The JUST Report: Fair Pricing, Not Politics, Is Corporate America’s New Consumer Imperative
Axios and Harris Poll’s 2025 reputation rankings landed this week, concluding that prices – not politics – are now driving corporate reputations.
This finding resonates with our own research. In 2024, we saw significant amounts of alignment across demographics. For the first time in our polling history, we saw fair pricing – which respondents describe as “pricing in line with … value and quality” and companies avoiding “price gouging or excessive price increases” – emerge as a significant bipartisan issue. Interestingly, of the 2025 JUST 100 companies included in the Axios/Harris Poll rankings, the coverage is even; nine are classified as non-partisan, three lean “blue” and two lean “red”.
Given today’s cost of living, this should not be surprising, and companies are already responding to the call. Home Depot recently announced they are not planning to raise prices due to tariffs, but shared that some products may no longer be available as a result. During recent egg shortages, Trader Joe’s – the top company on Axios and Harris Poll’s list – was able to keep prices low by working directly with suppliers and focusing on product selection.
Serving customers through greater transparency and fairness is also very much in line with financial performance. Updating our figure from last week – as of May 27, 2025 our Customer Index has outperformed the Russell 1000 Equal Weighted benchmark by 4% since inception in December 2021.
When companies master the basics of treating people fairly, offering good value products and serving all stakeholders, Americans are ready to reward them, regardless of politics.
Be well,
Martin
Interested in more content like this?
Sign up for The JUST Report, our weekly newsletter that delivers curated, cutting-edge insights and leading best practices to help your company navigate change and deliver value for all of your stakeholders.
Sign Up Here.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Don’t waste a good crisis. My most favorite leadership roles are ones that I’ve been leading through transformational change and market volatility.”
- Lisa McGeough, CEO of HSBC US, speaking to Fortune on why tumultuous times can actually be the best for leaders. Read the full remarks here.
JUST AI
Mashable reports that the congressional budget bill has a special provision that would ban states from regulating AI for the next decade.
Fortune discusses the claim from a current LinkedIn exec that AI is already starting to “break the first rung” on young peoples’ career ladder, with many companies automating much of the work that new graduates did to break into tech, law, and other professions.
Meanwhile, the New York Post highlights how much of Gen-Z is pivoting to trade work amid AI uncertainty and the extreme rising cost of college.
Axios sits down with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei who says we’re not taking the job loss implications seriously enough, and there is a possibility that AI wipes out “half of all entry level jobs.”
Must Reads
Debates continue over two versions of a “no taxes on tips” bill up for votes in Congress. The Washington Post shares concerns that this change would encourage restaurants to keep base wages artificially low. Vox concurs, saying that “tipped workers need a raise, not a tax break.”
When it comes to overtime, legal firm Jackson Lewis sees the potential for employers to “restructure compensation to provide employees more take-home pay without incurring higher payroll costs by reducing pay for non-overtime hours and permitting more overtime work that is tax-free — a win for employers and employees.”
Fox News released an op-ed stating that no taxes on overtime is actually the far more important bill with a greater impact for working people, despite receiving less press.
Pew’s latest polling shows support for stricter environmental regulations outweighs opposition in a majority of states.
As layoffs across tech continue, Meta announces plans to rate more employees “below expectations” to make culling easier.
Despite rolling back many Covid-era perks for their employees, The Financial Times seems to think that Covid-era benefits bestowed on C-suites are here to stay.
Chart of the Week
Axios reveals new data that shows that 77% of Americans think companies are moving too quickly on AI, and would prefer delaying breakthroughs to avoid potential catastrophic mistakes.
