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Thursday, November 28, 2024

Stop Trump - boycott four major US food companies

On Black Friday aka Buy Nothing Day (Nov 29) our campaign kicks off, calling for a worldwide boycott of four major US food businesses to stop Donald Trump, re-elected president of the United States. Buy Nothing Day was created in Canada in 1992 by Adbusters - a global network of artists and entrepreneurs - in order to raise awareness about the effects of consumerism on society, the economy and the environment. Trump announced to become a dictator on day one and it is likely that American democracy turns into chaos in his second term. Pseudo-dictator Trump will disrupt international trade by imposing steep tariffs on imported cars and other goods from China, EU, Canada and Mexico. This will shake up the supply chains of car manufacturers in the USA, as they depend on parts and materials (such as computer chips) from around the globe, leading to higher prices for cars in the US. It's easy to imagine that Trump will launch a series of trade wars with China, as he did during his first term between 2017 and 2021.

The chosen US companies in our political boycott campaign are Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Starbucks, and Amazon. Although Amazon is not a food producer, it sells and delivers grocery stuff and was one of the big supporters of Trump in the 2024 re-election. Each of the other three companies have been individual targets of previous boycott calls, and all of them have a long story of human right violations, busting labor unions and destroying nature. Environmental group Mighty Earth revealed that the cows killed for McDonald's meals are fed with soybean cultivated in deforested areas in Bolivia and Brazil. Coca-Cola creates the biggest plastic pollution footprint in six developing countries (China, India, the Philippines, Brazil, Mexico and Nigeria): about 8 billion bottles which are burned or dumped each year. Starbucks has dramatically expanded its presence in Asia, opening 400 new stores in 2023 - with no plan to address its plastic waste. A large-scale boycott over union busting could hit the coffee giant where it hurts, as the change in popular attitude could prove detrimental to the company's bottom line.

Technology and media marketing specialist Shannon Coulter started the hashtag #GrabYourWallet, which encourages people to actively boycott businesses who endorsed Trump or currently work with his properties. Users on Twitter began to circulate a continuously updating Google doc of businesses that do business with the Trump family, as well as their customer relations contacts. Amazon is on the list of major companies that do business with the Trump family. #GrabYourWallet shows to be effective, as Ivanka Trump's brand already experienced a 54 percent drop in consumer interest.

Our new boycott campaign also targets the direct or indirect involvement of US firms in the genocide in Gaza. Amazon is an official target of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee. BDS National Committee has since 2005 led impactful boycott campaigns against brands that complicit with human right abuses in Palestine. In May 2021, as the Israeli military bombed homes, clinics, and schools in Gaza and threatened to push Palestinian families from their homes in occupied Jerusalem, Amazon and Google signed a 1.22 billion USD contract to provide cloud technology to the Israeli government and military.

Grassroot boycotts against Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and McDonald's are popular but were not initiated by the BDS movement. Coca-Cola operates a factory in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Starbucks sued the Starbucks Workers United union for trademark infringement over a social media post that expressed support for Palestinians, and McDonald's gives free meals to Israeli soldiers. The BDS National Committee has endorsed the McDonald's boycott recently because of their in-kind donations to the Israeli military amid the current genocide in Gaza and because McDonald's in Malaysia has filed a SLAPP lawsuit against BDS activists.

What to do on Buy Nothing Day? Adbusters recommend that people cut up their credit cards, walk around stores without buying anything and do the whirl-mart. Whirl-mart is the act of walking around a store with a cart without buying anything. Our worldwide boycott of Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Starbucks, and Amazon to stop Trump starts now and continues until he leaves the White House. Drop Coca-Cola for healthier drinks, visit McDonald's and Starbucks without ordering something and support your local dealers instead of online shopping at Amazon. Of course our ultimate boycott of International Food Companies continues. Check the Buycott app and avoid their food products. There are plenty of healthier choices for your meals.

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YOU normally don't know on which routes the product was transported nor how many chemicals were used during the process of production nor if there are transgenes in your food. Through the last decades giantic food suppliers emerged conducting worldwide activities. Their budget even exceeds the gross domestic product (GDP) of some European countries. There are three international food companies making the highest profits (net income 2022):

NESTLÉ made 10,2 billion USD, second is UNILEVER earning 8,3 billion USD, third place is MONDELĒZ International (formerly Kraft Foods Inc.) making 4,3 billion USD and last is KRAFT HEINZ (merger of Kraft Foods Group and H.J. Heinz) with 1,0 billion USD.

These food multinationals can partly be blamed for the uneven distribution of wealth on the world. Scan products with the Buycott App before you shop (Sign Up).