Shopping Becomes a Political Act in the Trump Era

Jumping on the anti-Trump wagon is the virtue signal du jour, but care should be taken as Trump is not a one-off event - it is a worldwide trend

Heck if you would go back to the age of colonial america you'll find people boycotting things like you know tea way before the famous (or infamous) boston tea party.

Voting with your wallet is one of the easiest things to do for most people and it's something that makes them feel like they've actually accomplished something whilst in reality actually accomplishing very little in most cases.

And if you want to point fingers at specific governments then if we go back to GWB then we can all recall the "french boycott" ala freedom fries and freedom toast...

One can say that there is a difference between individuals politicising commerce and companies, but honestly companies always did it, if albit in a less public manner.

This is in most cases just virtue signalling which results in things like "fair traded XYZ" which isn't fairly traded in any objective interpretation of the word fair to the workers and individual farmers. Fair traded coffee is only really fair to the coffee companies it sets an upper limit on the price of coffee and in effect consolidates coffee production which makes it easier for the coffee companies since they have to deal with fewer entities.

But in the west we buy it as some good act we've done to help the poor farmer in some central american countries that most people would not be able to find on a map.