Why some want an Estée Lauder boycott amid Trump’s Greenland threats

U.S.-based Estée Lauder is the flagship brand and parent company of Clinique, MAC Cosmetics, Bobbi Brown, Jo Malone London, Aveda and Tom Ford among dozens of others.

As U.S. President Donald Trump continues his push to acquire Greenland, there is talk on social media about whether consumers should boycott products made by the cosmetics company Estée Lauder and its affiliate brands in response.

Since Jan. 15, and especially over the weekend of Jan. 17 and Jan. 18, there have been spikes in postings on social media pushing for this new boycott of Estée Lauder, according to Google Trends analytics.

Some of these posts, including on Reddit,  X (formerly Twitter) and Bluesky feature users reacting to a report published by The Guardian on Jan. 15 that American businessman Ronald Lauder, the heir to the Estée Lauder company, was an alleged advocate of Trump’s plans during his first term to take over the Danish territory.

U.S.-based Estée Lauder is the flagship brand and parent company of Clinique, MAC Cosmetics, Bobbi Brown, Jo Malone London, Aveda and Tom Ford, among dozens of others.

While it remains to be seen if the calls for a boycott will spur results, it comes amid a broader trend of consumers being more patriotic when spending their money, including with the Buy Canadian movement in response to the U.S. trade war and rhetoric that Canada should become the “51st state.”

“Consumers are operating today with a tremendous deficit of trust, and when instances like this come along, it just sort of reinforces that lack of trust in society and it really creates a situation where consumers feel the need in any way they can to fight back and to punish companies for violating that trust,” says Doug Stephens, a retail analyst at Retail Prophet.

“The degree to which the American economy relies on Canadian consumption, you could argue that our consumer power is stronger and more formidable than our military power. Donald Trump seems to have forgotten the degree to which U.S. businesses are dependent on the global market for their success.”

John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser,was quoted by The Guardian in that report as describing a 2018 encounter with Lauder, when Trump was in his first term.