Trump boycotts leave companies caught in the crossfire

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is barely two weeks old, but it has already whipped up vitriol on all sides. Consumers are moving in waves to voice their concerns via their wallets, pledging boycotts and protests against companies perceived to be either for or against the new president.

But amid the clamour of protests, it's hard to keep track of what companies are on whose hit list.

Consider the online retailing giant Amazon, which somehow found itself on both sides of the divide this week, scorned by both pro- and anti-Trump forces.

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Those opposed to the Trump administration have created the #GrabYourWallet movement and called on consumers to boycott the e-tailer, in part because it sells products such as neckties made under the Trump banner and women's wear made by the president's daughter Ivanka.

Also on the Grab Your Wallet boycott list is department store chain Nordstrom, which said Thursday it will stop selling Ivanka Trump clothing and accessories, stating that the decision was based on the sales performance of the brand. Grab Your Wallet said it will remove the Seattle-based company from its list once remaining items are no longer for sale.

Amazon holds the No. 1 slot on a top 10 list of Trump-affiliated brands to avoid, and it draws frequent criticism for not closing the door to Trump-affiliated businesses.

But paradoxically, Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos is also in the sights of pro-Trump forces because of his ownership of the Washington Post — which has been highly critical of the new president.

One prominent Trump supporter has compiled a widely distributed list on Reddit of companies Trump supporters should boycott — and Amazon is on it because Bezos refuses to toe the Trump line.

Amazon also raised the ire of Trump fans when it pledged to support Amazon employees in the U.S. and around the world who might be affected by Trump's immigration order, and backed a lawsuit aimed at fighting it in court.

It might seem surprising that one company could find itself the target of two rival protest groups, but one expert on the subject says politically motivated boycotts tend to be even more misguided than pragmatic ones.

"They don't work, they just don't," said Fred Taub, president of Boycott Watch, in an interview with CBC News. "More often that they just give the opponents a list of companies to support."

This could be the case for a recent app called Boycott Trump, with over 135,000 downloads since November, which lists more than 200 companies deemed to be in support of the new administration. "There's a pretty large range of reasons why a company would be on our app," said Nate Lerner, one of the creators of the app. "In order to have an effective boycott movement it needs to be unified, and it's hard when there are so many options."

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The app was created to resist the Trump administration. But that's not necessarily how everyone is using it. "Trumpers can do as they will," Lerner said of those using the app to support Trump-related businesses. "That's not going to affect us in any way."

Such counter-movements in favour of targeted companies are known as a "buycott," rather than a boycott — a word that derives from the name of Charles Boycott, a 19th-century British landlord so hated by his Irish tenants that they invented the form of protest that bears his name today.

Amazon is listed on that anti-Trump app, but it's also on the pro-Trump boycott list. So is retailer Macy's, which landed on both lists for its decision to stop selling Trump ties, but still sell Ivanka's dresses — a fact she was happy to remind everyone of in a tweet after the Republican National Convention.

Clearly, it's not as easy as one might think for consumers to vote with their wallets — regardless of their political affiliation.

Consider what happened to Uber recently. The ride-hailing company was roundly criticized last weekend when taxi drivers decided to protest Trump's immigration order at JFK airport, and Uber elected not to implement surge pricing. 

The move was perceived by some on social media as an effort to profit from the protests, as more passengers would need to seek alternatives to cabs. Uber was criticized for not raising its prices during the taxi protest — because apparently jacking up fares was the appropriate way to show support for immigrant taxi drivers.

"It created an opportunity for activists to make some noise," says Brayden King, the Max McGraw chair at the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago. "Uber was an opportunity, not the target itself," King says, because often these campaigns are more about winning PR battles than getting customers to switch their buying habits.

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Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has also faced a backlash by sitting on the president's economic advisory panel. Kalanick resigned from the panel yesterday, saying that his joining the group had not been an endorsement of Trump or his agenda, "but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that."

Uber's rival Lyft, meanwhile, announced a $1 million donation to the ACLU in protest of the immigration ban. That encouraged anti-Trump forces start a social media movement to move their business to Lyft instead with a #DeleteUber hashtag.

Yet two of Lyft's biggest financial backers are Trump stalwarts who have been with him since Day 1 of his campaign: Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, and Carl Icahn, a billionaire investor who was an early favourite to be named to Trump's cabinet.

But that seems to have been overlooked because Lyft played the public relations game better.

"Lyft very savvily saw an opportunity," King said, "so Lyft ended up avoiding the activists, whereas Uber attracted it."

Budweiser Super Bowl ad

Calls for a boycott of Anheuser-Busch arose this week when its long-planned Super Bowl ad for Budweiser centred on its founder's immigrant story, which landed right in the middle of a national debate on immigration.

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The company insists the spot was planned months in advance. But with activists on both sides of Trump looking to make some "noise," as King calls it, Budweiser may "lose control of their brand and it starts to become the spin of one activist group or another."

"A lot of the time businesses just get caught up in the middle," Taub says, "while extremists on both sides are going to town."