
ployees, suppliers and communities.
“The role of the CEO has changed, and I don’t think anyone can sit on
the sidelines,” says Paul Polman, the London-based former CEO of the
consumer-goods giant Unilever, whose new book, Net Positive, argues
that sustainability can go hand in hand with profit—one of a raft of recent
do-gooder tomes by CEOs (including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, the
co-owner of TIME). Under Polman’s leadership, Unilever set ambitious
climate goals and sought to improve its human-rights record, lobbying
against the death penalty for gay people in Uganda and deforestation in
Brazil. “Smart CEOs realize that their business cannot function in societ-
ies that don’t function,” Polman tells TIME. “We have to be responsible
and speak up, not just lobby in our own self-interest.”
Skeptics on the left see this kind of talk as cynical posturing.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren denounced the BRT’s
“stakeholder” announcement as an “empty gesture,” and former Labor
Secretary Robert Reich called it a “con.” Many of the statement’s
signatories, liberals note, still preside over abysmal working conditions,
environmental violations and racially segregated workplaces, while
employing armies of lobbyists to resist government attempts to hold
them accountable.
The right has revolted as well. GOP Senator Marco Rubio decries “woke
corporate hypocrites,” while Trump has taken up the slogan “Go woke, go
broke!” In the new book Woke, Inc., Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepre-
neur turned self-styled class traitor, decries “corporate America’s game
of pretending to care about justice in order to make money.”
The public, too, appears skeptical. In recent research conducted by
Edelman, 44% of Americans say they trust CEOs to do the right thing,
about on par with government leaders (42%) but lagging behind clergy
(49%) and journalists (50%). A far greater share, nearly three-quarters of
employees, trust the CEO of the company they work for.In the sprIng of 2020, as the spread of COVID and Trump’s attempt
to undermine the vote began to raise fears of an election meltdown, Son-
nenfeld began privately raising the issue with prominent CEOs. He urged