Expanding Globally in a Down Market for DEI for a Greater Social Impact
By Marion Davis
As of April 14, 2025, the dollar index had lost 9.25 percent of its value since the week before the January 2025 inauguration of President Trump. The world is currently in chaos, attempting to adjust to each new change by the Trump administration in the United States and other administrations globally, such as that of libertarian Argentinian President Javier Milei with his iconic chainsaw. People initially viewed the promise of change as bringing hope in reducing bloat but the actual result was rapid changes to appease the general populace that left many in fear of what was next. While change can be beneficial, rapid, unpredictable changes are often associated with project failure in the field of project management. Presidents are–in many ways–project managers in their role.
Looking to Argentina as an example with Argentinian President Milei assuming office on December 10, 2023, more than a year before US President Trump began his second term, we have the opportunity to see the impact of a similar approach. Argentina underwent a radical transformation in Milei's first year in office. When Milei took power, Argentina was facing severe inflation, with prices rising daily and public trust in the economy at a low point.
As a self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist, Milei enacted extreme austerity measures: he cut energy and transport subsidies, froze wages and pensions, laid off thousands of public employees, and halted infrastructure projects. These actions deepened recession, raised unemployment, and pushed poverty to a 20-year high of 52.9%. However, some economic indicators have improved. Monthly inflation has dropped dramatically from 25.5% in December 2023 to 2.7% in October 2024, the peso has strengthened, Argentina recorded its first budget surplus in 12 years, and its country-risk index is at its lowest in five years. A new tax amnesty also brought $19 billion back into Argentina’s banks.
Despite the deep social costs and widespread discontent, Milei’s approval ratings remain around 50 percent, partly due to his clear communication that pain would precede recovery and due to the weakness of the opposition. Still, structural risks remain, and Milei's long-term success depends on easing currency controls, securing more foreign investment, and possibly renegotiating with the IMF. As he pursues his goal of making Argentina one of the freest economies in the world, the sustainability of his model now hinges on lifting currency controls, attracting foreign investment, and managing billions in debt–all while walking a tightrope between reform and ruin.
We can see similar language here to where Trump has framed economic disruption as short-term and necessary for long-term growth, with his administration beginning to say in March that Americans would feel some “pain” ahead. This is similar to Milei’s maintenance of popular support despite social unrest and economic hardship by framing his policies as necessary shock therapy to stabilize a long-broken system. However, there is a distinct difference here in communication from Milei.
PBS News polled Americans in early March and found that Trump’s job approval ratings were at 49 percent disapproving and 45 percent approving of his record thus far. Of the latter group, 36 percent of Americans strongly approved of Trump’s actions. Interestingly, with numbers a bit off from these approval ratings, 54 percent of the polled Americans believed the US was heading in the wrong direction, which seems to hint at some overlap between approval of Trump’s actions but yet still believing that the direction taken was not correct. In follow-up conversations, respondents used words to describe Trump’s first month, ranging from “fabulous” to “chaos” to “disaster.” PBS News noted that none of the respondents had changed their views of Trump since the election and that allegiance was largely split along party lines. Dissimilar to Milei, there seemed to be less cohesive communication from Trump from the beginning to communicate the severity of the economic pain and shock that would be felt immediately. Rather, the communication of this seemed to be reactive as people began to struggle to navigate the constant fluctuations that appear to be likewise reactive such as the constant implementation and then wavering on tariffs and their respective tax percentages.
Comparative Analysis between Milei and Trump
The following sections will dig deeper into differences and similarities between Milei and Trump as the two are often compared. Arguably, while the two shared similar professed goals, such as a leaner government, the infamous chaos of Milei involved a type of controlled and predictable chaos with greater national cohesiveness during these changes. In contrast, Trump’s approach seems to involve an uncontrolled, reactive chaos performed to a divided audience.
Leadership Style and Public Messaging
Milei framed his economic shock therapy from day one as necessary pain to end Argentina’s inflation crisis. He clearly told the public that things would worsen before they improved, setting expectations and maintaining a consistent narrative. His approval ratings (~50%) reflect not enthusiasm, but tolerance grounded in his transparency and the visible results on inflation. Trump, on the other hand, has presented disruption as strategic strength, often touting immediate wins or strongman rhetoric. His administration’s warning of economic pain came after the effects had begun, making the message appear reactive rather than proactive. The inconsistent messaging around policies, such as tariffs, has added to public confusion, undermining confidence.
Implementation and Timing of Reforms
Milei implemented sweeping reforms immediately, targeting the public sector, subsidies, and inflation without hesitation. Though brutal, the consistent pace gave investors and economists something to model. In comparison, Trump’s return to power has brought rapid and sometimes conflicting policy changes that appear driven by optics and public sentiment rather than long-term coherence. The 9.25% drop in the dollar index reflects global uncertainty about these abrupt changes.
Economic Outcomes After Year One (or Less)
Milei now sees early economic stabilization: monthly inflation is down from 25.5% to 2.7%, the peso is strengthening (although it is important to note that US dollars are often used due to economic instability and high inflation on the Argentine peso), and foreign currency reserves are growing due to a tax amnesty. While poverty is up, inflation, which has been Argentina’s most entrenched issue, has reversed. As of Q2 in 2025, Trump’s economic policies are still in their infancy, but the dollar's rapid decline signals concern. So far, no clear gains have materialized, and the U.S. is experiencing global economic whiplash from chaotic policy shifts.
Public Sentiment and Political Capital
Milei has maintained support across party lines, in part because the Argentine public was exhausted and desperate for any economic relief and his warnings prepared them. Trump’s support remains deeply polarized, with the aforementioned PBS survey noting most Americans haven’t changed their views since the election. Approval ratings are stagnant, and many individuals express cognitive dissonance, approving of Trump but saying the country is heading in the wrong direction.
What We Can Learn from Milei
Milei’s administration shows that rapid change can work when paired with coherent communication, clear goals, and willingness to weather political backlash. His brutal reforms sparked protest, but transparency built resilience. In contrast, when change is erratic, driven by optics, or poorly explained—as with early Trump 2025—this change tends to lead to instability without direction, even if the underlying goals of economic revival and a leaner government are similar.
Implications for U.S. Leadership during Rapid Changes
Historically, other U.S. presidents facing economic downturns have also suffered from reactive or fragmented approaches. George W. Bush's administration entered two major wars and oversaw a deregulated housing market that eventually collapsed in 2008 due to insufficient regulatory oversight. Herbert Hoover, during the Great Depression, similarly adopted an inconsistent posture that failed to stabilize markets early enough. In contrast, Roosevelt’s New Deal response was marked by deliberate structural reform. These examples show that turbulent markets do not inherently doom leadership; however, timing, clarity, and consistent communication make the difference.
Argentina's experience under President Javier Milei offers a real-time current case study in how radical reform can yield early signs of potential economic stabilization after initial turbulence but only when coupled with clear, consistent communication and brutal honesty about the pain involved. President Trump’s return to power in 2025 has brought similarly disruptive ambitions but without the same coherent messaging, leaving Americans and global markets reeling. While Milei warned his country of hardship from the outset, framing it as necessary shock therapy, Trump’s administration began messaging about economic “pain” only after volatility set in, undermining public trust. The 9.25% drop in the dollar index since Trump’s inauguration reflects this unease. Project management teaches that rapid change without clear planning often leads to failure. In this sense, national leadership is no different. A year into Milei’s presidency, Argentina sees early signs of economic turnaround despite soaring poverty, while Trump’s United States is still stuck in chaotic fluctuation albeit much earlier in his second term. The comparison suggests that if Trump wants a Milei-style recovery, his administration must shift from reactive disruption to proactive, disciplined reform or risk collapse under the weight of its own unpredictability.
Effect of Trump Administration Chaos on Marginalized Communities in the US and the DEI Industry
The Trump administration's aggressive rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives has had profound and multifaceted effects on marginalized communities across the United States. These actions have disrupted educational opportunities, healthcare access, civil rights protections, and economic stability for various vulnerable and underserved populations.
Education and Civil Rights
In February 2025, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) issued a directive to K-12 schools that maintaining DEI programs could result in the loss of federal funding. This move led to the dismantling of DEI initiatives in numerous school districts, adversely affecting support systems for Black, Latino, and Native American students. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) responded by filing a lawsuit against the DOE, arguing that these actions violate civil rights and undermine equal educational opportunities for students of color. Additionally, the DOE withdrew from agreements aimed at addressing disciplinary disparities affecting Native American students, effectively halting efforts to combat systemic discrimination in education.
Healthcare Access and Reproductive Rights
The administration's freeze on approximately $66 million in Title X funding jeopardized the operations of clinics providing essential reproductive health services to low-income individuals. These clinics, serving around 846,000 people, faced potential closures, disproportionately impacting minority groups who rely on these services for contraception, STI testing, and cancer screenings.
Furthermore, Executive Order 14187 imposed restrictions on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, leading several hospitals to pause such treatments. This action prompted legal challenges from civil rights organizations, arguing that the order infringes upon the rights of transgender individuals and disrupts necessary healthcare services
Immigration and Protections for Vulnerable Populations
The Department of Homeland Security dismantled key offices responsible for protecting immigrant victims of gender-based and LGBTQ+ violence, including the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. The elimination of these offices removed critical channels for reporting abuse and seeking redress, leaving vulnerable populations without adequate protections.
Economic Impact on Black Workers
The administration's mass layoffs within federal agencies disproportionately affected Black workers due to the high rate of representation within these sectors by Black professionals. Those Black workers affected were particularly those in probationary positions or involved in DEI efforts. These job losses not only reduced economic stability for affected individuals but also signaled a broader retreat from commitments to workplace diversity and inclusion.
Leveraging a Down Market for Positive Social and Financial Impact
Rather than seeing this erosion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as a full stop, forward-thinking companies can see it as a pivot point. As DEI infrastructure is dismantled in the U.S., the need—and opportunity—for inclusion-focused services is growing globally. In this context, retreat is not the answer. Expansion into more supportive or developing ecosystems becomes both a moral and a strategic imperative.
We can take from the general rule of thumb in marketing regarding economic shifts, which is never to stop marketing due to an economic downturn. Marketing is an investment that needs to be sustained over time. Stopping marketing efforts leads to a loss of momentum and creates a hill to climb when the economy changes as economies do shift. In fact, continuing to invest in marketing during an economic downturn can create a strategic advantage at a time when many other companies cut corners on their marketing out of fear. The key here is not to stop but to pivot and market strategically during a downturn. For example, are you adapting your messaging to show that you understand your consumers’ concerns during this downturn–especially across marginalized communities that can make up large parts of overlooked markets? Are you leveraging lived experience from diversity within your employees to reach overlooked markets, communicate with them effectively in messaging, and to use innovation to boost revenue?
Investment in Global Expansion
While much of general marketing advice during a downtrend is to keep going but adapt the message, in the US of 2025, we can ask further: how can we adapt to additional factors such as the depreciation of the US dollar? Currently, against the backdrop of ever-changing tariff percentages and ongoing trade war moves, the dollar is struggling with a three-year low against the euro, a ten-year low against the Swiss franc, and record lows against other currencies worldwide. More than just adapting marketing messaging domestically during a downturn, social impact businesses can seek out ways with the drop in the US dollar’s value to expand internationally into other countries where an appreciation for diversity, equity, and inclusion and meeting the needs of underserved populations is holding strong or in emerging markets new to diversity and inclusion–all while coasting on the additional sell of being anchored in a country that holds great global strength and resilience, where the markets historically have bounced back from similar situations in the US’s favor over time, and where the US dollar is now making prices from US businesses look more attractive to those operating in pounds, euros, Swiss francs, and more.
Currently, only about one percent of all US small businesses export goods. Among service-based SMBs, only about one to five percent of US small businesses generate a notable portion of their revenue from international markets. Furthermore, as the US dollar drops in value, an advantage arises. One British pound (GBP) equated to 1.22 US dollars (USD) on January 17, 2025, after riding a wave of strengthening and then weakening to the dollar in 2024 into the new year of 2025 and has been on a consistent pattern of strengthening against the US dollar with slight hills and valleys since Trump has taken office–now weighing in at 1 GBP to 1.32 USD. That $0.10 USD increase is a significant strengthening, especially over just a few months from January 2025 to April 2025. In forex markets, even small changes of one to two cents can move billions of dollars and signal major shifts in investor confidence.
In 2024, there already were talks of US-based diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) professionals seeking remote contract work globally in parts of the world with less of an attack happening on DEI, such as in the United Kingdom. A December 2024 report by Diversio showed that UK-based companies planned to continue focusing on DEI with the most significant shift being a greater focus on data-driven DEI strategies with an emphasis on measurable outcomes. At the same time, in the US, Trump has created drastic cuts to programs such as government funding in the form of grants meant to improve public well-being as a return-on-investment of tax dollars. Perhaps the average American is not aware of just how drastic these cuts were with a list of keywords being distributed for which grant proposals–including past grant wins–were being flagged and pulled. While some complaints have been that DEI was too race-focused as well and other concerns have focused on gender identity, this keyword list is far-reaching, flagging words including “diversify,” "disabilities,” "advocate,” “female,” “trauma,” “victim,” “women,” “justice,” "underserved," and more. This is yet another example of where there seems to be very little strategy involved in these budget cuts.
Put simply, while pivoting in their marketing campaigns, many businesses, especially US-based small and midsize businesses (SMB) in the business-to-business (B2B) service-based market that value diversity, equity, and inclusion could take the opportunity to do now what many US-based SMBs struggle to do and step into the global arena. As an example, as the US dollar has weakened against the British pound, UK clients get more for their money when interacting with professionals from the US who operate in USD. This can open doors for contracts that may have been cost-prohibitive before. As an example of conversion rates, a contract price of $10,000 equated to about £8,197 on January 15, 2025, but then was only about £7,576 as of April 14, 2025. Considering that this is a nation where DEI initiatives are still going strong despite US backlash and where many UK firms think DEI is a wise investment, the UK is one of multiple optimal target B2B locations. Furthermore, a 2025 article noted that about 74 percent of UK companies have a DEI program with about 26 percent of these companies increasing funding from 2024 to 2025.
Hidden Growth Potential of Disability Inclusion as a Market Advantage
One of the most underleveraged areas of DEI strategy both domestically and globally is disability inclusion. Globally, over one billion people are disabled, yet workplace accessibility, healthcare equity, and public representation remain underdeveloped. While race and gender dominate the DEI conversation, investing in accessible work and healthcare structures for disabled populations produces direct financial return. Studies have shown higher retention, employee loyalty, and innovation in companies that include disabled professionals in strategic roles and not just performative ones.
In the US, strategic plans for increasing workplace and healthcare access and equality for disabled people remains a highly underaddressed area even after the height of DEI that could benefit corporations and the general population with an immense return on investment. Currently, 50 percent of the US has a chronic illness. Articles published in medical journals have noted that access to care and quality of care did not match the increase over the rise in chronic conditions in the US over the past decades and continue to focus on acute rather than chronic disease. Medical education is highly lacking in chronic illness management, and many chronic illnesses develop into a greater disease burden unnecessarily due to poorly informed providers and inaccessible healthcare. At the same time, workplace access for those with disabilities is still lagging despite the measurable positive impact in research of disability inclusion in the workforce. If a government wishes to be fiscally conservative, then a more appropriate approach would be one that invests wisely into reducing easily preventable disease burden, medical education reform, and health and workplace accessibility barrier removal. Taking on a proactive approach here would cut costs naturally by targeting the root cause of poor healthcare access and management tied in with workplace inaccessibility and discrimination.
Emerging Markets Around the World
BRICS is an intergovernmental organization consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates. Within this list of countries, while nations like Brazil are experiencing economic setbacks, India has been the fastest-growing economy worldwide and is projected to continue holding this spot for 2025. That said, the US dollar has not weakened against the Indian rupee in recent months as significantly as it has against other currencies. However, the current sentiment amongst economists is that the Indian rupee is set to inch up against the US dollar in the future as the tariff wars continue.
At the moment, the purchasing power parity (PPP) difference between India and the United States is approximately 20.92 rupees per US dollars. Put in other terms, in an exact conversion according to the exchange rate, the rupee is inching up to the US dollar, rising from 84.40 rupees to the dollar during the second week of April 2025 to 85.77 rupees to the dollar on April 15, 2025. However, with a difference in cost of living, average salaries, and so on, this affects the purchasing power of currency to give a fuller picture with the Indian rupee being undervalued by a factor of about 4.1 when comparing nominal exchange rates to PPP. In practical terms, this means that goods and services that cost $1 in the US would cost approximately 20.92 rupees in India or $0.24 as of April 15, 2025.
Despite the rapid growth currently being experienced by India, the country would need approximately 60 years of growth at this level of speed to reach current purchasing power parity with the United States–longer if we factor in the US’s present 2.7% annual growth numbers. However, there is a desire in India to expand globally and to be making money in other currencies with a need to understand what would appeal best to a variety of audiences. For instance, if an Indian company wishes to sell a business-to-business (B2B) Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product in the human resources (HR) field in the United Kingdom, this could be a prime opportunity for a US-based diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) consulting company with experience liaising between the US and UK to offer guidance internationally due to better prices currently in the US versus UK considering the dollar versus pound where UK-based consultants would be more expensive.
In India, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is increasingly recognized as crucial for both business success and societal well-being with organizations adopting initiatives to promote inclusivity across various dimensions. These initiatives include fair hiring policies, bias awareness training, employee resource groups, and mentorship programs. The Indian Constitution and various laws provide a foundation for equality and anti-discrimination, with further sector-specific laws adding depth to the inclusivity framework.
Other emerging markets beyond India also show promise. Vietnam is investing heavily in digital infrastructure and women-led entrepreneurship. Nigeria’s tech scene, particularly in fintech and healthcare, is booming with a young, English-speaking population ready to adopt inclusive solutions. In Latin America, Colombia’s rise as a nearshoring destination is paired with increasing investment in gender equity. Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe, Poland offers both cost-effective entry into the European Union (EU) and significant room to grow disability inclusion policies. These emerging regions often lack legacy systems and are eager to build inclusively from the ground up, making them ideal for collaboration with US-based impact businesses.
Final Thoughts
Despite political volatility and economic headwinds, one principle endures, namely that businesses that lead with vision during uncertain times are the ones that thrive when stability returns. Now is not the time to contract and diminish efforts. Now is the time to expand with strategy, with values, and with global partnerships that prioritize sustainability, inclusion, and long-term growth. Whether it’s reaching overlooked consumers, opening new international markets, or rebuilding what DEI should mean beyond the US context, corporations with a social impact mission and a solid expansion strategy will evolve and excel.