US firms that kept DEI policies despite ‘go woke, go broke’ threats thrived

Exclusive: Companies that kept policies did just as well financially, even after Trump’s executive order, as those that didn’t

Conservative backlash was supposed to put an end to the diversity, inclusion and equity ( DEI ) movement as companies were warned “go woke, go broke”.

In January 2025, Donald Trump delivered a death knell, ending DEI within the federal government with executive orders and threatening to target companies that still supported it. Companies including Google, Goldman Sachs, McDonald’s and Walmart that had embraced DEI years earlier fell into line and announced an end to their policies.

But new research published on Friday and shared exclusively with the Guardian found that companies that resisted the pressure and kept their DEI practices, including Costco, Apple and Delta Air Lines, performed just as well as their competitors who pulled back.

For the research, Jacob Grumbach, an associate professor at at the University of California at Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, analyzed how S&P 500 companies fared after Trump’s January executive order. He used what economists define as “abnormal returns” – the difference between how a stock was expected to perform versus how it actually performed – to isolate the impact of a company’s DEI decision.

What he found was the firms that kept their DEI policies or voted down anti-DEI shareholder resolutions did just as well financially, even after Trump’s executive order, as firms that didn’t. In the days after the executive orders were signed, companies that kept their DEI policies actually performed better on the stock market than those that didn’t.

Whether or not DEI benefits a company’s bottom line can depend on its consumers. Grumbach noted companies that publicly stood firm on their DEI policies might have known they could weather a political storm. Apple, for example, may have known it could maintain its DEI efforts in a way that Tractor Supply, another prominent company that pulled back its policies, could not.

The “go woke, go broke” movement found its power in 2023, when a series of conservative backlashes against companies gained momentum. Bud Light sales dropped following a conservative boycott after the beer company featured the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Target became an embodiment of its name after fury erupted over its pride month merchandise. Ron DeSantis , the Florida governor, embarked on a prolonged fight with Disney after the company vocally opposed the state’s “don’t say gay” bill. “Cracker Barrel has fallen,” a conservative group wrote after the restaurant chain celebrated pride month on social media.

Then, also in 2023, the US supreme court ruled that race-conscious admissions policies in higher education were unconstitutional , opening the floodgates for legal challenges against DEI policies in other places, including the workplace.

“That really created a lot of fear and panic in corporate America and is what led to a lot of the pullbacks around DEI,” said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at New York University’s law school.