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The renowned German classical violinist Christian Tetzlaff was blunt in explaining why he and his quartet have cancelled a summer tour of the US.
“There seems to be a quietness or denial about what’s going on,” Tetzlaff said, describing his horror at the authoritarian polices of Donald Trump and the response of US elites to the country’s growing democratic crisis.
“I feel utter anger. I cannot go on with this feeling inside. I cannot just go and play a tour of beautiful concerts.”
Tetzlaff is not alone in acting on his disquiet. A growing international move to boycott the US is spreading from Scandinavia to Canada to the UK and beyond as consumers turn against US goods.
Most prominent so far has been the rejection by European car buyers of the Teslas produced by Elon Musk, now a prominent figure in Trump’s administration as the head of the “department of government efficiency” a special group created by Trump that has contributed to the precipitous declines in Tesla’s share price. About 15% of its value was wiped out on Monday alone.
The fall in Tesla sales in Europe has been well documented, as has a Canadian consumer boycott in response to trade tariffs and Trump’s calls for Canada to become America’s 51st state, but the past week has seen daily reports of cultural and other forms of boycotts and disinvestment.
In Canada, where the American national anthem has been booed during hockey matches with US teams, a slew of apps has emerged with names such as “buy beaver”, “maple scan” and “is this Canadian” to allow shoppers to scan QR barcodes and reject US produce from alcohol to pizza toppings.
Figures released this week suggested the number of Canadians taking road trips to the US – representing the majority of Canadians who normally visit – had dropped by 23% compared with February 2024, according to Statistics Canada.
While Canada and Mexico have been at the frontline of Trump’s trade war, the boycott movement is visible far beyond countries whose economies have been targeted.
In Sweden, about 40,000 users have joined a Facebook group calling for a boycott of US companies – ironically including Facebook itself – which features alternatives to US consumer products.
“I’ll replace as many American goods as I can and if many do so, it will clearly affect the supply in stores,” wrote one member of the group.
In Denmark, where there has been widespread anger over Trump’s threat to bring the autonomous territory of Greenland under US control, the largest grocery company, the Salling group, has said it will tag European-made goods with a black star to allow consumers to choose them over products made in the US.
“We are making it easier to shop for European brands,” its chief executive, Anders Hagh, wrote on LinkedIn, although he said the company would still stock US products.
More striking, perhaps, is the decision by companies to cut ties with the US. Norway’s largest oil bunkering operation, the privately owned Haltbakk, recently announced a boycott of its occasional supplying of fuel to US navy ships.
Referring to the fiery meeting in the White House between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Trump last month, the company posted on Facebook: “We have today been witnesses to the biggest shit show ever presented “live on TV” by the current American president and his vice-president.
“Huge credit to the president of Ukraine restraining himself and for keeping calm even though USA put on a backstabbing TV show. It made us sick.
“As a result, we have decided to [immediately] STOP as fuel provider to American forces in Norway and their ships calling Norwegian ports … We encourage all Norwegians and Europeans to follow our example.”
While boycotts have been a familiar tactic in the past – targeting apartheid South Africa and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories – what is striking is how quickly the second Trump administration has become a target for both consumer anger and ethically minded companies.
Trump this week has commented on the issue for the first time, bemoaning the impact of the Tesla customer boycott and demonstrations.
He wrote on social media: “To Republicans, Conservatives, and all great Americans, Elon Musk is putting it ‘on the line’ in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!” But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they so often do, are trying to illegally and collusively [sic] boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers and Elon’s baby.”
Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, wrote for the Centre for European Policy Analysis this week: “Nobody – nobody – would have thought that western businesses or consumers would use such tools against America.
“The United States is, after all, the leader of the free world. Or was: its vote with Russia, against Ukraine, at the United Nations last month, combined with Trump’s and Vance’s verbal attack on Zelenskyy, along with Trump’s denunciation of Zelenskyy as a dictator and a refusal to use similar language about the Russian despot, suggests to many that America is no longer an instinctive member of what we term the west.”
For some, the backlash was entirely predictable.
When Trump first threatened to impose sweeping tariffs this year, Takeshi Niinami, the chief executive of the Japanese multinational brewing and distilling group Suntory Holdings, which owns several major US brands, told the Financial Times international consumers were likely to shun American brands in the event of a trade war.
“We laid out the strategic and budget plan for 2025 expecting that American products, including American whiskey, will be less accepted by those countries outside of the US because of first, tariffs and, second, emotion,” Niinami said.
And it is likely to spread further still. Zoe Gardner, an organiser of the Stop Trump Coalition in the UK, is seeing rapidly increasing interest in the issue.
“A lot of what we are seeing is coming about organically, people putting stuff on TikTok. People are so furious, and this is about taking back power. Already across Europe we are seeing sales of Tesla falling of a cliff because Musk encapsulates so much of the problem with the Trump administration, both its culture of horrible racism and the economic side.”
