1792 Insights
The 1792 Exchange is committed to delivering sharp, data-driven analysis of corporate America’s political entanglements. Discover what investors, executives, and concerned citizens should know regarding why businesses should return to neutral, mission-focused operations.
The Invitation Before American Business
This past week, as flags waved and fireworks lit skies from coast to coast, America marked its 250th birthday. We celebrated this bold experiment in self-government and ordered liberty that has produced unprecedented prosperity and human flourishing. Our Semiquincentennial marks one extraordinary chapter and opens the door inviting us to commence our nation’s next 250 years. The question now before us is whether American enterprise will help write that future, or drift from the principles that made the first 250 years possible. American companies are foundational civic institutions whose decisions shape employment, culture, speech, technology, and the daily lives of millions. With that influence comes responsibility. To embrace America today means choosing to strengthen the constitutional order, national cohesion, individual liberty, viewpoint neutrality, and merit that have defined our success. It means investing in American workers and communities rather than treating them as costs to minimize. It means protecting open debate inside company walls instead of policing lawful beliefs. It means rejecting imported ideologies that divide customers and employees in favor of the unifying promise that talent and character determine outcomes. The Founders understood that unchecked power threatens liberty, whether it resides in government or private hands. Today’s corporations hold …
The Covenant of American Commerce
Dear Friends and Partners, As America approaches the 250th anniversary of its founding this week, we celebrate not just an enduring nation, but the extraordinary idea that free people, under limited government and the rule of law, can build unmatched prosperity and human flourishing, with much of this flowing from the innovative outputs of free enterprise and capitalism. This Independence Day, the Buttonwood Brief reflects on what it truly means to be an American company at a moment when that identity matters more than ever. What does it mean to be an American company? Is it simply a matter of geography – the state of incorporation, headquarters location, domestic headcount, and where taxes are paid? Location and legal domicile are merely a starting point, not the defining standard. A company can be incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in New York, yet still offshore American jobs, restrict the lawful speech of its employees, promote un-American causes that alienate customers, and treat its duties to the nation and its people as expenses to be minimized. To be an American company is to be heir to a tradition as old as the republic itself — the belief that commerce, when rightly ordered, is one of the most …
The Coalition Grows: Holding Benevity Accountable
As June unfolds, business leaders face a timely reminder: companies thrive when they focus on their core missions of creating value, serving customers, employing people, and generating prosperity, not when they wade into divisive social and political activism. At 1792 Exchange, we are helping businesses get back to business. In advance of a second House Judiciary Committee Hearing on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), we issued an updated open letter to Benevity, one of the largest corporate charitable-giving platforms, calling on the company to stop relying on the discredited SPLC’s “Hate Map” and “Hate List.” This filter steers billions in employee donations and corporate matching gifts away from mainstream conservative, religious, and pro-family organizations while favoring activist causes. The letter, now signed by new partners including Turning Point USA, Focus on the Family, and PragerU, highlights how more than 200 Fortune 1000 companies use Benevity portals—often unknowingly outsourcing moral judgments to a partisan smear machine. We are actively engaging these companies, providing data and guidance to help them demand viewpoint-neutral policies from vendors, exit risky partnerships, and restore neutrality on contested issues. Our Corporate Bias Ratings now flag Benevity users, empowering shareholders and boards to push for sound governance and long-term value creation. …
234 Years Later: Why We’re Launching The Buttonwood Brief
Dear Friends and Partners, In May, we marked the 234th anniversary of a quiet but pivotal moment in American history. On May 17, 1792, twenty-four merchants and brokers gathered under a buttonwood tree in New York and signed the Buttonwood Agreement, a simple two-sentence agreement. They committed to trade stocks only with one another and to charge a fair, fixed commission. No grand declarations, just practical steps to restore trust and order after financial chaos. That modest pact laid the foundation for the New York Stock Exchange and helped power America’s extraordinary economic rise. It embodied timeless principles: focus on the transaction, honor your word, serve your customers, and get back to business. Today, as our nation approaches its 250th birthday, those same principles feel urgently relevant. Too many companies have drifted from their core mission—creating value, employing people, innovating, and building prosperity—toward divisive social and political activism. We believe this drift is neither inevitable nor irreversible. In the spirit of the Buttonwood Agreement, we work to restore confidence in the marketplace. We provide data, research, and analysis on corporate behavior and governance. We convene coalitions that help companies resist activist pressure and refocus on sound governance, neutrality on contested issues, …