Ben & Jerry’s Loses Billions in Stock Value Amid Boycott Calls

Unilever stock lost about $2 billion in market capitalization amid calls to boycott Ben & Jerry’s ice cream after the company posted a Fourth of July message saying the United States should hand Mount Rushmore over to Native Americans.

Shares of Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch multinational company, dropped about 0.5 percent on Friday, 0.8 percent on Thursday, and 0.5 the previous day. It’s not clear if the drop was due to the calls to boycott Ben & Jerry’s, which has been owned by Unilever since 2000.

It all started when the Vermont-based ice cream company wrote that “this 4th of July, it’s high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it,” before it posted a link to a blog post asserting that the United States hand back the famed national monument with four presidents to native tribal assets.

“The faces on Mount Rushmore are the faces of men who actively worked to destroy Indigenous cultures and ways of life, to deny Indigenous people their basic rights,” the post alleged.

A number of people on the platform, including prominent conservatives, called for a boycott.

“Make @benndjerrys Bud Light again,” country singer-songwriter John Rich wrote in response, responding to the several-week-long boycott targeting Bud Light that has seen the beer company’s year-over-year sales plummet. While Bud Light didn’t attack the founding of the United States, the company was panned for producing a can of beer with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney’s face on it.

“Long overdue for the Bud Light treatment. You hate the country, fine. We won’t buy your product. All good,” another wrote in response. “When is Ben & Jerry’s giving up their land?” Jenna Ellis, a former attorney to President Donald Trump, wrote on Twitter.

Several newspapers like the New York Post and Washington Examiner, too, called for a consumer-led boycott after the Twitter post.

By Jack Phillips

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