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- Lime will never spend money on any company owned by President Donald Trump or Jared Kushner’s families, its CEO Wayne Ting announced Tuesday.
- The company has removed Trump properties from its list of approved hotels for corporate travel for its 600 employees following the pro-Trump siege of the US Capitol, Ting said in an internal memo.
- Lime, the world’s biggest provider of electric bike and scooter lending systems, also said it would never donate to the Republican lawmakers who objected to President-elect Joe Biden’s certification as president.
- “We are looking for ways to ensure our actions – and dollars – don’t support those who are complicit in this attack on our democracy,” Ting said.
- TechCrunch first reported on the memo. Lime confirmed the memo’s content to Insider.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Lime, the world’s largest e-scooter and e-bike startup, has vowed to never spend any money on businesses connected to President Donald Trump.
The company is also removing all properties owned by Trump from its list of approved hotels for corporate travel, and has urged the corporate travel booking service it uses to do the same for other customers.
Lime CEO Wayne Ting announced the policy in an internal email to staff Tuesday, which was first reported by TechCrunch. Lime confirmed the memo’s contents to Insider.
“We are committing to never support or spend money at any of the business ventures and affiliates of the Trump and Kushner families,” Ting wrote in the email titled “Do the Right Thing.”
The family of Jared Kushner, who is a senior advisor to Trump and is married to his daughter Ivanka, runs real estate developer Kushner Companies. All of its properties are now on Lime’s black list.
"In fact, earlier today, we asked TripActions to remove all Trump properties from Lime search results and encouraged them to institute this policy for all of their customers."
Lime has more than 600 employees, a spokesperson told Insider.
Congress met on January 6 to certify the result of the US presidential election. Fueled by months of conspiracy theories and baseless allegations of election fraud by Trump and his backers, rioters stormed the Capitol. Five people died during the siege.
Congress ultimately voted to certify President-elect Joe Biden's win, but eight Republican senators and 139 representatives voted against this.
In response, top US firms have either cut ties with Trump or backed away from political contributions. Deutsche Bank and Signature Bank, two of Trump's favored lenders, have said they will no longer do business with him. Some companies are specifically withdrawing contributions to Republican lawmakers who objected to Biden's certification as president.
Lime, which runs electric bike and scooter sharing systems in more than 30 countries, has also committed to not making any donations to those lawmakers, but Ting noted in the staff email that the company has never made any political contributions.
"While we have not made political donations to date, we are committing now to never support any elected official who voted to challenge the certification of the results of the Electoral College," he wrote.
Lime is "inherently political," Ting added.
"We are speaking out and standing up for what we believe is right because that is the right thing to do," he wrote.
"And we are looking for ways to ensure our actions - and dollars - don't support those who are complicit in this attack on our democracy."
Trump controls his business empire of roughly 500 ventures through the Trump Organization. It includes 10 hotels and 19 golf courses alongside residential buildings, resorts, and restaurants across North America, Asia, and Europe.
In the email, Ting also noted the difference in police response to the Capitol insurrection and last summer's Black Lives Matter protests, asking: "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?"