It was first Canada – now some Europeans also avoid American brands

What started as a backlash in Canada has spread across the Atlantic, because American companies are faced with growing resistance to consumers after the radical rates of President Donald Trump and provocative rhetoric.

While its 20% prices on European Union imports have been reduced to 10%, damage to consumers may have already been caused.

European consumers seem to be more and more inclined to turn away from American brands, and the data suggest that it may not only be a fleeting trend.

Applications that offer alternatives to American products have gained ground across the continent.

A little over a month ago, Dutch entrepreneurs Xander Kanon and Gerben Houtsma launched Brandsnap, which allows users to scan products to check European origin.

It was underway before April, but they told Business Insider that Trump’s decision “accelerated” the release of the application and increased demand.

“Growth peaks are closely linked to the political actions taken by Trump, in particular around prices,” said Houtsma. He cited a wave of Denmark downloads after Trump again launched a takeover of Greenland in an interview with NBC earlier this month.

Supported by the Go European movement, a volunteer network at the base of promoting European manufacturing alternatives, Brandsnap recorded more than 14,000 downloads and 60,000 scans at the beginning of May.

“We are not trying to start a trade war,” Kanon told Bi. “We just want people to know where their money is going.”

Likewise, in France, IT engineer Sacha Montel launched “Derumpify Yourself” – a free and open source application designed to help consumers identify the American property hidden behind everyday products.

“Everyone knows that Coca-Cola or Heinz are American, but many do not realize that Lu, Milka or Le Petit Marseillais are also,” he told Bi, appointing three brands widely consumed in France.

Montel said that the application is a symbolic protest against what he described as Trump’s “aggressive economic and geopolitical policies”.

Companies respond

European companies are also involved. The Danish retail giant Salling Group introduced a black star label on electronic price labels to indicate European products.

CEO Anders Hagh declared in an article by March LinkedIn that this decision came after a “number of requests” of customers seeking to buy more European products. He stopped binding it to Trump’s policies.

Some answers have been more dramatic. Haltbakk Bunkers, the largest oil relief company in Norway, said in an article on Facebook deleted since March that it would no longer supply the US naval ships after Trump and Vice-President JD Vance criticized President Zelenskyy for having failed to recognize the magnitude of American support in the Ukraine war effort.

Although the Norwegian Defense Minister returned from the decision, the episode underlined the increase in discomfort with American leaders.

Some American brands are already seeing the fallout.

Tesla, led by Elon Musk, who expressed his support for far -right parties in Europe, recorded a 42% drop in European sales in January and February, because some European exposure rooms have undergone crime crises.

McDonald’s posted a 1% drop in world sales in the first quarter compared to the previous year, CEO Chris Kempczinski citing a “increase in general in anti-American feeling”, in particular in northern Europe and Canada.

In Denmark, the brewer Carlsberg said that the sales of Coca-Cola, which he bottles in the country, refused in the first quarter in the middle of the CEO Jacob Aarup-Andersen described as a “level of boycott of consumers around American marks”.

The trips were also affected, reservations by Europeans visiting the United States this summer by 25%, said CEO of the Giant of the Accor hotel, Sébastien Bazin last month.

Boycott support and reprisals

The polls suggest that this change is not isolated.

A March survey of the French Institute of Public Opinion revealed that 62% of the 1,000 French respondents supported calls to boycott American brands.

Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Five Guys, Pizza Hut and Starbucks have ranked among the 20 best American brands most likely to be affected.

A study in March of 1,000 Swedish conducted by the University of Lund in Sweden revealed that almost 20% of respondents said they had boycotted an American brand.

Meanwhile, a Yougov Eurotrack survey published in April revealed that 75% of Germans think that American prices will have a significant impact on their economy, the highest figure among seven European countries interviewed.

A structural change?

Some experts believe that the counterpoup could point out a lasting change.

In its survey on the expectations of March consumers, the European Central Bank said that 44% of the 19,000 respondents preferred to go from American brands, regardless of price levels.

The bank warned that this suggested a “long -term structural change possible in consumer preferences far from American products and brands”.

Lucia Reisch, director of the El-Erian of Behavioral Economics and Policy Institute of Cambridge Judge Business School, echoed this feeling.

She told BI that the trend reflects the skepticism of “cold American capitalism”, which has declared more and more to face the European values ​​of sustainability, inclusion and human rights.

Although some American companies can maintain market domination, it has warned that long -term offices could reshape transatlantic trade around disputed standards and value -based preferences.

However, not all economic analysts are convinced. Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, director of the European Center for the International Political Economy, told BI that boycotts in Europe rarely gain enough traction to considerably lower sales.

“European consumers are much less based on principles than they claim,” he said, adding that online demonstrations did not tend to continue in real world purchasing habits.

He described the drop in European sales of Tesla as more product of the market dynamics than a political backlash – a recall that European indignation can be noisy but not durable.