It will be a very different LGBTQ Pride month this year in the US – the first since the return of Donald Trump to the White House and the implementation of his anti-diversity initiatives across every element of government and society. There’s no blueprint for celebrating a month acknowledging a minority group when diversity initiatives have essentially been outlawed. Grave consequences potentially await companies and institutions that support diversity, equity and inclusion programmes. But while the American public is still ready to fete the queer community throughout June, the private sector has become far less sanguine.
According to Heritage of Pride, the organiser of New York’s annual pride parade, 25 per cent of corporate donors have cancelled or reduced sponsorship this year, which can run from $7,500 to $175,000 (€6,600 to €154,000). Long-time supporters such as PepsiCo, Nissan, Citi, Mastercard and PricewaterhouseCoopers are not returning to this year’s festivities. Other brands are trading marquee sponsorship deals for lower-profile parade booths and product placements.
Brewing company Anheuser-Busch has ended its PrideFest sponsorship in St Louis, and the same goes for spirits giant Diageo in San Francisco. Such moves not only threaten to reduce the size of Pride events in June but also broader outreach efforts by festival organisers throughout the year. Perhaps most worrisome, nearly 40 per cent of companies plan to reduce internal Pride programming over fears of White House retribution. As Fabrice Houdart, executive director of the Association of LGBTQ+ Corporate Directors, recently told The New York Times, “there are a lot of companies saying ‘I won’t engage on anything LGBT-related because I don’t want to find myself being a target.’”
While this year’s corporate retreat may feel regressive – if not foreboding – the shift does offer a much-needed reset for a Pride industry that many LGBTQ activists felt had become more concerned with celebrating capitalism than sexual liberation. Grassroots groups such as the Dyke March and Reclaim Pride Coalition have long held alternative, “protest” Pride events – the latter under the banner: “NO COPS, NO CORPS, NO BS”.
Even if it’s possible, ending Pride’s reliance on private sector largesse won’t be simple. Nor will it be easy for Trump to ignore the millions of LGBTQ people and allies that are expected to pour into Washington as it holds the biannual WorldPride event over the next two weeks. Hilton, Delta and Amazon are all listed as sponsors, though the extent of their contributions remains unclear. Even skittish companies such as home-goods retailer Target – which faced a backlash over its Pride fashion collection in 2024 – are finding ways to support LGBTQ causes while still avoiding White House ire: Target will reduce its visible brand presence at New York’s Pride march while still contributing cash to the event. Ultimately, of course, the show will go on. And for all the backroom corporate tussling, there remain few shows with the scale and spectacle of Pride.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer and US president Donald Trump have announced a “breakthrough” trade deal, the first since the latter leader triggered a global trade war.
To the extent that US president Donald Trump’s decision to launch a tariff war with the world made any sense – and the consensus among economists is that it did not – it was as a massive standover: to bully the world’s nations into seeking individual arrangements on terms more favourable to the US. This was certainly what Trump insinuated, repeatedly and coarsely boasting of grovelling entreaties from other countries. At one point he even claimed to have struck 200 trade deals. This would have been a remarkable accomplishment, given that the United Nations recognises a mere 195 countries, though perhaps Trump believed himself to be negotiating furiously with Ruritania, Freedonia, Lilliput, Legoland and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.
We now know that at least one of Trump’s deals has been done – with the United Kingdom. Trump declared the agreement as “full and comprehensive” and “big and exciting”, though such claims do need to be adjusted for the president’s lifelong tendency towards the oversell. The agreement might prove little more than yet another iteration of a recurring motif of Trump’s life in politics: create problem, cease creating problem, claim credit as a problem solver.
For this is not really a trade deal, at least certainly not a “full and comprehensive” one. It is a reduction for some items of the 10 per cent tariff that was slapped on most UK imports on “Liberation Day” – and scales back the 25 per cent tariffs imposed on UK car and steel manufacturers. Possibly grasping for a British brand of which Americans will have heard, US secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick beamed that Rolls-Royce aeroplane engines will now be tariff-free. Somewhat ominously, Trump, who has a formidable record for changing his mind and/or abnegating agreements, stressed that the final details of the deal are as yet unwritten.
This being said, the optics are significant for the UK. Trump could have chosen any country or leader to be the first recipient of his munificent generosity and abundant reasonableness: president Xi Jinping of China, prime minister Shigeru Ishiba of Japan and the chief penguin of the Heard and MacDonald Islands are still languishing beneath a 10 per cent tariff. That Trump chose the UK is, at the very least, a solid diplomatic result; a reinforcement of the UK’s cherished idea that its relationship with the US is the “special” one.
For UK prime minister Keir Starmer, it is the second big trade-related deal in a week, after an agreement was concluded with India. Tariffs on certain goods were lowered in both directions. It’s excellent news for Indian enthusiasts of Scotch whisky, UK wearers of Indian textiles and, hopefully, for the companies that supply both. The UK government’s line is that the deal will eventually increase UK GDP by £4.8bn (€5.6bn). Whether or not this proves accurate, it seems mildly preposterous that India and the UK, respectively Earth’s fourth and sixth-biggest economies, with deep historical, cultural and familial ties, were doing such a small amount of business: India presently accounts for less than two per cent of the UK’s exports and imports.
The UK-India deal could be added to Trump’s list of inadvertent triumphs, along with his recent crucial contributions in helping to re-elect the Liberal Party in Canada and the Labor Party in Australia. The UK-India deal had been sputtering for three years: they would not be the only two countries who have recently been figuring out ways to help each other compensate for the US’s possible retreat into protectionist autarky. Starmer is also looking forward to signing a new “strategic partnership” with the EU in London on 19 May, with commitments to defence and trade. The diplomatic narrowing of an English Channel widened by Brexit has been another unintended consequence of Trump’s caprices.
Defining yourself in opposition to Donald Trump has only so much rope – as Canada’s newly elected prime minister Mark Carney is about to find out (writes Tomos Lewis). Carney’s election campaign was dominated by matters beyond his country’s borders, specifically the economic upheaval caused by US tariffs and threats to Canadian sovereignty. Today, however, the campaigning stops and the job of leading begins.
Monday’s election result was a remarkable turnaround for Canada’s governing Liberal Party and represents one of the biggest swings in the history of the nation’s polling. A record 7.3 million early ballots were cast. Carney successfully framed Canada’s numerous internal challenges – high inflation, an urban-housing crisis and a paucity of defence spending – as reasons to loosen the country’s economic dependence on the US. Voters liked what they heard. But that combative talk now needs to turn into solid, actionable policy.
After campaigning as a political outsider who can freshen up governance for the future, Carney will now need to make good on his vow to move quickly and bring profound change. By Canada Day on 1 July, he has promised to pivot the nation’s trading and defence relationships towards new overseas alliances, streamline internal trade among Canada’s provinces and start building more homes. But before then he has another crucial milestone in chairing the G7 in June. It’s an opportunity for Carney to lead on a few global issues, not least whether he will help Western governments seize $300bn (€264bn) in frozen Russian assets to pay for the protection of Ukraine, which includes CA$22bn (€14bn).
The momentum that has driven the Liberal Party’s historic electoral comeback should not be allowed to ebb now that the campaign is over. A good hockey metaphor, employed prodigiously on the campaign trail, doesn’t land as well when you’re in power. Carney is no longer an outsider – it’s time for political point-scoring to make way for nation-building.
