22 May 2024 Amazon Faces Charges of Supporting Radical, Divisive Causes
Shareholders Aren’t Smiling
Washington, D.C. – At today’s annual Amazon shareholder meeting, Stefan Padfield, deputy director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP), presents a proposal holding the online shopping behemoth accountable for taking radical and divisive political positions through its corporate charitable donations.
Stefan Padfield
Padfield will present Proposal 5, which calls into question Amazon’s corporate contributions to radical left-wing groups, the danger such contributions present to shareholder value and the need for full disclosure of those donations.
FEP wrote in its supporting statement:
The Company supports divisive organizations and takes public stances on divisive issues that alienate current and prospective consumers and draw even more regulatory and legislative attention than it’s already under.
Recent events have made clear that company bottom lines, and therefore value to shareholders, drop when companies take overtly political and divisive positions that alienate consumers. Following Bud Light’s embrace of partisanship and disparagement of its customer base, its revenue fell $395 million in North America when compared to the same time a year ago…. Target Corporation’s market cap fell over $15 billion amid backlash for similar actions. And Disney stock fell 44 percent in 2022—its worst performance in nearly 50 years—amid its decision to put extreme partisan agendas ahead of parents’ rights.
“Amazon is a platinum partner of the Human Rights Campaign, and partners with allied organizations, which many view as seeking to sow gender confusion in primary school children while destroying girls’ and women’s sports and demolishing long-standing religious freedoms,” said Padfield. “As the recent cases of Bud Light, Target and Disney demonstrate—embracing such radical leftist positions is no longer costless. In fact, it can destroy billions of dollars of shareholder value.”
More information about this proposal, as well as other key votes, can be found in FEP’s mobile and web app, ProxyNavigator.
About
The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 60,000 active recent contributors. Contributions are tax-deductible and may be earmarked for the Free Enterprise Project. Sign up for email updates at https://nationalcenter.org/subscribe/.
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