U.S. President Donald Trump, and by extension, publicly traded companies tied to his administration by policy issues, have long been targets of political activists who wanted to make an example of corporations aligned against their interests.
In the dog days of summer 2026, however, it seems as if Americans have a case of boycott fatigue, and even market experts are shrugging their shoulders and moving on from profit-targeted protests.
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“We should be careful about attributing positive or negative movements in the stock market to any president,” says Usha Haley, Barton distinguished chair in international business at Wichita State University. “Markets aggregate many forces simultaneously, and they often over- or underprice.”
Boycotts or not, the U.S. stock market has shown remarkable resilience in 2026. The S&P 500 is up about 13% and has reached record highs, and strong corporate earnings have been bolstered by enormous U.S. government and private investments in AI and technology infrastructure.
Simultaneously, the Trump administration’s policies have created great uncertainty, which historically moves financial markets. “Tariffs have affected and continue to affect input costs and supply chains,” Haley says.
Immigration restrictions can also affect labor availability and costs, and geopolitical decisions have moved and will continue to move oil prices, with tariffs and Middle East turmoil repeatedly and consistently affecting the flow of goods.
Somehow, it’s just not enough to impact investors or companies right now. “I see the stock market as strong despite considerable policy uncertainty,” Haley says.
Other market gurus say boycotts usually don’t have enough longevity, and are reliably shoved to the sideline once more powerful economic factors arrive on the scene.
“It’s not politics driving this market; it’s earnings,” says Humberto Marquez, founder of Kestrel Lending, a Houston-based real estate investment advisory firm. “Q1 saw S&P revenues rise by 12%, and earnings by 28%, and consumer spending is still chugging along, plus the tax-refund boost from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
But many experts say the policy risks that do matter are the impact of tariffs on margins and energy shocks from geopolitics. “The lesson for investors is the markets really don’t price presidents,” Marquez says. “What they actually price is cash flow.”
One protest issue that’s hanging around in 2026 is that boycotts aren’t impacting investor decisions. “Target, which is probably getting the most sustained, organized boycott in the country right now, is up a whole 40% over the past year,” Marquez says.
So with some of the Trump-related boycotts leaking oil, how are their targets faring in mid-2026? Here’s a snapshot of seven stocks tied to companies viewed by Trump’s critics as ripe for blacklisting and boycotting by vocal protesters:
— Tesla Inc. (ticker: TSLA)
— Target Corp. (TGT)
— Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)
— Home Depot Inc. (HD)
— Walmart Inc. (WMT)
— Starbucks Corp. (SBUX)
— Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR)
Tesla Inc. (TSLA)
Love him or hate him, and many do, Elon Musk has become a political lightning rod for public policy advocates and their online followers.
Electric vehicle maker Tesla became a boycott target after CEO Musk assumed a prominent advisory role in the Trump administration and helped oversee government spending cuts through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Not helping matters was Musk’s haul from Space Exploration Technologies Corp.’s (SPCX) initial public offering, which helped make him Earth’s first trillionaire. Even though the firestorm accompanying the SpaceX IPO has abated, the stock has lost 4.5% over the past month.
Meanwhile, Tesla shares have significantly underperformed in 2026, down about 26% year to date. Even historically reliable Tesla fans can’t save the stock, though they’ve tried. In early August, over $372 million was invested in TSLA shares over five days, compared to $121 million in the same five days the week before.
Tesla’s 2026 slide isn’t due to any boycott-related activity, market watchers say. Instead, it’s all about financial performance, or more likely, lack of it. “Tesla and Palantir are both down this year, but there are cash-flow and valuation reasons why a boycott only has a small part to do with it,” Marquez says. “Moral outrage and market performance are two separate things.”
Target Corp. (TGT)
There’s some evidence that links Target’s actions on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) to a souring stock price back in 2024 and 2025, but that’s faded now. As of Aug. 10, Target’s share price is up 58% year to date, which is rarefied air for retail stocks in 2026. Comparing that figure with the S&P Retail Select Industry Index’s 6.3% year-to-date return demonstrates Target is very much back in the black after its DEI-fueled boycott woes, which commenced in February 2025.
Target had quietly begun scaling back DEI programs in January 2025, immediately following the presidential inauguration and several Trump administration executive actions regarding federal DEI guidelines.
A boycott sometimes referred to as the “Target Fast” lasted more than a year before organizers declared it largely complete in March 2026, when the company reaffirmed its commitments to diversity initiatives and community investment. Some are still holding the company accountable, though, claiming management hasn’t made any actual changes.
There’s a lesson there for investors who wanted to hop on the Target bandwagon but who opted to wait until the political winds subsided. Now, they may have missed the TGT opportunity, as a consensus call on TGT shares by 20 TipRanks-tracked retail analysts set a $145 average call on the stock, about 5% less than where it’s trading now.
Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)
E-commerce giant Amazon is somewhat of an outlier, facing boycotts on multiple fronts in 2026.
For starters, the MakeAmazonPay campaign, which has aligned with the activist group Everyone Hates Elon, co-sponsored a high-profile May 2026 boycott and protest against Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who was involved with the 2026 Met Gala in New York City. One month prior, approximately 100 deep-pocketed merchants calling themselves the Million Dollar Sellers Club held a single-day protest against Amazon’s payment shift that saw advertising costs auto-deducted directly from seller disbursements rather than credit cards.
Protests began heating up after Bezos’ donations to Trump’s inauguration back in January 2025, and the Magnificent Seven giant’s labor practices and scaling back of some DEI initiatives fanned the flames. In April 2025, booksellers association Syndicat de la Librairie Française boycotted a major French book fair due to Amazon’s sponsorship and market practices, including its support of AI-generated books.
Have multiple rounds of protests negatively impacted AMZN shares in the last two years? Not likely. The stock has proved scrappy after a tough first half of 2026, with Amazon shares returning 20.5% year to date and gaining 13.4% in the last 30 days alone. The company boasts a $3 trillion valuation, with Wall Street analysts calling for a $5 trillion valuation by the end of the decade. AMZN’s cloud computing segment is leading the charge, with revenues up 37% year to year, the highest growth figure in 18 quarters.
There’s no bullhorn that’s going to shout those numbers down.
Walmart Inc. (WMT)
America’s largest retailer, which boasts an $894 billion market cap as of mid-2026, has also been swept into the broader anti-Trump consumer advocacy movement. Most of the boycott activity so far occurred in 2025, with consumer advocacy groups like the People’s Union USA taking a lead role in nationwide Walmart boycotts over the retail giant’s DEI rollback policies. The protests typically relied on “no spend days” and broader economic blackouts.
That movement petered out as more and more U.S. corporations began curbing or eliminating DEI channels. According to a joint 2026 study by Catalyst and NYU Law, 55% of organizations have publicly signaled a retreat from DEI in 2025 and 2026, up from about 5% in prior years.
In Walmart’s case, boycotts have also percolated as consumer advocacy groups have railed against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency over its enforcement efforts. In March 2025, Walmart heiress Christy Walton turned the temperature up with a New York Times full-page advertisement urging the Trump administration to release undocumented immigrants being held by ICE who don’t have a criminal record. A digital version of the ad cited a 2025 Cato Institute study that claimed 73% of people in ICE custody since October 2025 had no previous criminal record. Walton has steered about $500,000 into conservative anti-Trump political action committees in recent years and publicly backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
Walmart stock has largely performed listlessly in 2026, returning 1.5% so far in 2026, mostly due to a tepid consumer economy and an uptick in WMT insider selling in 2026.
Home Depot Inc. (HD)
Up a mere 1.9% so far in 2026, boycotts have been nipping at the heels of Home Depot, with a spate of protest activity in late 2025 and in the spring of 2026, much of it stemming from the groups behind the “No Kings” protests, which backed the “We Ain’t Buying It” campaign that called on consumers to nix shopping at big-box retailers like Home Depot and Amazon during the marquee shopping weeks of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Presidents’ Day weekend.
The advocacy group Boycott Home Depot has also urged consumers to cancel their Home Depot credit cards and shopping accounts, and to “adopt a day labor center” on the group’s website. Protesters have accused Home Depot of complacency in ICE detention efforts in the retailer’s parking lots.
Home Depot denies taking sides in the ICE/immigration debate, issuing a statement: “We ask associates to report any suspected immigration enforcement operations immediately and not to engage for their own safety.” The note goes on to say, “We aren’t notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen, and we aren’t involved in them. In many cases, we don’t know that arrests have taken place until after they’re over. We’re required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate.”
Wall Street analysts who cover Home Depot aren’t concerned over boycotts. They’re more likely to focus on the company’s recent lackluster 2026 performance, as HD shares gained just 2% in the past month compared to the 7.5% gain of the overall retail-wholesale sector. Demand for hammers and wheelbarrows takes a back seat in an economy where consumers are watching their budgets closely.
Starbucks Corp. (SBUX)
If Starbucks is worried about any continuing boycott activity in 2026, the C-suite hasn’t let on, and SBUX shares have risen 26% so far in 2026. The stock got a boost this week after quarterly earnings gains easily beat analyst expectations. Starbucks has been busy overseas, closing a joint venture with China’s Boyu Capital in April, with Boyu owning 60% of the operation and Starbucks holding 40%. Now, Starbucks is operating in a market where, in the fiscal third quarter, global comparable-store sales rose 7.9%. U.S. sales rose an equal 7.9%, a sign of strength at home and abroad.
The company has shrugged off concerns from labor unions who weren’t happy with Starbucks’ recent decision to close hundreds of stores across the U.S., Canada and Europe in a recent turnaround move. To generate some political breathing room, the global coffee giant expanded its North American presence by opening a major $100 million corporate office in Nashville. Starbucks said it has “major plans” for its Tennessee location, where it will employ up to 2,000 people over the next several years and presumably steer clear of the protest scene in Seattle.
Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR)
Palantir, an artificial intelligence software provider with high-profile government clients, has seen its share price soar 38% over the past 30 days, which has helped it claw back some losses earlier in 2026.
Boycotters have made hay in the first half of 2026, protesting the company’s close alliance with ICE dating back to 2013. Palantir provided ICE with systems like its Falcon surveillance system and investigative case management, which the nonprofit American Immigration Council says were used for workplace raids, enforcement operations and investigations into asylum seekers. Boycotters cite multiple issues, including Palantir’s reported use of AI and data mining to help ICE identify, track and deport suspected noncitizens.
Politically minded critics were also vexed over Palantir’s reported close ties to GOP funding supernova Peter Thiel, who was influential in Trump’s choice of JD Vance as vice president back in 2024. Leading prediction markets currently have Vance as the odds-on favorite to be the GOP presidential nominee in 2028.
“Palantir’s pattern-finding capabilities have long been central to ICE’s most aggressive tactics and raising concerns that ImmigrationOS could enable similar or expanded practices,” the American Immigration Council states.
PLTR shareholders are likely more worried over the $43.7 million in insider shares sold over the past 90 days. Shyam Sankar, the company’s chief technology officer, offloaded $5.4 million of Palantir stock in early August, in the midst of a huge run-up on PLTR shares. Yet, it’s doubtful PLTR insiders are growing bearish, not after the company reported Q2 revenues rose 93% on a year-to-year basis.
Market experts advise investors to tread carefully when trying to mix politics with money management. “The main investment point is that ‘being boycotted’ is not, by itself, an investment category,” says Douglas Goldstein, a financial advisor and director of Profile Investment Services. “An investor still has to ask whether the controversy is actually changing revenue, margins, customer loyalty, regulation or the company’s competitive position.”
Will Political Boycotts Affect Stocks in the Near Future?
Boycotts inevitably start losing steam after the media stops giving the protests oxygen, and that seems to be happening in the U.S. and abroad, for various reasons.
Haley, for example, told U.S. News that her research on companies operating in the political environment surrounding apartheid in South Africa convinced her that boycotts, by themselves, have substantial economic limits. “Boycotts that affect companies’ bottom lines are reinforced by regulation or other institutional mechanisms,” she says. “They have to be applied with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.”
Additionally, boycotted companies have become remarkably adaptive over the years. “They restructure ownership, change suppliers, create subsidiaries, alter branding or construct organizational facades that allow economic activity to continue while appearing to respond to political pressure,” Haley says.
Even so, boycotts remain highly relevant as barometers of public sentiment. “They tell us that a meaningful number of people believe normal political or economic channels are no longer responding to them,” Haley notes. Protests may also become even more relevant with midterms looming. “People’s lived experience appears disconnected from economic statistics and political assurances,” Haley adds. “A significant number are questioning the institutions producing those assurances.”
Market-wise, Haley’s stance on political boycotts is simple and direct. “Watch the boycotts less for if companies’ stock prices are moving up or down and more for what they are telling us about the political waves underneath the economy,” she says.
Goldstein concurs with that assessment, adding that cutting stocks from a portfolio over political differences is usually bad business. “Your portfolio is not a ballot box,” he says. “If someone wants to make a political statement, voting, donating or choosing where to shop are direct ways to do it.”
By selling a stock solely because you dislike a company’s politics, you could be unintentionally reducing diversification or pushing yourself into emotional market-timing scenarios.
“That doesn’t mean politics never matter to investors,” Goldstein says. “A political controversy becomes an investment issue when it changes the business, not merely when it changes your mood.”
If a boycott affects earnings, or shifts legal exposure, regulation, financing costs or customer demand, then it belongs in the investment analysis. “Values-based investing is also a legitimate personal choice, but investors should recognize the trade-off,” Goldstein adds. “Excluding companies for non-financial reasons may change diversification and performance relative to the broader market.”
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7 Companies Being Boycotted Over Trump Policies originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 08/11/26: This story was previously published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
