From 'economic blackout' to 'Latino Freeze,' Wall Street is grappling with activist consumers

Fri, Mar 7, 2025, 7:00 AM 5 min read

A caller question of user activism is sweeping the nation, with protests and boycotts targeting companies successful a fraught governmental environment. Is Wall Street bracing for the impact, if any?

For much than a period now, for example, Michael Galvez, a starring fig successful the Latino Freeze Movement, has been calling connected consumers to boycott brands going on with President Donald Trump's anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. We can’t support “spending our wealth connected companies that whitethorn not worth our community,” Galvez told Yahoo Finance.

Meanwhile, demonstrators are gathering extracurricular Tesla (TSLA) stores nationwide to protest CEO Elon Musk’s involvement with the Trump medication and his propulsion to chopped authorities spending.

Some Wall Street analysts reason that Musk’s governmental involvement — with the Department of Government Efficiency, i.e., "DOGE" — has imaginable consequences. Even immoderate Wall Street Tesla bulls are acknowledging the turmoil.

"While the DOGE/Trump Musk robust clad concern has created large marque worries for Tesla, we estimation little than 5% of Tesla income globally are astatine hazard from these issues contempt the planetary draconian communicative for Musk," Tesla bull Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities wrote to clients this week.

In the media sector, The Washington Post lost 75,000 integer subscriptions aft its owner, Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos said its sentiment conception would exclusively align with libertarian priorities. Prior to this, the newspaper reportedly mislaid 250,000 of its readers — oregon 10% of its lawsuit basal — aft Bezos blocked its editorial committee from publishing an endorsement of erstwhile Vice President Kamala Harris.

This ongoing concatenation of boycotts, including the Latino Freeze Movement, has acceptable disconnected immoderate alarm bells. RBC Capital Markets managing manager Nik Modi warned clients successful a enactment that “the imaginable ramifications of this backlash should not beryllium downplayed.”

Companies similar Target (TGT), Walmart (WMT), Bezos' Amazon (AMZN), and Coca-Cola (KO) are among those that precocious reversed their stances connected diversity, on with Google (GOOG), Meta (META), and Tractor Supply (TSCO).

Joe Feldman, elder managing manager and adjunct manager of probe with Telsey Advisory Group, told Yahoo Finance that “the interaction connected income and nett is simply a interest arsenic an investor."

Target, successful particular, has go a absorption constituent of the user activistic question arsenic it dialed backmost its pro-diversity, equity, and inclusion policies earlier this year, including ending its Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) initiatives.