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Consumers in Denmark and Mexico, as well as some in the US, are drinking less Coca-Cola as a result of President Donald Trump’s hardline foreign policies and his tough stance on immigration.
Danish consumers are boycotting Coca-Cola amid anger at Trump’s threats to take Denmark’s territory of Greenland. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola attributed a slowdown in consumption in Mexico partly to geopolitical tensions, and Hispanic customers in the US bought less as the White House threatens mass deportations of immigrants.
Carlsberg, which bottles Coca-Cola in Denmark, on Tuesday said volumes of the American soft drink were “slightly down” in the country.
“There is a level of consumer boycott around the US brands . . . and it’s the only market where we’re seeing that to a large extent,” chief executive Jacob Aarup-Andersen said on Tuesday.
US vice-president JD Vance has accused Denmark of not being “a good ally” despite Danish forces having fought alongside American troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
“Danes are pissed off. They remember those Danish soldiers’ bodies coming home, and now they feel disrespected. You can see why calls for a boycott [of US goods] would be popular,” one Danish official told the Financial Times last month.
Aarup-Andersen said smaller local brands were gaining share from US rivals as a result of the boycott, but the impact on overall sales was “not dramatic”.
Sales of local brand Jolly Cola have soared as Danes rejected the US fizzy drink in favour of a homegrown option. Supermarket chain Rema said year-on-year sales of the brand had soared 13-fold in March.
Similar brand nationalism has swept Canada, where consumers furious with Trump’s threats to annex the country and impose punitive tariffs have led to boycotts of some US goods.
Inside the US, Coke was among the brands to lose sales from Hispanic consumers amid worries about Trump’s deportations of immigrants.
James Quincey, Coke’s chief executive, noted the hit to its sales from viral videos, many of which used artificial intelligence-generated footage to show Coca-Cola had allegedly reported undocumented workers to immigration authorities.
He called the videos “completely false” on Tuesday, but said they had an impact nevertheless.
Sales of Coca-Cola, which is emblematic of the US to consumers around the world, also slumped in majority Muslim countries following the outbreak of the war in Gaza, as consumers railed against American brands in the wake of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Coca-Cola’s unit case volumes rose 2 per cent globally in the first quarter, the company said on Tuesday. However, sales in Mexico were hit by diminished consumer sentiment, which the company attributed to trade-related tensions.
Last week, Mexico-based bottler Coca-Cola Femsa reported volumes declined 5.4 per cent in the country during the quarter, citing “a deceleration in economic activity, geopolitical tensions that affected consumer sentiment and more challenging weather”.
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In early March Trump hit Mexico and Canada with 25 per cent tariffs, but he subsequently exempted imports that complied with the rules of a 2020 North American trade agreement. Coca-Cola said costs from the trade war would be “manageable”.
Quincey said the pullback was especially concentrated close to the US border in northern Mexico, which hosts export-oriented manufacturing plants exposed to Trump’s tariffs.
“I think some of the geopolitical tension was just causing people to be a little more cautious with their spend, a little less going out, a little more keeping the money in the pocket,” Quincey added.
