Nestlé chief blames Trump for company going quiet on sustainability

Keystone / Jean-Christophe Bott

Philipp Navratil tells staff that ESG has ‘gone off the agenda’ for US investors since president’s re-election.

Nestlé chief executive Philipp Navratil has partly blamed Donald Trump for the company’s failure to talk enough about sustainability, as the US president dismantles the country’s environmental regulations and labels climate change “a hoax”.

At an event for Nestlé employees in December, Navratil said “it’s a bit [of] a pity” that the world’s largest food company isn’t more vocal on sustainability issues.

Nestlé’s chief said that while he should bear some of the blame it was “also President Trump’s fault”, according to video footage of the event seen by the FT.

“If you think about it in hindsight, five years ago or three years ago, if you go and meet investors you would get plenty of questions about sustainability,” said Navratil.

“Somehow in the US it has totally gone off the agenda,” he added. “In all of the investor meetings I have done, nobody asks, not one has asked — I think one maybe — about sustainability.”

Corporate leaders have become wary of publicly criticising Trump’s strident positions — across everything from climate change to tariffs and immigration — during the president’s second term.

After re-entering the White House one year ago, Trump swiftly rescinded a raft of US environmental protections and pulled out of the Paris climate accord.

In a speech at the UN in September, the US president called the concept of a carbon footprint a “hoax” and this month withdrew the US from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the world’s most important climate treaty.

The US is Nestlé’s largest market, generating $38 billion (CHF30 billion) in annual revenue in 2024, according to its annual report. The Swiss group employs about 36,000 people across 112 sites in the country.

Navratil, who was appointed Nestlé’s chief executive in September, said during the company event that he thinks “it’s a huge mistake not to be focused on it [sustainability]” and assured employees that Nestlé was still committed to its net zero emissions targets.

“We have not stepped back from it but we have to talk about it more,” Navratil said.

A spokesman added: “It is important to advance sustainable agricultural practices to increase supply chain resilience, improve farmers’ income and keep food affordable, priorities we share with the US administration.”

The company has committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050 and is aiming for a 50 per cent reduction by 2030, compared with 2018 levels. It has already achieved a 20 per cent reduction.

Over the past few years, major corporations, including BP and Coca-Cola, have scaled back or diluted their environmental targets as the ESG movement loses momentum. Others have stuck to their goals but stopped talking about them in their corporate communications, a phenomenon known as “greenhushing”.

Last week, scientists warned that global warming will surpass 1.5°C more than a decade earlier than had previously been expected if recent rates of warming continue.

While Nestlé says its approach to ESG is unchanged, it has withdrawn from a number of initiatives, including the Dairy Methane Action Alliance, aimed at cutting the global carbon footprint of dairy farming. The company said it “regularly reviews” its membership of external organisations.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026