Counter/Consensus: Jobs and Tariffs, Global Consumer Boycotts, U.S.-India Relations and Palestinian Statehood

1. Jobs & Tariffs (Counter):

A labor of love. Republican consumers continue to buy into the Trump administration’s narrative that tariffs will help to revitalize domestic manufacturing sector employment as U.S. reciprocal tariffs begin to roll out. Per the latest update of our U.S. tariff sentiment tracker — which uses trended survey data collected just before the administration’s Aug. 1 reciprocal tariff announcements — Republicans (first chart below) continue to say that U.S. tariffs will yield net benefits for manufacturing workers, alongside benefits for the government and politicians, big corporations, and the economy as a whole. While Democrats (second chart below) and independents (see tracker) continue to feel that tariffs harm most groups we ask about, the fact that Republicans see benefits for more groups than not continues to affirm our view that the administration is unlikely to do an about-face on the latest tariffs anytime soon, TACO trade be damned.

The Trump administration’s reciprocal tariff rollout comes alongside a July jobs report that widely missed job growth expectations amid sharp revisions to earlier months and a bump in unemployment. Though it’s far from the only driver, tariff-related uncertainty — alongside curtained immigration, federal workforce reductions, and AI advancements — may be doing some of the work. 

But for tariff detractors wondering if cracks in the labor market could cause America’s most fervent tariff supporters to sharply change their tune or otherwise provide a silver bullet for anti-tariff advocacy in Washington, we view this as a long shot. At the moment, U.S. consumers are less concerned about tariffs’ perceived impact on the job market — specifically job prospects and job stability — compared with any other item we test. Instead, concerns about savings, prices, and product availability predominate. 

The skew in sentiment surrounding tariffs and the job market is even starker among Republicans: While 27% of U.S. adults overall say they are “very concerned” about tariffs’ impact on jobs, only 21% of Republicans say the same, compared with 28% of Independents and 34% of Democrats. The same relative ordering holds when looking at the corresponding shares who say they are “somewhat concerned.”

Lest we get ahead of our skis, there are a few caveats worth noting. First, the July jobs report came out shortly after we finished fielding our latest tariff survey, so we expect its impact on job-related tariff sentiment to become clearer in the weeks ahead. Even so, the fact that job market worries rank at the very bottom of consumers’ tariff concerns leads us to believe that last month’s jobs report is unlikely to shift the needle very much in the days immediately ahead, and that corporates keeping an eye on anti-tariff advocacy opportunities should continue looking elsewhere.

Second, and more broadly, we continue to see an extremely close relationship between Americans’ approval of Trump’s handling of the economy and his handling of trade, as our Head of U.S. Analysis highlighted in an edition of this week’s Politics briefing (you can sign up for free here). While U.S. voters have been fixated on inflation for years, should the current cracks in the labor market turn into crevasses, one could envision a scenario where all three issues become increasingly tightly intertwined, in which case sentiment among Republicans could shift and give the administration greater pause on the tariff front. But we think there’s still a fair amount of room to fall before we end up there.

2. U.S. Brand Boycotts (Consensus):

Buoyant boycotts. Impending U.S. reciprocal tariffs may not be rankling President Trump’s base yet — neither as voters nor consumers — but for U.S. companies concerned about negative reactions among global consumers, new storm clouds are on the horizon. 

As we noted in a memo we published one day ahead of the Aug. 1 reciprocal tariff announcements, the share of overseas consumers who say they are decreasing spending with U.S. brands by “a lot” or are “considering doing so” specifically in response to the Trump tariffs — our proxy for related global consumer boycott risks affecting U.S. brands — is again on the rise in major markets. With those tariffs now beginning to roll out across many of them, we expect boycott risk to continue rising. 

As we discuss in the memo, the uptick in the shares of consumers who say they are reducing spending “a lot” has been most pronounced in a handful of markets. These include Canada, China, Germany and Mexico, alongside Brazil, which saw a particularly sharp rise in boycott consideration following Trump’s sparring with the Brazilian government over former President Jair Bolsonaro’s coup plot trial (and simultaneous U.S. tariff imposition).

At the moment, not all the news is overtly bad for U.S. brands. But it’s also not exceptionally clear-cut, raising uncertainty for corporates. For example, in some large markets like France and Japan, the shares of consumers saying they’ve reduced spending on U.S. brands by “a lot” have trended sideways in the run-up to the latest reciprocal tariff announcements. And in the United Kingdom, which won a relatively favorable tariff deal earlier on, the share saying so has actually declined. But this rosier outlook should be balanced against the fact that the shares who say they are “considering” reducing their spending on U.S. brands are again rising in all three markets (see memo for details), suggesting some consumers were in wait-and-see mode ahead of the formal Aug. 1 announcements. Conversely, while Mexico and Canada both showed a bump in the share of consumers who said they were decreasing spending on U.S. brands “a lot” in mid-July, the shares who said they are “considering doing so” were a little steadier in that timeframe.

Looking ahead, we expect to see more pronounced movement in these data series now that the long-awaited U.S. reciprocal tariffs have begun to roll out, which should help to provide clearer signals to U.S. brands navigating overseas boycott risks. For the moment, we expect that boycott risk will see a near-term rise in major consumer markets, followed by a longer-term plateau as global consumers begin to price in the tariffs’ impact, mirroring trends in our data on global consumers’ favorability toward the United States since the onset of the latest trade war (see here). But if our latest readings on America’s reputation among global consumers are any guide, we think U.S. brands will be waiting a while longer before the tariff-related bump in boycott risk subsides.

3. U.S.-India Relations (Consensus):

Karma’s a… . While many countries’ publics and political leaders were mentally prepared for last week’s reciprocal tariff onslaught, several others were not. Chief among them was India, which saw its exports hit with 25% tariffs despite months of negotiations, with even higher rates waiting in the wings at the time of writing. The fact that India’s nemesis, Pakistan, saw its exports targeted with a somewhat lower rate of 19% alongside garments exports competitor Bangladesh did not go unnoticed in the Indian press. In addition to calling out India for being a “tariff king,” U.S. President Trump has also lambasted it for buying Russian oil and weapons. In response, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose administration was already chafing at Trump’s claims that he resolved the India-Pakistan military conflict in May of this year, urged his constituents to buy local and indicated that Russian oil purchases would continue. 

As we’ve noted previously, the Trump tariffs and the resentment they’ve produced in India and elsewhere are making for strange geopolitical bedfellows (at least as far as public opinion is concerned), with many countries now developing increasingly unfavorable views of the United States and increasingly favorable views of China. India is no exception. Per our daily survey data, net favorability toward the United States among Indian adults is at a tracking low after a sharp fall over 2025 — with another precipitous decline emerging over roughly the past week on the back of the latest tariff news — while favorability toward China is at a tracking high (see our most recent analysis of the latter here).

If geopolitical and market realities are any guide, we think it’s ultimately India that may have the upper hand. America’s geopolitical qualms with New Delhi turning to Moscow for oil and arms — part of a broader non-alignment strategy that India has long embraced — are nothing new, and India has often been able to turn the United States’ interest in building up a stronger South Asian bulwark against China to its advantage. New Delhi’s purchase of the S-400 air defense system from Russia in defiance of potential U.S. CAATSA sanctions — a saga that spanned both Trump 1.0 and the Biden administration and ultimately saw India emerge unscathed (at least for now) — is a clear example of this, with the system being used most recently to deter Pakistani drone attacks in May. And on the market realities side of the ledger, India is becoming an increasingly hot supply chain destination for U.S. companies like Apple, some of whom were looking to reroute their supply chains out of China (Trump’s Enemy No. 1 as far as tariffs are concerned) even before Washington slapped Beijing with repeated waves of duties earlier this year.

The latest U.S. reciprocal tariffs targeting India are at cross-purposes on both fronts, simultaneously dampening America’s ability to nudge India away from China (particularly during a period of relative calm in a long-running bilateral border dispute) while posing potential barriers to trade diversion by U.S. companies (i.e. out of China and into India) that should be in Washington’s geopolitical interest. 

Trade negotiations between Washington and New Delhi are ongoing and expected to resume in earnest later this month. For U.S. companies watching the drama unfold and keeping an eye on the potential implications for supply chains (likely to be more pronounced for some sectors than others due to various tariff exemptions, particularly in the electronics sector) and Indians’ consumption of U.S. goods, we see relatively strong incentives for Washington to make a deal.

4. Palestine (Consensus):

The enemy of my frenemy. France, the United Kingdom and Canada have signalled their intent to recognize Palestinian statehood as early as next week. While high profile, these moves are more a rebuke of Israel and the United States than an endorsement of Palestine as a state. While public favorability of Palestine has moved positively as the world watches the current situation with growing sympathy for the Palestinians, it remains net negative in all three of these key U.S. allies who may nonetheless recognize it as a state in coming weeks. Notably, views of Palestine have similarly improved in the United States.

Similarly, all of those countries’ populations held net negative views of Israel in November 2023, which have merely intensified in the years since (charts below). 

As images coming out of the Palestinian territories become ever grimmer, states may use recognition of Palestine as a low-cost signal of displeasure with Israel’s land campaign and with the United States’ seemingly unconditional support for Netanyahu. Views of Israel have declined by a lot in recent years, in an inverse of the picture for Palestine. Namely, views of Israel have worsened over all, but have generally remained net positive or net negative within a given country. (For example, views of Israel in the United States have dimmed, but remain net positive.) 

For France, the United Kingdom and Canada, recognition of Palestine may serve to placate parts of their domestic constituencies calling for more action to stop the humanitarian tragedy underway, or signal meaningful support for a two-state solution. Critics, for their part, say these moves strengthen Hamas. Pointing to Oct. 7, they question whether giving Hamas the legitimacy of sovereignty won’t lead to more future conflict. 

Commentary around recognition by these and other important geopolitical players notes that it would leave the United States isolated in the U.N. Security Council and should trigger obligations in organizations like the International Criminal Court (ICC). In practice, however, these organizations tend to reflect power politics, and little is likely to change. France and the United Kingdom, for their part, could have used their veto in the Security Council in the past, but they typically choose to abstain rather than displease their trans-Atlantic ally. This makes recognition of Palestine, even by powerful countries like these, largely symbolic and unlikely to have any immediate impact. Symbols can and do matter in international affairs, but neither Trump nor Netanyahu seems particularly open to moral suasion at the moment. If talk is cheap, diplomatic recognition costs only pennies more.

Contact us for a confidential briefing on brand- and market-specific dynamics, and to discuss opportunities to leverage our daily Intelligence data to safeguard your brand.