Want to know how DEI proliferated in corporate America, especially with federal contractors? Just follow the money ... while you still can.

Over the last several months, major American corporations have retreated rapidly from the progressive quota system in hiring and promotions, in virtue signaling as well. Earlier, I wrote about the financial industry hitting reverse on policies they adopted just a few years ago, presumably after discovering just how unpopular those turned out to be with Americans. Today, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump administration has ordered executive-branch agencies to no longer consider DEI compliance in contracting, removing the financial incentives from the rotten progressive structure:

The Trump administration is directing federal agencies to no longer consider a company’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices when deciding whether to procure its goods or services, according to an announcement from the General Services Administration.

The new policy reverses a Biden administration initiative that asked the government to weigh a company’s internal DEI practices as one of many factors when considering whether to purchase that company’s products or services.

GSA also put an end to paper-straw replacements within the executive branch, which also reversed a Joe Biden policy that would have required no governmental use of plastic straws by 2035. That's small potatoes, however, compared to the reach of GSA's reversal of incentives in federal contracting for DEI implementation. The existence of these requirements likely explain why corporate America was so eager to pursue these policies in the first place -- they went where the money was.

It also helps explain why so many of these corporations are willing to reverse these policies. Biden and his team had GSA set up these incentives as both carrot and stick. Comply and get rewarded; refuse, and find yourself locked out and grant your market competitors a significant advantage. That is how many of the requirements for federal contracts work; a large number of them have nothing to do with actual deliverables, but with social engineering based on punishing those who refuse to embrace the ideology of the moment. 

Nice business ya got there ... shame if something happened to it, if ya know what I mean.

Note too how the Trump administration has ended that practice with DEI. They are not requiring contractors to not use DEI practices to qualify for federal contracts; they are just removing the incentives for social engineering via discrimination. The companies can continue to use those practices if they want, but as we have seen, most of them now don't want to do so. Even besides the general unpopularity of DEI practices, it's not tough to see why, since these discriminatory practices inevitably turn into quotas that necessarily pit identity groups against each other for priority, which is hardly healthy for private-sector companies. 

However, federal contracting involves a lot more social engineering than just DEI. GSA also announced that the Trump administration planned to overhaul a lot more of these set-asides and other social-engineering incentives. There may be a limit to how much they can reverse:

The moves are the first in what the GSA says will be an overhaul of federal procurement practices. The set of acquisition regulations “has grown to more than 2,000 pages. It’s burdensome, outdated, and doesn’t allow agencies to buy at the speed of need,” said Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service.

For decades, the government has been criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike for rules governing federal contracting that many found to be cumbersome. It isn’t clear what sorts of reforms the government can make without the permission of Congress, however. Many preferences given to certain types of companies, such as those owned by people with disabilities or Native American tribes, are set by Congress.

Republicans and Democrats may have complained for decades, but they haven't done anything about it. Why? For the same reason Congress won't use a simplified income-tax system; they want to use federal contracting and the tax code for their preferred social engineering. In doing so, they lard up both of these systems -- not to mention the massive regulatory regimes in the federal government -- with so much complexity that it's nearly impossible to comply with it all, or even enforce it except when particular incentives dictate enforcement. 

I do not necessarily subscribe to the Uniparty belief, but this is a good demonstration of it.

Can Trump convince Congress to take action to demolish these mechanisms? It depends on how much the removal of DOGE-uncovered grift impacts the political incentives for members of Congress -- and how much they worry that Trump's populism could overcome the inertia of the deep state that Congress has kept fed for so long.