DOs and DON'Ts for responsible business in the Trump 2.0 era

Two years ago, cartoonist Graeme Mackay was agreeable to the recaptioning of his four wave version of this, his “most shared, cropped, and altered cartoon ever”, as detailed in a previous column.

Seven and a bit weeks ago, Donald Trump started his second term as US president, and Graeme agreed to this fifth wave. It visualises the question: is the pursuit of business responsibility and sustainability relevant or worthwhile in a polycrisis, on an ever-steepening extinction trajectory, in the Trump 2.0 era?

Yes. More than ever. But, as I’ll try to illustrate here, doing it wrong takes us backwards, not forwards. For example, despite its honourable origins and intentions, being woke seemed to deliver the polar opposite of what its proponents were hoping for by animating and mobilising the MAGA movement and returning Trump to power. 

This column is split into two parts. Firstly, a brief overview of the sense-making journey I’ve been on, which signposts and aggregates those many others have taken. Given that all anyone wants to know is what useful actions they can take, both personally and professionally, in this world gone mad, the second half sets out my DOs and DON’Ts. If the first part doesn’t resonate, the DOs and DON’Ts are certain to disappoint, and possibly offend. I’m happy to receive your challenges, as long as you wish to engage on the issues.   

Plumbing the depths

Professor Christina Pagel’s categorisation of 76 actions taken by the Trump administration in its first 4.5 weeks, showing how they align with the authoritarian playbook, was shocking when published. She places those actions into five broad domains that she suggests correspond to “features of proto-authoritarian states”:

• Undermining Democratic Institutions & Rule of Law; Dismantling federal government
• Dismantling Social Protections & Rights; Enrichment & Corruption
• Suppressing Dissent & Controlling Information
• Attacking Science, Environment, Health, Arts & Education
• Aggressive Foreign Policy & Global Destabilization

Since then, somehow, things seem to have only got worse. Take a look at Professor Pagel’s latest analysis, this time of Trump’s “deliberate war on science and academic freedom”. And if you're a user of X, here's a link to some warped, rambling nonsense from the man himself, denouncing science believers as “climate lunatics” and climate change as harmless. Then going on to say that, in contrast, nuclear weapons are real and deadly, could be used tomorrow, and therefore form part of his “negotiation” with Iran. See also Bob Reich’s share of an infographic illustrating how Musk’s pursuit of “efficiency” in various government departments just might benefit his companies. 

Brilliant satire from Jonathan Pie [a fictional TV news correspondent who rants about Western politics, played by British comedian Tom Walker] is a godsend. In one of his latest videos – possibly his sweariest ever – Pie skewers Trump’s absurdity, describing him as “clearly one of the worst negotiators in geopolitical history: this is the first time ever an American president has criticised an ally for not surrendering to an invading army.” Funny, not funny, wise and to the point like nothing else: “Trump is an ally of no one”.

I can still hardly believe how Zelensky was treated at the White House on 28 February. Phillips O'Brien, Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews wrote: “I mean every word of this. The USA is now run by gangsters who both want to ally with other gangsters, and are using threats of destruction and violence to get their way.” You can read his full post here. Sadly and tragically, those weren’t just threats. Where is the bottom? How much deeper is it possible to fall?

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC very brilliantly and compellingly asks: “who switches sides in a war”, and why (watch her on video here)?

My DOs and DON'Ts

DON’T allow yourself to become inured to the lunacy and disgustingness of it all. In his occasional newsletter, the social entrepreneur Sam Coniff describes the phenomenon of ‘psychic numbing’ – “the emotional shutdown that follows large-scale tragedy” and that which “helps us keep moving through horror, letting us function—but at the cost of feeling detached… We are trapped in a loop where witnessing suffering fuels a moral obligation to do something, yet the scale of the problem is so vast that the only logical-seeming option is to collapse under the weight of it.”

Psychic numbing is a natural coping mechanism but I fear that it erodes our agency and our ability to resist and fight back. 

DO overcome the urge to blame his supporters. In the weeks following Trump’s election victory last November, I was imagining a binary choice whereby people and businesses would be able to stand alongside Trump et al, sweat the dirty (fossil fuel) assets, grift, join the far right, feather their nests and the rest be damned, etc. Or, they could choose to be in the service of people, planet and future generations instead. I still feel there is some logic in this, but the “pick a side” framing and language proved unhelpful. Even though it is hard to argue anyone voted for what Trump and Musk are now conjuring up, some people, many in the US if Trump’s gravity-defying approval ratings are anything to go by, are happy to see him unravel the world. Or perhaps it is because they are sufficiently ignorant of the facts, disinterested in history, and confident that it’s the price of eggs that truly matters, and they will soon come down. Irrespective, blaming his supporters seems likely to be counterproductive. It’s everyone’s problem that, across much of the world, large numbers of voters seem to think that strong man populism is worth experimenting with.

DO keep trying to persuade those who hold opposing views. For the last 24 years, I’ve played five-a-side football with Fraz, who also goes by the name of Dominic Frisby. He is a commentator, a comedian, a singer and song writer, and a gold and crypto investor. His YouTube video highlights include “17 Million F*ck-Offs”, a song celebrating Brexit, and more recently, “We're All Far Right Now”, which was boosted by a retweet from his hero Elon Musk and has now been watched more than a million times. Somehow, it offends me and amuses me in equal measure. His Substack boasts over 12,000 subscribers from 135 different countries around the world. The other week we were treated to a newsletter that started, “I am just back from a two-week trip to the States, and what a time I had… I felt so privileged to be there at what feels like the dawn of a new golden age for this most amazing of countries”. I nearly puked up on reading it. But, well, I know and like Fraz. We’re both equally rubbish-but-keen footballers who treasure the weekly run out. We enjoy having this – but practically nothing else – in common. While I’m doubtful that I’ve ever persuaded him of anything, I know I have to keep trying.

DON’T be (toxically) woke. And I’m not talking about the original meaning of the word, which was first used by African Americans to describe becoming woken up to issues of justice, but to the word that those on the political right have now weaponised as a way to denigrate their opponents. Unfortunately, if you present your values in ways that might be seen as too progressive, not only do you run the risk of having Fraz write a humiliating song about you, it ultimately leads to the election of “change candidates”, who promise to dismantle the state to improve people’s lives. This finally, fully dawned on me about half an hour into the audio recording of the interview of VC-overlord Marc Andreessen by Ross Douthat of the New York Times, entitled “How Democrats Drove Silicon Valley Into Trump’s Arms”. I’ve no doubt that journalist and How to Survive the Broligarchy writer Carole Cadwalladr would scoff but Andreessen makes the case for how Biden/Harris became a political impossibility partly through their over-zealous attempts to prevent US businesses and entrepreneurs from developing AI and crypto in ways that risked national security. It is persuasive in describing how a toxic wokeness became a feature of the Biden administration and created spaces for the alt-right to fill and exploit.

DON’T condemn your own company’s recent efforts to be sustainable. While it might be tempting to do just that, you’ll present as one of those companies for which CSR and ESG was never anything more than a partial, selective, half-arsed experiment. By all means explain how you may have got things wrong, or how you may have done things differently with hindsight, but to “proclaim the ‘insanity’ of all and any burdens placed on businesses, and reaffirm your full commitment to Mammon” – to quote Sasja Beslik – suggests an opportunistic bonfire of your previously stated values and strategies.

DO consider how greenwash and purposewash feed the Trump narrative. A paper from the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), entitled “Survival of the Fittest: From ESG to Competitive Sustainability” was published in October, before Trump’s election victory. It makes a strong case for moving on from ESG and CSR, because they had never worked, and never could. Sasja Beslik’s recent blog goes further arguing that it wasn’t simply that business failed to become more responsible and sustainable while the world got flooded with greenwash. “Neoliberalism had one last chance to reinvent its purpose, to reset its engine through sustainability. That was the last train. And as we now know, sustainability was never truly embraced by neoliberals around the world.” His argument is that Trump and his fellow authoritarian strong men have been able to claim neoliberal elites run multinational corporations to enrich themselves. They offend common sense by, for example, endowing Hellman’s mayonnaise with a social purpose but their agenda has left the middle and working classes well behind. Responsibility theatre was recast as wokery and paved the way for the “traditionalist” takeover that is now overwhelming us.

DO offer a credible alternative if you must abandon your DEI or net zero targets. Stefan Stern quotes Groucho Marx: “Those are my principles and if you don’t like them … well, I have others,” to mock some of the corporate giants that have downplayed or deleted their commitments to DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] in recent weeks (he lists Meta, Amazon, McDonald’s, Accenture, Google, General Motors, Pepsi, Walmart and Boeing) in his Guardian article, “To the CEOs who’ve joined Trump’s fight against diversity, I say this: you’re making a big mistake”. Diversity and climate remain pressing business issues. Removing or revising targets may be defensible, but only if coherent policies and practices of some kind remain. 

DON’T be a Nigel Farage or a Liz Truss. Your values have never been more relevant nor more important. Be sure of them. If we succeed in valuing and holding on to history, I doubt it will look kindly on those who chose to work for or align themselves with MAGA and co (see Liz Truss's recent speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington), or those who saw fit to keep trucking with business as usual and help deflect attention from the global fascist takeover. 

DO spend your time and effort on the right things. Call time on groups or projects that you know to be futile, irrelevant, or otherwise unaligned with your true goals. Your passion, resources and energy are finite and should be invested with focus and purpose.

DO responsibility and sustainability in ways appropriate to your organisation’s size, sector, geography and circumstances. There is a place you need to find, somewhere between the glossy greenwash, the bonfires of ESG targets, and the posturing wokeness. It is a place from which you can focus on reducing your various negative impacts on people and planet, and increasing your positive impacts, systematically, in the course of getting your products and services to market at the right price and quality. This is the work, pure and simple. It always has been. Do it to become a better, more efficient, more effective, more commercially successful business. If you are struggling to locate this space, drop us a line at Responsible 100, it’s what we’re here for.

DO share your game-changing ideas and theories of change. Responsible 100 has helped to spearhead a collaboration between several of the UK’s leading responsible business marks, certifications and frameworks, as introduced on these pages recently by Adam Garfunkel.

• READ: Opinion: Why the UK responsible business movement needs to grow up 

Alongside Tomorrow’s Company, The Purposeful Company, North Star Transition and DEAL, we’ll be taking aspects of this work back to Anthropy, where it all began, as part of what we hope will be a superb panel discussion. We aim to share and debate game-changing ideas and theories of change that are capable, or necessary, in order to fix the way the world works. You are warmly invited to submit your own ideas. We wish to know what new technology, new law, changes to culture or accepted norms that you’d magic into existence to deliver the big, powerful solutions we need.

DON’T kid yourself that this is not your fight. Let’s be clear, as non-profit news platform Common Dreams put it simply, “Everything we care about is in danger”. And as ethical marketeer Jane Shaw argues, no viable means of fighting back and countering reality will be available to us until we define and confront that reality first. The words we need are corrupt, supremacist, autocratic, anti-democratic, censorial, dictatorial, totalitarian, tyrannical and authoritarian.

DO be inspired and emboldened by the poets. They’ve seen this coming, or they saw it before. They know. The power and wisdom in speaking up at times like this reside in these poems: Martin Niemöller’s First They Came  and Wendell Berry’s Do Not Be Ashamed.

DO tell me what I got right or wrong here, and also what I missed. As well as how else I can join the fight.

• Michael Solomon is the founder and director of Responsible 100, a benchmarking tool and community to support companies to operate as responsibly as they can by balancing their own economic interests with the interests of nature, society and a fair, livable, sustainable future.

Top image: The cartoon has been expanded with editing software to fit within the website image format.