In the week following the January 6 Capitol siege, Lime CEO Wayne Ting issued a directive that transformed moral outrage into financial consequence: the e-scooter company would permanently blacklist all Trump and Kushner family businesses from its corporate spending, removing Trump hotels from employee travel options and urging its booking platform to extend the ban further. The decision reflected a growing corporate reckoning with the boundaries of complicity — a question not merely of politics, but of what institutions owe to democracy when its foundations are tested.
Lime bans Trump properties, vows never to fund Trump or Kushner businesses
We are looking for ways to ensure our dollars don't support those complicit in this attack on democracy.
Mark
So Lime is saying it will never spend money on Trump or Kushner businesses. How much money are we actually talking about here?
Mimi
The memo doesn't specify a dollar amount. We know Lime has 600 employees and removed Trump hotels from their approved travel list, so there's some corporate travel spending involved, but the exact figure isn't disclosed.
Luke
Right—and that's worth noting. We don't know if this is a meaningful financial hit or largely symbolic. The company says it's never made political donations before, so the real impact might be limited to hotel bookings and maybe some other vendor relationships.
Mark
What about the request to TripActions? Is that just Lime being noble, or is there actual leverage there?
Mimi
Lime asked TripActions to remove Trump properties from search results for all customers, not just Lime. It's a request, not a demand—TripActions could refuse. But it signals Lime wants to use its position as a customer to influence the platform's broader policy.
Luke
And we don't know if TripActions complied. The article doesn't say. So we have a request, but no confirmation of outcome.
Mark
Ting also brought up the difference in police response between the Capitol riot and Black Lives Matter protests. Why include that?
Mimi
He was making a point about accountability and unequal treatment. He was asking whether the same rioters would have been allowed to leave if they'd been Black and carrying BLM flags instead of Trump flags.
Luke
That's a fair observation, but it's also a separate argument from the business policy. The two things—corporate spending decisions and police response—are related in his mind but distinct in fact.
Mark
Does this policy actually matter? Can Trump just operate his businesses without Lime's money?
Mimi
Of course. Trump's business empire is enormous—roughly 500 ventures. Lime's corporate travel spending is a drop in that ocean. But the symbolic weight matters. It's one of the first major companies to establish a permanent blacklist.
Luke
Symbolic weight is real, but let's be clear: this is not a financial threat to Trump. It's a statement. Whether that statement changes anything depends on whether other companies follow.
Der Puls
- One week after rioters stormed the Capitol, Lime's CEO sent a company-wide memo declaring a permanent financial severance from all Trump and Kushner family ventures — one of the first concrete corporate consequences to follow the siege.
- Trump hotels were immediately stripped from Lime's approved employee travel list, and the company pressured its booking platform TripActions to extend the ban across its entire customer base.
- Lime also pledged to withhold donations from any Republican lawmaker who voted against certifying Biden's Electoral College victory, formalizing a political accountability standard the company had never previously adopted.
- Ting drew a pointed parallel to the Black Lives Matter protests, challenging his staff to reckon with whether the Capitol breach would have unfolded the same way had the rioters been Black — framing the policy as a stand against unequal justice, not just partisan politics.
- The move joined a wave of corporate withdrawals from Trump's financial ecosystem, including Deutsche Bank and Signature Bank, but stood out for targeting not just Trump himself but the full breadth of his 500-venture business empire.
In the week following the January 6 Capitol siege, Lime CEO Wayne Ting issued a directive that transformed moral outrage into financial consequence: the e-scooter company would permanently blacklist all Trump and Kushner family businesses from its corporate spending, removing Trump hotels from employee travel options and urging its booking platform to extend the ban further. The decision reflected a growing corporate reckoning with the boundaries of complicity — a question not merely of politics, but of what institutions owe to democracy when its foundations are tested.
On January 13, 2021, Lime CEO Wayne Ting sent an internal memo to the company's 600 employees announcing that Lime would never again spend corporate money on any business connected to Donald Trump or the Kushner family. The directive came one week after the Capitol riot and represented one of the earliest concrete financial consequences a major company had imposed in its wake.
The policy had immediate effect. Trump hotels were removed from Lime's approved travel accommodations, and the company contacted its corporate booking platform TripActions to scrub Trump properties from employee search results entirely. Ting went further, urging TripActions to adopt the same ban across all of its customers — an attempt to translate Lime's internal decision into broader market pressure.
Ting framed the move in explicitly moral terms, titling his memo 'Do the Right Thing.' The scope was sweeping: Trump's business empire spans roughly 500 ventures, including hotels, golf courses, resorts, and restaurants across multiple continents. Kushner Companies was blacklisted in full as well. Lime also pledged to withhold political donations from any Republican lawmaker who had voted to object to Biden's electoral certification — a formal commitment for a company that had never previously made political contributions.
Ting used the moment to raise a harder question, asking employees to imagine how the Capitol breach would have been handled had the rioters been Black and marching under a Black Lives Matter banner. The question reframed the policy as something larger than a corporate rebuke of one politician — it was a statement about accountability and the unequal application of power.
Lime's decision arrived alongside similar moves by Deutsche Bank and Signature Bank, but distinguished itself by targeting Trump's entire business ecosystem rather than the man alone. For Ting, the Capitol riot had crossed a threshold that demanded not just words, but durable financial consequence.
On Tuesday, January 13, 2021, Wayne Ting, the chief executive of Lime, sent an internal memo to the company's 600 employees with a stark directive: Lime would never again spend corporate money on any business owned by Donald Trump or the Kushner family. The announcement came one week after the Capitol riot, and it marked one of the first concrete financial consequences a major company had imposed in response to the siege.
The policy had immediate practical effect. Lime removed all Trump-owned hotels from its approved list of accommodations for employee travel. The company also contacted TripActions, the corporate travel booking service it uses, and asked the platform to strip Trump properties from Lime's search results. In the memo, Ting went further, urging TripActions to adopt the same policy across its entire customer base—a request that signaled Lime's ambition to leverage its corporate spending power into broader market pressure.
Ting framed the decision in moral terms. "We are committing to never support or spend money at any of the business ventures and affiliates of the Trump and Kushner families," he wrote in an email titled "Do the Right Thing." He added that the company was looking for ways to ensure its "actions and dollars" did not support those complicit in what he called an attack on democracy. The scope was sweeping: Trump controls roughly 500 ventures through the Trump Organization, including 10 hotels, 19 golf courses, residential buildings, resorts, and restaurants spread across North America, Asia, and Europe. Kushner Companies, the real estate developer run by Jared Kushner—Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor—was also blacklisted entirely.
Lime also committed to never donate to Republican lawmakers who had voted to object to Joe Biden's electoral certification. On January 6, eight Republican senators and 139 representatives had voted against certifying the election results, even as rioters stormed the Capitol building. Five people died during the siege. Ting noted in his memo that Lime had never made political donations in the past, but the company was now formally pledging never to support any official who had challenged the Electoral College certification.
The move reflected a broader corporate reckoning in the days following the Capitol riot. Deutsche Bank and Signature Bank, two of Trump's longtime lenders, announced they would no longer do business with him. Other companies began withdrawing contributions to Republican lawmakers who had voted against certification. Lime's decision was notable partly because it went beyond the typical corporate response—it was not merely cutting ties with Trump himself, but establishing a permanent blacklist of his entire business ecosystem.
Ting also used the moment to draw a connection between the Capitol riot and the summer's Black Lives Matter protests. He asked his staff to consider a hypothetical: "If the rioters last week had been black and brown and held high the flag of Black Lives Matter instead of Donald Trump and the Confederacy, would they have been allowed to overrun the Capitol, ransacked offices, and walked back out the front door in their own volition?" The question underscored his view that the company's response was not merely about Trump, but about accountability and the unequal application of force.
Lime operates electric bike and scooter sharing systems in more than 30 countries. Ting concluded his memo by asserting that the company was "inherently political." "We are speaking out and standing up for what we believe is right because that is the right thing to do," he wrote. The announcement made clear that for at least one major technology company, the Capitol riot had crossed a line that demanded not just words but concrete financial consequence.
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
We are committing to never support or spend money at any of the business ventures and affiliates of the Trump and Kushner families.— Wayne Ting, Lime CEO, in internal memo
We are speaking out and standing up for what we believe is right because that is the right thing to do.— Wayne Ting, Lime CEO
Möchten Sie die ganze Geschichte?
Das Original lesen bei Business Insider India ↗
Politics & Governance