(Headline USA) McDonald’s is the latest company rolling back its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in light of President-elect Donald Trump’s election.
The fast-food giant announced the decision on Monday, saying it would retire specific diversity hiring goals and disband a program that required McDonald’s employees to undergo diversity trainings, Fox Business reported.
“We are proud of the work that we do at McDonald’s,” the company said in a statement. “We will continue to drive business results through all three legs of the McDonald’s stool, specifically with our people practices, by fueling economic impact and innovation through our robust supply chain and by building a franchisee pipeline that thrives in the communities we serve and fuels our growth.”
McDonald’s, which is known to be a favorite of President-elect Donald Trump, made political headlines in the final stretches of the 2024 presidential campaign by allowing Trump to work the drive-through window at one of its Pennsylvania locations.
The publicity stunt proved to be massively successful, trolling Democrat opponent Kamala Harris over her false claims of having once been employed there and helping Trump further connect with working-class voters in a crucial battleground state.
However, during much of the Biden administration, the global corporation took a decidedly more woke posture.
In 2021, McDonald’s global diversity and inclusion officer Reginald Miller announced it would be offering executive bonuses based on DEI goals. Miller also vowed that McDonald’s would fill 35% of its U.S. leadership roles with minorities and 45% of its leadership roles with women.
The company also began enforcing strict diversity requirements for its suppliers at this time.
All of these policies are now being done away with, McDonald’s announced, and its diversity team will be renamed the Global Inclusion Team.
“This name change is more fitting for McDonald’s in light of our inclusion value and better aligns with this team’s work,” the company said.
McDonald’s didn’t cite Trump’s electoral victory as the reason why it was moving away from DEI, instead pointing to the Supreme Court’s recent decision striking down affirmative action.
It follows a trend among major corporations—including Walmart, which made a similar announcement in November—amid conservative pressure campaigns and threats of legal action.
Longtime Trump adviser Stephen Miller, whose America First Legal has been at the forefront in some of those courtroom battles, was named deputy chief of staff for policy in one of the first rounds of appointments made by the Trump transition team.
This “shifting legal landscape,” as well as the decisions by several other large companies in recent months to abandon their own DEI programs, has led the company to reevaluate its priorities, McDonald’s admitted.
Nonetheless, the company said it remained committed to one of the three letters in “DEI”: inclusion.
“Since our founding, we’ve prided ourselves on understanding that the foundation of our business is people,” said the McDonald’s statement. “As [former CEO] Fred Turner said, ‘We’re a people business, and never forget it.’”
