Costco Not Worried About Becoming the Next Bud Light

As a business move, it makes no sense. Then again, not much about the Big Corporate embrace of the culturally leftist diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda ever did. On Jan. 24, shareholders of the wholesale club Costco overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to scuttle the corporation’s DEI programs. The pushback came at the strident behest of Costco’s Board of Directors.

Those directors are undoubtedly aware of the crushing financial penalties irate consumers doled out to Bud Light and Target when those two brand-name giants embraced woke causes as a basic business practice. What makes the company’s intransigence seem all the more mystifying is that Costco isn’t some fashionable urbanite boutique. Its customer demographic mirrors that of Bud Light and Target: working-class Americans.

Costco Execs With a Mission

“We owe our success to the more than 300,000 employees who serve our members every day. It is important that they all feel included and appreciated and that they transmit these values to our customers,” Costco Chairman Hamilton “Tony” James said at the shareholder meeting while regurgitating the stale “diversity is our strength” Obama-era mantra that has decidedly fallen out of favor with the general public in 2025. James’ triumph was total: 98% of shareholders voted against a proposal to investigate the risks DEI posturing posed to Costco’s profit margins.

The latter half of James’ quote should alarm anyone investing in Costco for sound financial reasons. The head of a major American corporation is stating that the company has a proprietary duty to “transmit” progressive social “values” to those seeking to purchase its wares. This is the precise out-of-touch formula for alienating your entire customer base, as Bud Light, with its transgender spokesperson, and Target, with its LGBTQ clothing line for kids, learned the hard way.

James’ words disturbingly indicate that there is more than business success driving Costco’s executive suite.

“Costco board member Jeff Raikes, who formerly served as CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been a vocal supporter of DEI policies, and has written that businesses should ‘maximize’ their DEI initiatives,” Fox Business noted. Another board member, Sally Jewell, served as President Barack Obama’s interior secretary from 2013 to 2017. From June 2019 to May 2020, Jewell was interim CEO of the Nature Conservancy, “a global environmental non-profit organization,” as her official Costco corporate bio puts it. Climate Change is the first item listed under “Our Priorities” on the Nature Conservancy’s website.

In July, Jewell said she was “really afraid for the future of our planet” if Donald Trump returned to the White House. “To go backwards is not acceptable,” Jewell asserted at the Bloomberg Green Festival in Seattle. “I can’t say enough about the importance of continuing the progress that has been made over the last three years” on climate change.

“If [Joe] Biden or another Democrat is elected, and the kinds of people that are working in government that understand these issues are able to continue to do the work they do, we are fine. If the election is lost, we are not fine,” she added.

Costco was one of the numerous big-name American corporations that eerily toed a uniform party line in the name of “social justice” after George Floyd died while in police custody in 2020. Once again, the company stressed a sense of mission that went far beyond selling rotisserie chickens at a great price.

“Along with the rest of the country, we were shocked by the tragic and senseless death of George Floyd,” then-CEO Craig Jelinek wrote in a memo to employees at the time. “While Costco cannot alter this terrible event, or others like it, we believe all individuals and organizations can use this moment as a catalyst for change. We must re-examine how we deal with issues of racism and injustice everywhere in our society.”

Jelinek is a current member of the Costco Board of Directors.

Mark those words: “all organizations can use this moment as a catalyst for change.” This is the jargon of committed social activists.

Barack Obama’s Wall Street Connection

And then there is James himself. He was hailed as a key money man for Obama during his tenure as president of the powerful private equity behemoth Blackstone. “Mr. James is a longtime donor to Democrats and had been avidly courted by the Obama campaign,” The New York Times reported in April 2012 in advance of a fundraiser James held for Obama one month later.

How cozy was James with Obama? “Reuters has learned that James was offered the job of commerce secretary when President Barack Obama reshuffled his cabinet two years ago,” the wire service reported in December 2014. “He turned down the previously undisclosed offer because he wanted the post of Treasury secretary or national economic adviser, one of the sources who was briefed about the offer said.”

If you’re taking score, that’s two people Obama had asked to serve in his Cabinet seated on the Board of Directors at Costco, the beloved wholesale club of millions of working-class Americans who turned out in droves to support Trump last November.

Something’s got to give. James feels it is his duty to “transmit” progressive social values to customers who are beyond fed up at having political agendas they do not agree with foisted upon them every time they merely seek to buy a razor, groceries, or a six-pack of beer.

Corporate DEI has always been part of a larger agenda that goes far beyond the financial bottom line. Its proponents simply will not go away. The major question for Costco executives is, will their fed-up customer base go elsewhere? Ask Bud Light and Target. They can tell Obama’s board members what happens when you push too far.