Turns out, keeping DEI didn’t cost companies a thing

Apple faced a different kind of pressure, this one coming directly from the White House. After Apple’s shareholders voted down an anti-DEI resolution in early 2025, Trump criticized the company by name on Truth Social.

“I really like the Apple case, because that’s one where Trump himself made it salient,” Grumbach said. “Trump’s post slightly affected Apple’s stock price that day, but then it climbed right back up. In the medium and long term, that did not affect Apple in the least.”

That kind of unpredictability is part of why some HR leaders are working to make DEI’s value measurable in business terms, rather than dependent on shifting politics, and clearer ways to measure outcomes instead of just reacting to backlash have started to emerge.

What this means going forward

Grumbach doesn’t expect many companies to revive the DEI programs they’ve already dropped, even with these findings in hand.

“There’s no going back in time. Many firms, as well as other civil society organizations like law firms, folded to early 2025 Trump administration directives, and there’s no going back now,” Grumbach said. “I think a lot of these firms see that it was not necessary economically to do that, that they feared being in the spotlight with the administration.”