Författare: Garritt C. Van Dyk Senior Lecturer in History University of

Boycotts are back. With people worried about everything from labour practices and human rights to tariffs and equal opportunity initiatives, collective consumer resistance has been rising globally.

Right now, there are several month-long boycotts of Target underway in the United States due to the company abandoning its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programme. Longer boycotts of specific corporations, beginning with Amazon, are scheduled for March and April.

Last week, the non-partisan, grassroots People’s Union USA organised a “national economic blackout” by urging consumers to avoid buying anything beyond essentials. The inaugural event was, in part, spurred by anger at government cuts being made in the US by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, with organisers saying:

Our strength lies in economic power. If corporations control politicians through money, then we control corporations by withholding ours. Targeted boycotts, economic blackouts, and financial pressure will make them listen.

More widely, the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestiture, and Sanction (BDS) campaign against Israeli goods and companies has been operating for years now. And anti-American boycotts are underway in Canada as increased tariffs take effect .

As these campaigns gain momentum, some consumers will question how effective boycotts are at changing corporate behaviour. But there is a long history of ordinary citizens successfully “voting with their wallets”, even before the term “boycott” was coined.

Origins of the boycott

In 1792, a British campaign to stop buying sugar produced by enslaved Africans in the West Indies began. This originated in the American colonies with Quakers rejecting sugar in the 1750s. They viewed enslaved Africans as stolen people, and therefore slave products as stolen goods.

In Britain, the abolitionist movement appealed to women as household managers to give up slave products and sign a petition to end slavery. The power of this ethical consumerism gave women, not yet allowed to vote, a voice to parliament and a tangible way to participate in the cause.

The word “boycott” itself originated during the 1880 Irish Land Wars, and referred to the resistance to English land agent and former army officer Captain Charles Boycott. Tenants of the absentee landlord he represented complained he “treated his cattle better than he did us”.

Protests outside the gates of Captain Boycott’s residence during the Land League boycott in Ireland in 1880.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images

After Boycott imposed fines and employed police to attempt evictions, the Irish Land League responded with a campaign to ostracise him. Crowds intimidated workers so his crops would not be harvested, local shops refused to sell to him, and the post boy was threatened to stop deliveries.

The parish priest, Father John O’Malley, adopted the term “boycott” for this collective action because he thought the County Mayo locals wouldn’t remember the word “ostracise”. Boycott was forced to flee Ireland, and the new term spread across the country.

Some 75 years later, across the Atlantic, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman, as required by Alabama’s racial segregation laws. In 1955, the Montgomery Improvement Association organised a 13-month long boycott of the city’s buses, led by Martin Luther King Jr.

African-Americans, who made up 75% of passengers, refused to ride the buses. In 1956, the US Supreme Court ruled segregated public buses were unconstitutional.

American civil rights activist Rosa Parks sparked the 381 day Montgomery bus boycott, part of the wider civil rights movement in the US.
Underwood Archives/Getty Images

Can boycotts work in the 21st century?

Boycotts are not the exclusive province of progressive activists. Across the political spectrum, the rejection of brands because of corporate behaviour has had moments of significant traction.

In 2023, beer company Bud Light collaborated with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney as a brand ambassador. A backlash from conservative consumers saw the boycott cost parent company Anheuser-Busch Inbev an estimated US$1 billion.

Bud Light also lost is status as the best-selling beer in the US to Mexican import Modelo. The brand then tried to back away from its marketing strategy, which only alienated the LGBTQIA+ community.

Broad campaigns, such as the historical ones mentioned here, can be successful. But specifically targeted boycotts tend to be more effective in attracting media attention and sustaining momentum in the modern consumer age.

This is especially true if consumers have a wide range of alternative goods or outlets that make it easier to avoid a brand or retailer.

The most recent economic data show US consumer confidence is faltering, with its biggest drop since the summer of 2021. Inflation and the potential impact of a trade war are dampening retail sentiment.

This fragile economic environment may amplify the effects of boycotts, if not in terms of profit, then in terms of brand reputation. As messaging becomes more common in the news and on social media, the current consumer boycotts in the US will be a test of how effective the strategy still is. Läs mer…

A White House fact sheet about Donald Trump’s recently announced “Fair and Reciprocal Plan” on trade described it as “the art of the international deal” – a reference to Trump’s 1987 business book, The Art of the Deal.

It was a classic piece of self-marketing from the president, but whether his latest tariff proposal will really turn out to be artful is very much open to question.

In fact, the United States’ long history of “reciprocity” in tariffs and trade suggests ordinary Americans could be in for a bumpy ride.

In essence, Trump is reviving a strategy used in the US more than a century ago to protect developing domestic industries. This time, according to the president, reciprocal tariffs aim “to correct longstanding imbalances in international trade and ensure fairness across the board”.

The plan targets trade relationships with other countries where the US does not receive reciprocal treatment. And it echoes the policies of the 25th US president, William McKinley, who presided over an aggressive reciprocal tariff regime in the late 19th century.

McKinley was president from 1897 until he was assassinated in 1901. And while Trump greatly admires his business acumen, McKinley’s economic legacy also reads like a cautionary tale.

Not a simple equation

From the current US perspective, “reciprocity” refers to symmetrical tariffs. Trump’s plan targets unequal rates, such as the European Union’s 10% tariff on US cars, compared with the 2.5% US tariff on European automobiles.

The EU’s 10% rate represents its “most-favoured-nation” tariff, which applies to all its favoured-nation trading partners (with certain exceptions).

While this looks like a clear lack of reciprocity, it’s not that simple. The US also applies a 25% tariff on EU utility vehicles (pickup trucks).

This is significant because of the popularity of pickups in the US – a 2024 survey found 47% of Americans owned one. Until last year, the Ford F150 had been the bestselling “car” in the US for 42 years in a row.

This is just one example of how differences in tariffs can be more complex than they appear at first glance.

A history of reciprocal tariffs

This cycle of higher and lower tariffs has gone on for well over a century. From 1861 to 1930, the US Congress maintained control over trade tariffs, with levels as high as 50% to protect developing industries.

But in 1934, Congress passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, giving President Franklin D. Roosevelt authority to negotiate reciprocal tariff reductions with individual nations to stimulate global trade during the Great Depression.

These tariff reductions continued after World War II with the development of the World Trade Organization and US tariff levels declining to 5%. Economist Douglas Irwin refers to this period as the “reciprocity period” of nations lowering barriers to international trade.

The last time “reciprocity” was used to refer to the opposite process of raising tariffs was in 1890, under the Tariff Act, often just called the McKinley Tariff. It is this era Trump harked back to in his inaugural address:

President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent – he was a natural businessman.

William McKinley.
Getty Images

Before he became president, McKinley was head of the House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee. He proposed an average increase in tariffs on all imports, rising from 38% to 49.5% to “secure reciprocal trade”.

The new law was designed to protect the tinplate industry with a tariff of 70%, and “to reduce the revenue and equalize duties on imports”.

At the time, the US was running large surpluses from tariff revenues, which was threatening economic growth. This sounds counterintuitive these days, but surpluses were a problem because the US dollar was backed by gold at a fixed price (the gold standard).

Because the amount of money in circulation – and state spending – were limited to the amount of gold held by the government, surplus funds had to be kept in the Treasury reserves. This reduced the money supply and led to lower growth, less investment and tighter credit.

Republicans thought higher tariffs would reduce imported goods and therefore tariff revenues. Instead, income from the higher tariffs more than compensated for import reductions, and the surpluses increased.

Consumer prices rose, farm prices dropped, and the resulting voter backlash saw the Republicans lose control of Congress at the 1890 midterm elections. There was a financial panic in 1893, followed by a recession that lasted until 1896.

A new ‘Gilded Age’

This period in late 19th-century US history is often referred to as the “Gilded Age”, from the title of an 1873 book by Charles Dudley Wright and Mark Twain.

The book was a satire of political corruption and unscrupulous businessmen who benefited from political favours. The title reflects the reality of the era – superficially prosperous but not truly golden.

A thin veneer of technological progress, innovation and wealth concealed widespread corruption, scandals and income inequality.

But aside from the obvious historical parallels, it is overly optimistic to expect a plan from 1890 to succeed in a complex global trade environment that relies on interdependent supply chains to function.

McKinley’s flawed strategy sought protection for a few industries, but also aimed to reduce revenue for a government running large surpluses. However, Trump’s new tariffs are meant to raise revenue to pay off the US$36.5 trillion national debt, as well as to enforce reciprocal trade terms.

Trump began his second term with a declaration that “the golden age of America begins right now”. As in 1890, however, the risk remains that a handful of wealthy industrialists will benefit from increased protection, while ordinary citizens will pay higher prices.

Less the “art of the deal”, then, than a possible dealbreaker. In which case, Trump may yet be remembered less for a new golden age than for a Gilded Age 2.0. Läs mer…