Published August 28, 2025 in Governance • 4 min read • 
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The Donald Trump roller-coaster ride throws into doubt the quest for a new nature of business. Can it still be achieved, or will we be thrown back into harmful and wasteful old ways? I remain optimistic: science doesn’t change because of regulations any more than climate change stops because of an executive order.
The early signs from Washington were not hopeful. In January 2025, the US left the Paris Agreement on climate change for the second time in a decade. Weeks later, the US government announced funding cuts for everything from UN agencies to the Environmental Protection Agency. Some of the world’s most important climate research sites, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were also affected.
However, censorship is the biggest cause for concern in Trump’s agenda, with major government departments, from defense and state to agriculture and transportation, removing references to climate change from their websites. Increasingly, federal funding for scientific research that even mentions the word “climate” has been blocked. In other words, the new administration is attempting to rewrite history.
These radical policy changes also affect the world of business. After Trump’s election, six major US banks announced they were leaving the Net Zero Banking Alliance. In 2024, some companies revised their climate ambitions downward or scaled back their scientific validation. In recent months, the government has instructed companies active in the US to play by the new rules, whether on DE&I or sustainability.
As a result, the fossil fuel industry in the US and around the world is reviving. For example, Exxon never fully embraced the renewable energy transition and is doubling down on oil exploration and exploitation. BP and Shell are among the companies that are retracing their steps and moving back to their oil and gas core. American business lobbying groups, emboldened by Trump, have begun advocating for a loosening of sustainability rules in the EU. None of this bodes well for the new nature of business.
But the darkest hour comes just before the dawn. Indeed, corporate climate action is under severe pressure, but efforts in other areas, such as nature and biodiversity or the development of capital accounting, are moving forward. And, while the US government is moving backward on the new nature agenda, other countries and regions, including Switzerland, the EU, China, Japan, and other parts of Asia, are pressing ahead.
President Xi Jinping inserted the pursuit of an “ecological civilization” into the Chinese People’s Charter in 2017. The idea has permeated much of society and Chinese policymaking. Chinese companies lead the world in developing and commercializing electric vehicles and their batteries, solar power, and other “clean” technologies, such as hydrogen. And the government is acting on citizens’ demands for cleaner and greener cities.
The Chinese efforts (and those in the EU and Switzerland) will need to go much further and faster still. They will also need to encompass the parts of the economy still heading in the opposite direction, such as the many coal plants that power large parts of its economy.
The trend toward more sustainability in China seems unaffected by the second-term Trump agenda. While Trump asks American companies to “drill baby, drill” and exploit more fossil fuels, China and other Asian and European economies are unquestionably still headed toward more climate and nature action. Thanks to market forces, scientists claim that even the US green transition is moving ahead. The same is true for grassroots movements, such as B Lab in Switzerland and France, and academic and employee groups like INSEAD.
Major companies such as IKEA, Schneider Electric, and my family company Roche, along with local firms like Innergia, a Swiss communal renewable energy cooperative, are charting the path forward in establishing and making mainstream the new nature of business. They are doing so regardless of the political agenda elsewhere.
International collaboration in updating the world’s accounting systems to include climate and nature metrics is rapidly gaining pace, as Emmanuel Faber, the former CEO of Danone and now the chair of the International Sustainability Standards Board, shows in his foreword to my recent book, co-authored by Peter Vanham, on the new nature of business. Accounting may seem boring, but it is the yardstick on which capital allocation happens, and it creates systems change as a result.
It is more important than ever to stay the course and expand the movement for a new nature of business. By maintaining this critical mass, the balance between business and society will shift definitively toward a more sustainable and inclusive future. Rather than letting ourselves be demotivated by the last gasps of the old system, we should hold on to the notion that the new one is on the way.
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