Business Response to the U.S. Government Shutdown

On December 21, 2018, the U.S. government entered a partial shutdown after Congress failed to reach a compromise on a spending bill that included billions of dollars in funding for a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. On January 25, 2019, President Trump announced that Congress had reached a deal to temporarily reopen the government after 35 days, making it the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.   Weber Shandwick regularly monitors for corporate responses to hot-button issues. As part of our ongoing business response series, we analyzed corporate reactions to the government shutdown. Within the 35 days, we saw 87 organizations respond.   We found that 53 percent of organizations had their leader (e.g., CEO, Founder, President) speak up about the shutdown. About two-thirds (64 percent) took some sort of action beyond issuing a response, such as free and discounted products and services and financial assistance to furloughed government workers. Many organizations avoided politics, with only 34 percent being openly critical about the shutdown. More of our findings can be found here.   Click here for additional Weber Shandwick research on CEO activism.