Publicly held businesses respond to pressure from shareholders and customers, and we’ve seen such response in recent days. We know that many CEOs were looking for a reason to distance themselves from our morally-bankrupt, racist president, and used his Nazi-sympathetic comments to abandon the myriad councils that Trump had formed to prove his “business” focus. For most of those CEOs, we’re unlikely to ever learn if those departures were based on their own disagreement with or disgust by Trump’s comments or whether their boards, employees, customers and shareholders had an impact. We’ve also seen that pressure on several organizations who’d planned “gala” events at Mar-a-Lago resulted in their cancellation of those plans in light of the outrage expressed by the public, the media, and their contributors.
CEOs are creatures driven by reputation and legacy. Sure, they focus on ensuring their businesses are well run, but they also focus on how they’ll be remembered when they’re gone… what they’ll be known to have accomplished. This pressure point is where we need to focus our message and efforts in order to starve Trump and the Trump Organization of as many sources of revenue as possible.
Of course, one of Trump’s bright-and-shiny points of pride are his hotels and golf courses (especially since they’re “wonderful, truly wonderful), and several of them are already suffering revenue declines. Now is exactly when we need to ramp up the pressure.
There are some initiatives already focused on this, so this isn’t a new idea, but it’s one that we need to accelerate and amplify.
I spent a good chunk of this morning trying to identify those businesses that allowed their employees to stay at Trump properties, but that effort proved largely fruitless. As a result, I’ve concluded that we can take a more broad-brushed approach. Similar to the #GrabYour Wallet initiative, which had a very strong impact on retailers carrying Trump products or supporting Trump fundraising, we need to use both that platform and add additional actions towards those companies that we either patronize or invest in to insist that they do not spend corporate monies in support of any Trump businesses.1
The message to deliver is that, as a customer or shareholder, you want an assurance that the business:
- Does [CompanyName] currently allow employees or contractors to stay at Trump properties while traveling on company business, at company expense?
- Does [CompanyName] have any current plans, arrangements or commitments to conduct company meetings, events, parties, galas, golf outings or any other type of gathering at company expense at any Trump property?
- Does any employee, officer or board member have membership in or patronize a Trump-owned golf course, golf club (or other recreational entity) where such membership dues, greens fees, meals or any other expense is paid with company funds, either directly in the form of a perquisite or via reimbursement after the fact?
- Has the company made any donations to the Trump Foundation or the Eric Trump Foundation at any time in either Foundation’s history?
I have created MS-Word templates for your use. They’re available here (as a customer) and here (as a shareholder). I encourage you to send them to the CEO and copy of the following at each company:
- Chair of the Board of Directors (if different than the CEO)
- Chief Financial Officer
- Chief Marketing Officer (for companies where you are the customer)
- Chief Investment Relations Officer (for companies in which you are a shareholder. Often, it will be SVP or EVP of Investor Relations. You can find it by searching their Investor Relations page on their website)
It’s important that you send to all these people at each company (and let each of them know that others have been communicated with) because when you do, the recipient cannot simply ignore it when he/she knows that other officers have received the same message.
Take action. Resist.
1 Some businesses will have leases or other long-term financial ties with The Trump Organization that cannot easily be altered or cancelled. It’s unrealistic to think that a company will cancel such a relationship early, but we can insist that it not be renewed.