Bud Light, Nike trans activist partnership is the worst kind of ‘woke capitalism,’ says Vivek Ramaswamy

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is wading into the controversy surrounding Bud Light and Nike's recent partnerships with a trans activist, citing it as an example of large corporations' consistent push to engage in "the worst kind of woke capitalism," even if it means pushing away established customers.  

"This, to me, is a case of a company that's clearly not following its financial self-interest," Ramaswamy said. "Sometimes you could make an argument that a company does something totally woke because that's what its customer base wants to see. Oftentimes, that's even debatable. In the case of Bud Light, that's just wrong."

Anheuser-Busch, the company behind Bud Light, recently sent specialized cans of the popular beer to trans activist and TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney, featuring the influencer's face. The cans included printed text that celebrated her first "365 Days of Girlhood."

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Less than a week later, Mulvaney received a paid partnership with Nike and took to social media to model the company's leggings and sports bras in a series of videos.

Many Twitter users claimed the partnerships were an attempt to push radical gender propaganda.

Conservative social media user James Lindsay went viral after he posted a thread suggesting the companies were forced to engage with Mulvaney to maintain a high score with the Corporate Equality Index (CEI). CEI is a national benchmarking tool from the Human Rights Campaign that measures policies and benefits pertinent to LGBTQ employees.

"It's ESG (Environmental, Social and corporate governance) racketeering," Lindsay said, attaching images of past instances in which trans activists warned Anheuser-Busch the company would see its CEI score plummet if they did not engage in an open dialogue with LGBTQ advocates.

Ramaswamy said that special ratings applied to CEOs, like CEI, are definitely a factor, but the reasons for these types of corporate displays of progressivism go far beyond that.

Ramaswamy referred to the recent moves by Anheuser-Busch and Nike as a "short run marketing gimmick" that could push away customers but claimed the companies might view it as a "net neutral" because it provides them free coverage at a time when it's difficult for a corporate brand to break through. Regardless, he said such actions create opportunities for other entrepreneurial ventures.

"In this country, there are over 100 million customers easily who are now badly disaffected from the places where they shop, where they bank, where they invest, as they do business with companies that effectively show disrespect for their own values as customers by prioritizing different values instead," he said.

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However, to take advantage of this opening, Ramaswamy said smaller companies must rely on more than customer annoyance to cultivate market alternatives.

"I do think that you know, a lot of these other firms like Disney, Anheuser-Busch, they're so big and many of them, even in Big Pharma, for example, or even operating monopoly businesses, that there is no market accountability, that even if they take a hit, they hit small," Ramaswamy said. "But the executives derive so much more cultural and personal social power that the trade becomes worth it for them to make anyway."

Ramaswamy added that the U.N. Principles of Responsible Investment influence how large asset managers behave. Those large asset managers, like BlackRock and State Street, then become the shareholders of large public companies and pressure them publicly and in the boardroom.

According to Ramaswamy, the problem can also be traced back to universities feeding new generations of Gen Z employees that demand social change within lower ranks of companies.

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He compared the Mulvaney controversy to the birth of the private equity industry in the 1980s when employees policed the overuse of private jets in public companies because that was a personal benefit to the CEO at the expense of the shareholders. Now it takes the form of virtue signaling, where they get to be more popular in certain "weird cultural corridors" of the U.S. despite the fact it is "quite obviously on its face" something that alienates their customer base.

"This is a cut-and-dry example of the worst kind of woke capitalism, which is the kind that doesn't even advance their capitalistic goals," Ramaswamy added.

Citing his book "Woke Inc.," Ramaswamy recalled the first commandment of woke capitalism is that companies pretend to care about something other than profit and power to gain more of each.  

He suggested that companies like BlackRock and Airbnb, or even in some cases Nike, fit into that category. Still, he noted that Anheuser-Busch is a "much simpler case," falling more into the former category, where C-suite executives merely want to gain notoriety in the cultural circles they run.

Characterizing the rise of radical gender ideology as the equivalent of a mental health epidemic, Ramaswamy surmised that Mulvaney is being used as a pawn to bolster Nike and Anheuser-Busch's "cultural cachet."

The controversy involving Mulvaney has garnered attention from a multitude of conservative figures.

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"As someone that grew up in awe of what Phil Knight did, it is a shame to see such an iconic American company go so woke! We can be inclusive but not at the expense of the mass majority of people, and have some decency while being inclusive. This is an outrage," Caitlyn Jenner tweeted Thursday.

A day earlier, former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake claimed she was at a rally when the open bar ran out of beer, except for one brand, Bud Light.

"Go woke, go BROKE. Sad!" she tweeted.

While Republican lawmakers take these observations and try to "retrofit" them into a concise campaign slogan, Ramaswamy suggested that these political maneuverings often fall flat because they simplify the complicated motivations behind corporate threats to liberty and culture.  

"It's not just in the form of big government or just in the form of one bad actor. It's a 30, 60-degree problem. And I think that's why it's a big part of why I'm running for president to expose these cultural problems," Ramaswamy said. "It takes a leader who understands that nuance in a first personal way, not somebody who got handed a binder 10 minutes before an interview like this one to be able to spout off talking points. The left is far ahead of that."

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He added that Republican leaders like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are essentially playing a game of whack-a-mole when instead, they need to get to the root cause of the "cultural cancer" itself, which is complicated and shows up in a variety of ways.  

Ramaswamy suggested that DeSantis tried to punish companies like Disney and BlackRock from the bully pulpit, which allowed the companies to get the last laugh. He said that DeSantis' big announcement on removing special privileges from Disney was ineffective because the changes will not affect the company for years.

"Where was DeSantis when that happened? Nowhere to be found. Same thing with respect to divesting the money from BlackRock. That's a form of boycott. He pulled $700 million out while actually leaving the $13 billion of Florida state funds still in there. And so Republican politicians, you know, the way I say this about Disney is if you can get outsmarted by Mickey Mouse, you're going to get outsmarted by the left," Ramaswamy said.

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He added that Republican politicians, particularly career politicians, are only in the game of woke capitalism insofar as it allows them to trend on Twitter or conservative media for a cycle.

"These forces that are actually driving the companies to behave in the way they are, they're in this for the long haul because they actually want to change the culture," Ramaswamy added. "And so that's a mismatch. The left is actually up for the challenge where you get career politicians who are into a cycle of attention that just turns them into another pawn in the game."