By Phil Bloomer, Executive Director, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, and Bennett Freeman, Former Senior VP, Sustainability Research and Policy, Calvert Investments and former US, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor

At a glance:

• Two decades of incomplete but significant progress on business and human rights in the US.
• Fear and risk of roll-back with blanket deregulation.
• The business (and moral!) case for sustaining a human rights-based approach appears strong, with only isolated evidence of roll-back so far. However, many companies are keeping quiet and appear not to be moving forward.
• Business & Human Rights Resource Centre is developing a new tracker – to be published by the end of 2025 – to deter and prevent any further backsliding and to reward companies that continue to move forward. It will provide a compelling evidence base, moored to the UNGPs and OECD Guidelines.

After over two decades of incomplete but overall significant progress on corporate respect for human rights, we are at a crossroads. With the global rise of narrow economic nationalisms, authoritarianism and crony capitalism, we’re facing real risk of roll-backs by business on their longstanding human rights commitments – especially in North America and Europe. In the US, we have already seen a rolling back of climate commitments and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, increasingly unchecked power of big tech, rapid deregulation, and unpredictable tariffs that risk squeezing suppliers and harming low wage supply chain workers.

Amid these shifting tides, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (the Resource Centre) is monitoring top US companies across a selection of high-risk sectors: apparel and fast fashion, mining, automobile, technology, and food, beverage and agriculture. The aim is to create a clear evidence base of whether businesses are building, stalling, or dismantling the protection of human rights in their operations and supply chains as government approaches shift radically.

Some companies have already changed their human rights-related commitments. In January, Meta announced it was getting rid of its fact checking program, starting in the US. In February, Google removed its commitment against designing or deploying AI for weapons. All told, early evidence is that backsliding from human rights commitments isn’t widespread among US-based companies and investors, at least not yet. We must keep it that way.

Early evidence, though, is also showing that companies are staying silent. In May, when the Resource Centre asked 25 apparel companies how they are protecting human rights in the face of new tariffs, not one of them responded to the survey. This isn’t business as usual – we regularly monitor fashion companies’ responses to supply chain shocks – but this is the first time our requests were met with total silence by every brand.

This moment calls for calm commitment among business leaders and sustained action from civil society to prevent corporate backsliding on international human rights standards.

The Resource Centre’s forthcoming US Corporate Human Rights Tracker will monitor changes in the human rights commitments and performance of more than 50 US-headquartered companies. We are selecting companies for inclusion not only based on their sector and size – as indicated by their ranking on the 2025 Fortune 500 list – but also based on their influence from a human rights perspective, using their inclusion in existing human rights-focused benchmarks as a key criterion.

The tracker will comprise two components. First, we’ll monitor companies regularly against key human rights indicators, including their core commitments, approach to human rights due diligence, and public reporting. Second, we’ll conduct rapid response assessments and analysis, tracking how companies respond to shifts in relevant US policy and regulation. Will they stay the course – or even build on – their commitments? Or will they retreat when it matters most?

This tracker will provide the basis for accountability to ensure that companies hold fast to the commitments they’ve made. Our goal is clear: deter further backsliding and protect those two decades of progress, while using the data to demonstrate the need for smart business regulation and incentives to direct business towards sustainability, human rights, and their own long-term competitiveness.

Corporate respect for human rights cannot be treated as optional in times of increasing restrictions on civic freedoms, and eroding democratic norms. This is the very moment when people are at even greater risk of being harmed.