A group of grassroots organizations is urging shoppers to boycott major retailers including Amazon, Target and Home Depot that they say caved to President Donald Trump and reneged on pledges to support diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
The “We Ain’t Buying It” nationwide economic pressure campaign is launching ahead of the holiday season “to demonstrate to corporations that there are consequences for not standing up loudly for freedom and core democratic principles of fairness, justice and liberty,” Black Voters Matter, Indivisible and Until Freedom said in a statement.
The idea is for shoppers to boycott the stores during the crucial holiday season. Shoppers surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers said they expect to reduce their holiday spending this year on average by 5% compared with last year in the first significant drop since 2020. Retailers are trying to lure in shoppers by kicking off Black Friday early with doorbusters and other deals.
Rather than patronize retailers that have stood by Trump, boycott organizers are asking shoppers to support retailers that have stood up to Trump, as well as Black, minority and immigrant-owned businesses and small and local shops.
“Instead of fighting back and supporting the very people who put money in their pockets, corporations and retailers have bowed at Trump’s feet. But we ain’t buying it,” LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said in a statement. “We ain’t buying that the wealthiest country in the world will punish the poor during the holiday season by withholding SNAP benefits. We ain’t buying that families can be torn apart and people kidnapped off the streets by masked ICE agents. We ain’t buying that DEI and racial justice commitments can be tossed aside at the whims of political convenience. And we ain’t buying that corporations are powerless in all of this.”
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The latest consumer boycott shows the perils corporations face when drawn into contentious culture-war issues in a volatile and polarized political environment.
During a 1990 Senate race in his home state of North Carolina, Michael Jordan refused to publicly endorse Harvey Gantt, a Black American and a Democrat who was running against Republican Jesse Helms who faced repeated charges of racism, saying “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”
Even though Jordan later said the off-the-cuff comment was in jest, more than three decades later it still gets repeated, especially now that shoppers of all political stripes are wielding their wallets to make their feelings and beliefs known at the cash register.
Most recently, a pressure campaign from activists like Robby Starbuck and Matt Walsh accusing Cracker Barrel of bowing to “wokeness” and distancing itself from its country roots and conservative values forced the company to backtrack on plans to spruce up its vintage logo of an overalls-clad old timer leaning against a barrel. Followers of Starbuck also pressured the likes of Walmart, Ford, Harley-Davidson and Tractor Supply to rein in their DEI efforts.
Bud Light, owned by beer giant Anheuser-Busch, struggled after conservative blowback over a social media campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
Target moved its Pride displays from the entrances to the back of stores after shoppers confronted employees and vandalized displays. Last year, Target scaled back its Pride collection and did not carry the collection in all stores. Then a national boycott over the company’s DEI retreat hit the company from the other side of the aisle, denting sales at Target, which recently said it would cut around 1,800 corporate roles.
A new study of the Tesla boycott suggested Elon Musk’s “polarizing and partisan” political activities alienated the electric car maker’s base and cost over 1 million in U.S. car sales between October 2022 and April 2025.
“By the first quarter of 2025, we find that without the Musk partisan effect, Tesla monthly sales would have been about 150% higher,” Yale researchers said in the working paper.
Boycotts in which shoppers are asked not to patronize a business during blackout periods sometimes don’t pack the same economic punch as a sustained boycott, Brayden King, a professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, previously told USA TODAY.
Shoppers will buy before or after the blackout, he said. It can also be difficult during longer boycotts “to convince enough consumers to make those purchasing changes to make a dent at all in the bottom line,” King said.
