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    ‘They’ve lost my trust’: consumers shun companies as bosses kowtow to Trump

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    In late January, Lauren Bedson did what many would likely find unthinkable: she cancelled her Amazon Prime membership. The catalyst was Donald Trump’s inauguration. Many more Americans are planning to make similar decisions this Friday.Bedson made her move after seeing photos of Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, sitting with other tech moguls and billionaires, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai, just rows behind Trump at his inauguration.“I just couldn’t stand to see them so cowardly,” Bedson, of Camas, Washington, told the Guardian. “I lived in Seattle for over a decade. I was a fan of Amazon for a long time, I think they have a good product. But I’m just so disgusted. I don’t want to give these billionaire oligarchs any more of my money.”It’s a sentiment that many Americans have been feeling since Trump entered the White House. Companies and business leaders who were once passive or vocally critical of Trump are now trying to cozy up to him, leading consumers to question the values of the brands they used to trust. A recent Harris poll found that a quarter of American consumers have stopped shopping at their favorite stores because of shifting political stances.Many are being inspired by calls to boycott coming from social media. One boycott has gone viral over the last few weeks: a “blackout” of companies that dropped some of their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals, including Target, Amazon and Walmart, is planned for 28 February with protesters planning to halt all spending at these corporations for the day.View image in fullscreenBut people are also making the decision to boycott at their kitchen tables, trying to figure out how to resist Trump, and perhaps corporate capitalism at large, within their own communities.The Guardian asked readers how their shopping habits have changed over the last few months, as the political climate started to shift after Trump’s win. Hundreds from across the country said that they have stopped shopping at stores such as Walmart and Target that publicly announced the end of DEI goals. Dozens like Bedson had cancelled long held Prime accounts. Others have shut down their Facebook and Instagram accounts in protest of Meta.“I’m just trying to do little things that make me feel a little bit empowered, to stake my claim against what’s happening and how companies are acting in ways that are opposed to my values,” said Kim Wohlenhaus, of St Louis, Missouri, who cancelled her Prime membership, deleted her Meta accounts and has stopped shopping at Target. “It feels good to be able to do something.”Erica Bradley, of Reno, Nevada, said she stopped shopping at Target because of their changing DEI policies.“I don’t plan on going there ever again, just because I feel like they’ve shown that they’re not really committed to these things,” Bradley said. “They’ve lost my trust.”View image in fullscreenFor many consumers, the shift away from the big companies has revealed how much they have come to rely on them. As of last spring, 75% of American consumers had Amazon Prime memberships, a total of 180m Prime accounts, according to Bloomberg.Bedson said cancelling her account made her aware of a culture of consumerism in American where “in some ways, it feels like we don’t have a choice”.“Amazon is so convenient,” she said. “I think we all have become very complacent or complicit, and it’s hard to make these changes. But on the other hand, what else can we do?”It’s been a year since Bradley cancelled her Prime account, after she saw Amazon’s union busting. She recalls a transition period as she was adjusting to life without Prime, but it ultimately led her to spend less overall.“I just decided I don’t really need a lot of these things. Like I don’t need more clothes, I don’t really need more house decorations, which are things I used to spend a lot of money on,” Bradley said. “It’s not retail therapy anymore.”The Harris poll found that a third of Americans are similarly trying to “opt out” of the economy, cutting down on overall spending as the political stances of corporations have become murky.View image in fullscreen“It’s like a Whac-a-Mole now,” Wohlenhaus said. “You could really look in any direction and find something you dislike about the way corporations are caving to this administration.”Wohlenhaus said she has started to prioritize shopping at local businesses. She kept her Costco membership, since the company affirmed its DEI policies.During Joe Biden’s presidency, many of the boycotts against companies actually came from conservatives who felt corporations were caving to a “woke” mob. But boycotts didn’t amount to any serious consequences – with two exceptions. Bud Light saw a drop in sales after it sponsored a post by a transgender influencer and Target removed some of its Pride merchandise after conservative backlash.It’s unclear what the consequences of the current backlash will be. But Wohlenhaus and others voiced optimism that consumers are thinking critically about the choices they’re making at checkout.“Hopefully if thousands of other families are doing what we’re doing, I think they’ll start to feel it,” she said. “We don’t care about your products as much as we care about those values that we cherish.” More

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      in US Politics

      UK marketplace sellers face ‘second Brexit’ hit from Trump’s US import rules

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      Many UK-based independent sellers on marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon could suffer a significant hit to US sales from planned changes to import rules under Donald Trump, with experts comparing the impact to a second Brexit.The new rules, which mean all parcels originating or made in China and being sold into the US must pay import duty – of as much as 15% on fashion items – and an additional 10% tariff, are also expected to impact bigger online clothing retailers such as Asos and Boohoo.The changes were introduced at the start of February in an attempt to protect US retailers from a surge in competition from the likes of Chinese online marketplaces Shein and Temu, but were indefinitely paused after the US customs service struggled to cope with the massive increase in parcels requiring checks last week.However, they are expected to be implemented within the coming months, potentially driving up prices for US consumers and hitting sales for online retailers.Before the change, parcels with a value of less than $800 (£635) shipped to individuals in the US were exempt from import tax and did not pass through the usual customs checks. That scheme, originally designed to help smooth online shopping, is being revoked after it emerged that the number of shipments under the “de minimis” rules had ballooned to more than 1bn, valued at $54.5bn by 2023 – most of them from China or Hong Kong via firms including Shein and Temu.“You are looking at an increase of $30 to $50 per consignment [group of parcels],” said Brad Ashton at the advisory firm RSM. “It is creating a perfect storm for online retailers putting goods into the US market. It has a lot of the hallmarks of Brexit in terms of its potential impact on small traders.“Businesses will see their margins eroded because costs will increase. We may get to a point where the changes make a UK business uncompetitive in selling to the US.”The widespread use of Chinese factories for many British brands, particularly in fashion, means businesses such as Asos and Boohoo will be drawn in, as well as many UK independent marketplace sellers.It will not just affect goods made in China and then sent from the UK, but potentially a much wider array, as any package containing even one product made in China may have to pay import tax and pass through customs checks, further increasing costs, according to experts.There is also an expectation that the de minimis rules will eventually be scrapped for all imports, no matter their origin.About $5bn worth of parcels were exported to the US from the UK under de minimis rules in 2021, according to a Congressional Research Service analysis of data from US Customs and Border Protection. About 80% of that was estimated to be related to online retail, with fashion likely to be a large proportion of it.Chris White, at the logistics company Fulfilmentcrowd, said that during the brief period when the rules were in place in early February, one-third of the parcels it shipped to the US from the UK were found to be of Chinese origin and subject to the new taxes.Fast-fashion specialists Asos and Boohoo sell about £300m of clothing a year to the US. Both are already struggling to compete with the rise of Shein and high street retailers, which have revived after the Covid pandemic. John Stevenson, a retail analyst at Peel Hunt, said Asos and Boohoo would have to “adjust prices or take a view on [the] profitability of operating in the US”.As well as the higher tax charges, customs checks required after the rule change will add as much as two days to the processing of orders, making UK retailers less competitive with US-based operators on the speed of delivery.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStevenson said the hit to Asos and Boohoo was “not business-critical” in the way it could be for Shein or Temu, which he believed were heavily reliant on the tax benefit, but that it would have an impact.In the short term, online sellers will probably have lower sales because of uncertainty among US shoppers over possible taxes. White said that during the period when the new rules were in place, similar parcels were loaded with different levels of duty as local customs officers made different decisions.He said a further element of the rule change might be to expose brands that were “trading on an image of being British or European” as being “made in China and not Savile Row”, potentially damaging their appeal.There would be “lots of crossed fingers and puzzled faces” over the changes in legislation, with retailers potentially opening more US warehousing or, longer term, to switch sources of supply, White added.Boohoo closed its US warehouse earlier this year, and Asos is scheduled to close its facility there in November. However, a reversal could be on the cards if the de minimis rules are confirmed. Many fast-fashion companies have already diversified their supply chains – making more in India, Bangladesh or Turkey. Trump’s tax changes could accelerate this further.Shein is reportedly incentivising Chinese suppliers to set up in Vietnam, according to a report by Bloomberg.It is not clear when the new rules might be implemented as the US tries to put the technology and workforce in place to handle the new system. Experts say it could take weeks or months.While there is a chance that Trump will change his mind, as he has done on tariffs with Canada and Mexico, no business can bet on which way the US might jump. More

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      in Elections

      Sears and Kmart pull Ashli Babbitt T-shirt after outcry

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      US Capitol attackSears and Kmart pull Ashli Babbitt T-shirt after outcryUS retailers apologize for shirt reading ‘Ashli Babbitt American Patriot’ for the Capitol rioter shot dead by law enforcement Priya ElanWed 7 Jul 2021 16.54 EDTLast modified on Wed 7 Jul 2021 17.42 EDTThe US retailers Sears and Kmart have apologized and pulled from sale a T-shirt featuring the words “Ashli Babbitt American Patriot” after an outcry on social media.Babbitt was shot dead by law enforcement while taking part in the attack on the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on 6 January. She had been inside the building and was attempting to climb through a broken window when she was shot.After her death, her internet history showed she was a conspiracy theorist, including a believer in QAnon. Elements of the conservative movement have been attempting to make Babbitt a martyr for their cause.After the T-shirt’s availability was brought to attention by a Twitter post from the Vox reporter Aaron Rupar, Sears tweeted a brisk apology from its official account, writing: “Thank you for bringing this product to our attention. This item is no longer available for purchase on Sears.com or Kmart.com.”Both shops are owned by Transformco.Last year, Walmart was found to be selling an All Lives Matter T-shirt on its website.Both instances highlight concerns about third-party sellers: companies will sell items from external sources without vetting.In June, the Wall Street Journal reported that Urban Outfitters and J Crew would open their digital stores up to third-party sellers, in a bid to compete with Amazon, which had been selling items by them for years.In April, in a letter to shareholders, Amazon’s then CEO, Jeff Bezos, said that third-party sellers made up 60% of Amazon’s overall sales, compared with 34% in 2010 and 3% a decade earlier.Last month, the first Capitol rioter to be sentenced, Anna Morgan Lloyd, got probation instead of a prison sentence.TopicsUS Capitol attackRetail industrynewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Amazon won the Alabama union fight. But don’t mourn – organize | Indigo Olivier

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      Nearly a week after Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, cast their ballots to determine whether or not to form a union, a final tally shows workers lost their campaign by a more than two-to-one margin. The results are being contested by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), which claims Amazon coerced and intimidated workers with their belligerent anti-union campaign. Even if the results are thrown out and another election is held, the outcome is likely to remain unchanged.During the agonizing week-long vote count, all you could do was wait and hope. Little snippets of information trickled in, followed by more waiting. The loss, while not surprising, is a disappointment to not only the workers and supporters who threw so much into this campaign but to the labor movement as a whole.Postmortems abound about the warning signs of defeat, the tactical errors made by organizers, the urgent need for labor law reform, and the demoralizing effect this outcome might have on other workers. In any case, the final takeaway should always be: don’t mourn. Organize.While there is much to learn from the strategy deployed in Bessemer, the defeat is not so much an indictment of the specifics of this one union drive as it is of the balance of power between labor and capital as a whole.Amazon started off with the upper hand and used every tool it could to not only defeat Bessemer workers but to send a clear message to others who might try to organize at other fulfillment centers: you don’t stand a chance.For weeks, Amazon sent a barrage of anti-union messaging to its employees, posted “vote no” flyers in bathroom stalls, texted workers on a regular basis, waged a social media campaign linking back to the “Do It Without Dues” website, changed traffic lights outside the facility, held “captive audience” meetings with workers to dissuade them from voting “yes,” and spent nearly $10,000 a day on union-busting consulting firms.The company followed a familiar anti-union playbook; in fact, they went even further, pressuring USPS officials to install a private ballot box on company property all while denying the reality of their workers peeing in bottles and defecating in bags to meet merciless delivery quotas – a reality that was quickly confirmed by reporters.With all eyes on Amazon, the entire country has just seen the lengths corporations will go to prevent workers from organizing.While the legality of some of these tactics is being challenged by the RWDSU, the reality is that most of them are commonplace and, in the eyes of America’s lopsided and mostly toothless labor laws, fair game. Even if Amazon is found to have violated workers’ rights in Bessemer, it is unlikely that the company will face any serious consequences.More than anything, this defeat stressed the immediate importance of passing the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (Pro Act) which would ban captive audience meetings, severely limit corporate interference, invalidate right-to-work legislation and strengthen collective bargaining as a whole.The Pro Act, which would represent the most significant federal labor legislation in decades, passed the House in early May and is all but certain to be voted down in the evenly split Senate.President Biden has spoken strongly in favor of the legislation, but its passage is unlikely without eliminating the filibuster – an action for which Biden has withheld full commitment.The Pro Act would allow labor to move from the defensive to the offensive which is crucial when workers – especially at giant corporations like Amazon – already have the deck stacked against them.A battle has been lost but an advance was made in the war to shift the focus of power from politicians to workersBiden has so far proven to be both the most pro-labor president in modern history and not nearly where we need him to be to deliver the goods. He sent a message of support to workers organizing in Alabama and around the country but stopped short of calling Amazon out by name. He’s encouraged Congress to pass the Pro Act without forging a viable path to follow through. Simply put, he lacks the courage to do what is needed to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen”.Unions and other pro-labor groups have taken it upon themselves to move things forward. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has shifted the national organizing infrastructure used for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign to make hundreds of thousands of calls convincing people of the urgent necessity of the Pro Act.While the Bessemer vote is devastating, the public attention and enthusiasm that was shown to the organizers there is exactly what is needed to make any significant strides in the labor movement, especially if the Senate is going to stall for as long as it can with Green Eggs and Ham.Bessemer was the most high-profile union election in recent memory and it started a national conversation about organized labor and poor working conditions. This election saturated social media (when was the last time you saw a viral TikTok about the importance of union dues?) and has even prompted talk of organizing other Amazon facilities.A battle has been lost but an advance was made in the slow ideological war to shift the public focus of power from politicians to workers. Amazon may have been successful in temporarily exorcising any attempt to organize from within, but the specter still haunts them. More

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      in US Politics

      Walmart sued by US over alleged role in fuelling America's opioid crisis

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      The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Walmart on Tuesday, alleging that the retail giant filled “thousands of invalid prescriptions” for powerful painkillers, helping fuel America’s opioid crisis.Walmart runs more than 5,000 pharmacies across the country. Until 2018, the chain was a wholesale distributor of controlled substances for its own pharmacies, giving it extensive reach into many communities.The civil complaint points to the role Walmart’s pharmacies may have played in the crisis by filling opioid prescriptions and by unlawfully distributing controlled substances to the pharmacies during the height of the opioid crisis.“As a nationwide dispenser and distributor of opioids, and given the sheer number of pharmacies it operates, Walmart was uniquely well positioned to prevent the illegal diversion of opioids,” the 160-page civil suit, filed in Delaware federal court, said.“Yet, for years, as the prescription drug abuse epidemic ravaged the country, Walmart abdicated those responsibilities,” the suit added.In response, Walmart said the suit was “riddled with factual inaccuracies”.The DoJ document said the company “knowingly violated well established rules requiring it to scrutinize controlled-substance prescriptions to ensure that they were valid – that is, issued by prescribers in a legitimate manner for legitimate purposes, not for purposes of abuse or other diversion,” the suit continued. While Walmart was legally required to check potential red flags, it “made little effort to ensure that it complied with them”.Instead, Walmart made it hard for pharmacists to abide by these regulations. Managers pressured pharmacists to fill high volumes of prescriptions as quickly as possible “while at the same time denying them the authority to categorically refuse to fill prescriptions issued by prescribers the pharmacists knew were continually issuing invalid prescriptions”, the complaint charged.Even though Walmart’s compliance arm had amassed extensive information showing that people were repeatedly trying to get invalid narcotic prescriptions filled, the unit kept that data from pharmacists, authorities also said.Walmart filled prescriptions from prescribers who its own pharmacists had “repeatedly reported were acting as egregious ‘pill mills’ – even when Walmart was alerted that other pharmacies were not filling prescriptions for those prescribers. In fact, some of those pill-mill prescribers specifically told their patients to fill their prescriptions at Walmart.”So intense were the pressures on pharmacists that managers told them to “[h]ustle to the customer, hustle from station to station” because completing prescriptions “is a battle of seconds”, federal authorities alleged.As early as 2013, Walmart adopted a plan that used the number of prescriptions processed by an employee’s store as a factor in determining if the pharmacy staffer “was entitled to monetary incentive awards”.The DoJ contends that Walmart has committed “hundreds of thousands of violations” of the Controlled Substances Act. If Walmart is found liable for violating this act, each unlawfully filled prescription could result in a $67,627 penalty. Each suspicious order that was not reported to authorities could result in a penalty of up to $15,691. Civil penalties could reach “billions”, the DoJ said.More than 232,000 people died in the US from opioid-involved overdoses between 1999 and 2018, according to the DoJ.In a statement, Walmart said that the DoJ’s investigation was “tainted by historical ethics violations, and this lawsuit invents a legal theory that unlawfully forces pharmacists to come between patients and their doctors, and is riddled with factual inaccuracies and cherry-picked documents taken out of context”.“Blaming pharmacists for not second-guessing the very doctors the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) approved to prescribe opioids is a transparent attempt to shift blame from DEA’s well-documented failures in keeping bad doctors from prescribing opioids in the first place,” the company said.Walmart recently sued the DoJ and DEA, alleging that authorities wrongly ascribed blame to the company. The retailer’s suit wants a federal judge to determine that the government doesn’t have grounds to pursue civil damages, according to the Associated Press. More