Renewed U.S. Tariff Threats Boost Consumers’ Boycott Propensity in Major Global Markets

On April 2, U.S. President Donald Trump declared a national emergency over the U.S. goods trade deficit and rolled out an unprecedented slate of “Liberation Day” tariffs. Faced with pronounced international and business pressure, he quickly issued a 90‑day pause on their implementation, scaling most rates back to 10% while negotiations proceeded (though China remained at higher tariff rates). Trump’s reciprocal tariffs have since swung dramatically — from sweeping threats, to tactical pauses, to renewed global price hikes — all designed to force bilateral deals that favor the United States. Ahead of the looming August 1 reciprocal tariff deadline, our data indicates that Trump’s repeated threats have fueled backlash among global consumers and reignited consumer boycotts targeting U.S. products and travel in key overseas markets.

See our previous memo from June analyzing this data for a sense of which markets saw the highest levels of boycott risk prior to the reciprocal tariffs’ implementation, and which consumer demographics in those markets were most likely to boycott. Fast forward several months, and the risk outlook for U.S. brands doing business in some markets is becoming more fraught. 

Since late April, the share of overseas consumers saying they were decreasing spending with U.S. companies “a lot” declined modestly in many of these markets, including in Canada, China and Germany. But even before President Trump began issuing renewed tariff threats starting on July 7, several major markets saw a rebound in the shares of adults saying they were decreasing spending. Canada, China, Germany and Mexico — all countries with relatively large populations and strong U.S. brand presence — are among those that have seen renewed consumer intent to decrease spending with U.S. brands, specifically in response to the Trump tariffs. 

Furthermore, there has been an uptick in the shares of consumers saying they had not yet started avoiding U.S. brands, but were considering doing so. We see this especially in markets that have not witnessed large boycotts thus far, like wealthy East Asian markets including Japan and South Korea. By contrast, the share of consumers who say they are considering decreasing their spending on U.S. brands is very low in markets like Canada where a large proportion of consumers were already eschewing them. As a silver lining, consumers in markets like France and the United Kingdom both show lower boycott risk compared to April and lower consideration of future boycotts. In the case of the United Kingdom, President Trump’s decision to apply relatively low tariffs to U.K. imports is likely partly to thank. By contrast, French consumers may have been counting on a similarly favorable outcome, only to see 15% tariffs materialize earlier this week as part of larger E.U. negotiations.  

One of these things is not like the others: the curious case of Brazil

Brazil jumps out on the above chart. While Brazil resembled most other markets with regard to the share of consumers who said they have already decreased their spending with U.S. companies by a lot through mid-June, Brazilian consumers have recently become much more likely to say they are considering decreasing their spending with U.S. brands. In fact, they are now among the most likely to say so compared with consumers in any other market we examine. And their favorability toward the United States has meanwhile plummeted (chart below).

The explanation is in plain sight: Trump has recently escalated tensions with Brazil over its prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro, whom Trump has called "a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World" and defended as being targeted in a "witch hunt." Then, in July 2025, Trump announced a 50% tariff on all Brazilian imports starting August 1, explicitly linking the measure to Brazil's treatment of Bolsonaro, a right-wing figure often likened to Trump himself. 

How brands should prepare

As the August 1 reciprocal tariff deadline approaches, ongoing uncertainty about what tariff rates will ultimately materialize continues to shape consumer sentiment toward U.S. companies worldwide, putting them at heightened risk for consumer boycotts in a number of markets. While initial boycott momentum had begun to fade in the middle of Q2, the latest round of U.S. tariff threats has reignited consumers’ intent to continue or start decreasing their spending with U.S. brands, particularly in countries like Canada, China, Germany and Mexico, while Brazil stands out for its especially sharp rise in future boycott consideration. 

Where do things go from here? After August 1, we expect sentiment toward U.S. brands to remain depressed for some time among consumers in overseas markets that are hit with tariffs. Because the recent decline in the United States' global reputation that we've documented in our data over 2025/YTD was partially, but not entirely, attributable to U.S. tariff policy, we anticipate that as long as the United States continues to reconfigure its foreign policy under President Trump, global consumers will continue to reassess their views of the United States’ role — and by extension U.S. companies’ role — in the world.  We advise paying particular attention to major European markets and China — both of which still have ongoing trade negotiations covering tariffs for specific sectors (like pharmaceuticals in the case of the former) and both sector-specific and universal tariffs (in the case of the latter) — in the weeks and months ahead. 

Beyond the August 1 deadline, U.S. companies can leverage Morning Consult Intelligence to monitor these shifts in real time and identify which brands are most at risk in specific markets among consumers overall or among various subsets of them.