Activism of all kinds has been one of the most conspicuous casualties of Donald Trump’s second spin in the White House. Particularly activism focused along the left, which is why the recent resignation of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream-founder Jerry Greenfield from the brand’s longtime corporate owner comes as little surprise. 

Even before Trump’s return to the presidency, progressive-led corporate activism was already under attack. Companies adhering to  “green” investment strategies or race-based policies, such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), were being picked apart by investor watchdogs asking whether companies were doing well financially from formalised efforts to morally do good. 

In the case of Greenfield, Ben & Jerry’s – the company that he co-founded in Vermont along with Ben Cohen back in 1978 – is beloved for the feel-good, save-the-world, “kumbaya” philosophy that has long fueled its marketing and manufacturing. When Unilever bought Ben & Jerry’s for $326m (€277m) back in 2000, Greenfield and Cohen said that the British multinational not only understood their social-mindedness but guaranteed that it could continue without interference.

“For more than 20 years under [Unilever] ownership, Ben & Jerry’s stood up and spoke out in support of peace, justice and human rights, not as abstract concepts but in relation to real events happening in our world,” wrote Greenfield in a public letter this week explaining his resignation from Ben & Jerry’s, where both founders have long served as brand ambassadors. Greenfield said that his exit choice was “one of the hardest and most painful decisions” that he had ever made but that he could not “in good conscience” work for a company that had been “silenced” by Unilever.

Trump’s return to the Oval Office, the rise of the war in Gaza and increased scrutiny on the bottom-line impact of socially minded investing has seen Unilever seemingly increasingly attempt to silence and sideline the ice-cream entrepreneurs’ activism. In 2022, for instance, Unilever sold its Ben & Jerry’s business to a local licensee, despite its founders’ objection to operating in the West Bank. Two years later, Greenfield and Cohen sued Unilever after accusing it of censoring their support for Palestinian refugees.  

Earlier this year the duo alleged that Unilever banned a social-media post that appeared to criticise Donald Trump. Frustrated by mounting corporate interference, Greenfield and Cohen began a campaign to “free” Ben & Jerry’s from The Magnum Ice Cream Company, which was recently spun off from Unilever and now controls the brand. The packaged-good giant has repeatedly rejected such overtures. 

Maintaining corporate progressive momentum was always going to be hard amid Trump 2.0. On day one of his new presidency, Trump issued sweeping executive orders intended to dismantle DEI programming in both the public and private sector. At the same time, anti-DEI hawks such as investor James Fishbeck scaled their fervor to ever higher and more consequential levels. Last year, for instance, Florida-based Fishbeck launched the first-ever anti-DEI investment fund, which puts its money in every S&P 500 company except those, says Fishbeck, “with explicit racial and gender hiring targets.”  

Corporate activism is not entirely dead but it’s now “maturing,” Sam Fankuchen, founder and CEO of volunteer and donor-management platform Golden, told Forbes this year. Under Trump, “companies are realising they cannot just signal good intentions; they have to drive meaningful outcomes,” said Fankuchen.  

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder last week alongside high-profile dismissals such as the suspension of late-night talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel from the ABC network on Wednesday, the definition of “outcomes” has never been more porous – or politicised.  For the White House, this means adhering to the anti-diversity, America-first mindset that has fueled every element of Trump’s political journey. But now weaponised by both power and policy, the type of activism long embodied by the Ben & Jerry’s duo might soon become an “outcome” that few companies are willing to risk.