Target 17.10: Rules-based multilateral trading system
Promote a universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system under the World Trade Organization
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Trade rules are negotiated by states, but corporate lobbying shapes national positions. The OECD's 2021 lobbying report found that transparency measures have not kept pace with corporate influence over policy. Corporate legal action also interacts with trade and investment rules: UNCTAD's navigator records 1,332 known investor-state cases, 60 of them initiated in 2023. Owners voting for lobbying disclosure and alignment can help at the margin. The target itself belongs to WTO members.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Runs a corporate lobbying program under which members press companies through dialogue and resolutions to disclose direct and indirect lobbying spending and to address gaps between stated policy and actual spending, with 60 proposals filed as of April 2025 and majority votes at Cenovus and McDonald's.
Corporate Lobbying, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2025-04
Has worked with shareholder partners filing election-spending resolutions at public companies since 2004, and since 2022 has run a Model Code resolution asking companies to require and publish political expenditure reports from trade associations, 527 groups and 501(c)(4) organisations they pay.
Recent Shareholder Engagement, Center for Political Accountability
3 campaigns on record
Disclose lobbying spending and election spending and strengthen board oversight of both, across 32 resolutions on lobbying, 23 on political election spending and five asking companies to assess whether their lobbying on climate issues is consistent with their stated climate goals.
With United Church Funds, Zevin Asset Management
Result: Expanded disclosure was agreed and the resolutions withdrawn at eight companies, and the proposals were due to appear on the proxy ballots of six companies at annual meetings in spring 2025.
AbbVie had incrementally added to its lobbying spending disclosure and did not renew membership in four trade associations, and the resolution there was withdrawn by agreement. Air Products challenged its resolution at the SEC and, breaking from past practice, the staff allowed it to be omitted, a decision followed by a surge of more than thirteen further successful company challenges.
Increase disclosure of corporate political activity and strengthen board oversight of lobbying and campaign spending, including adoption of the CPA-Zicklin Model Code of Conduct for Corporate Political Spending and the Erb Principles for Corporate Political Responsibility.
Result: Of the 63 proposals, the outcomes named in ICCR's account are these: Starbucks and Boeing reached negotiated agreements and the proposals there were withdrawn, and the resolution at Stride came close to a majority. Stride's own filing certifies that vote as 17,857,527 for and 18,249,329 against, with 542,640 abstentions and 1,979,998 broker non-votes, which is 49.5% of the votes cast for and against. The outcomes at the remaining sixty companies are not stated in the source.
Starbucks and Boeing agreed to add detail to their lobbying reports, and the proposals at those two companies were withdrawn as a result. We found no stated outcome for the other companies in the slate.
Report annually on Walmart's policies and procedures governing direct, indirect and grassroots lobbying, on the payments it makes for that lobbying including the amount and the recipient of each, and on management's decision making and the board's oversight of those payments.
With Ellen Sarkisian, a second co-filer not named in the proxy statement
Result: Proposal No. 10 at the annual shareholders' meeting of 1 June 2022, rejected: 322,914,850 votes for, 1,914,044,836 against, 5,334,090 abstentions and 207,665,975 broker non-votes.
Rejected, with about 14.4 percent of the shares voted for and against, below the 22 percent the proponents say a similar proposal drew at Walmart in 2021.
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.