What’s the rationale for protesting against the sale of Ivanka Trump products?

While their counterparts in China, Korea, and Taiwan were studying semiconductor physics and integrated circuit fabrication, some of my neighbors were protesting the sale of Ivanka Trump products at a nearby T.J. Maxx.

I’m wondering what the rationale for this is.

Can it be environmentalism? I don’t see how. If the Ivanka-branded products are not sold and worn, additional clothing will have to be manufactured and then shipped from the factory to American retailers.

Can it be a desire to see a Communist-style purge of an entire family if the parents are guilty of heterodoxy? If so, does that conflict with American liberals’ cherished belief in disregarding genetics? If Ivanka is bad because her father is bad, is there a slippery slope via which if an ethnic or racial group in the U.S. exhibits low academic and career achievement then we should expect their children to exhibit low academic and career achievement, even absent prejudice? (see the book White Trash for how resistant Democrats in academia are to this thoughtcrime)

Is it simply to hurt the Trump family financially? How can that work when they already have $4+ billion?

Is it prejudice against women-run companies? They are protesting because they want people to buy clothing from a male designer and/or a male-led clothing brand? (In fact, I think the “Ivanka Trump” label is mostly a licensing arrangement with an established apparel company.)

Readers: What is the point of this?

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36 thoughts on “What’s the rationale for protesting against the sale of Ivanka Trump products?

  1. Pretty sure most of those Asians are too embroiled in cheating scandals to have time for studying semiconductor physics. It’s like you’ve never talked to anyone who has actually worked or taught in these places.

  2. If Ivanka is bad because her father is bad, is there a slippery slope via which if an ethnic or racial group in the U.S. exhibits low academic and career achievement then we should expect their children to exhibit low academic and career achievement, even absent prejudice?

    That’s a strange leap in thinking there to suddenly be concerned about ethnic groups with low academic achievement.

  3. They are operating on the level of feelz and don’t really have a well thought out rationale. The usual American sentiment (up until now) was that elections are won or lost at the ballot box so if you come up short at the ballot box, you regroup and try again at the next election. But (maybe because Hillary was such a “sure thing” ) for some reason this time Democrats can’t bring themselves to accept the results of the election (ironic because they kept asking Trump whether HE would accept the result ) and are “hitting back” in various childish ways.

  4. They are rich so they can’t be hurt financially? I’m sure the East India Company, Sean Quinn, and 50 Cent will be heartened by that news.

    I don’t see the option of this is done to help offset the cross-pollination of money and rent seeking of people in power and their families. That one makes sense to me.

  5. Ivanka is an active part of the current administration. She is accompanying the president, sitting in the presidential chair, meeting foreign dignitaries, etc.

  6. As she is the face of the first family, perhaps it’s a protest against them using the office of the White House to generate profits. If they are as wealthy as they claim, these businesses would be hobbies. I was more concerned with them using ambassadorships as negotiating tools for her in laws business interests.

  7. The left was on the cusp of a permanent victory and it was snatched away by Trump. Many of them only realize this subconsciously. Hillary was going to change the electorate enough with refugees and immigration that a right leaning candidate would never have won again. This was literally the last election where something like Trump was possible. As it is the game has instead gone into overtime and they just might lose. They are quite right to be so upset. They were dealt a serious blow.

  8. Why would a rational, intelligent American study semiconductor physics and integrated circuit fabrication? With a bachelor’s degree, you’re looking at a 5-figure job wearing a bunny suit in a cleanroom all day, and all the graduate spots in those fields are going to overseas students. Worse: even if you do luck into a decent technology niche, how long until it gets offshored?

  9. Can’t but agree with Toucan Sam!
    Always be ready for that snowstorm/blizzard over America: make sure you buy and keep quality snowplows and learn how to use them well to clean up your backyard of all that grey, smelly snow.

  10. Simple. They protest to make the depth and breadth of their objections clear to all.

    Ivanka is half a step removed from DJT. If she stayed in New York and ran her little licensing duchy instead of shadowing her dad at work, she wouldn’t get any flak for it.

    Ironically, Ivanka might be the most respectable influence in DJT’s circles, so the protestations are likely misplaced. But they’re easy, and visible.

  11. Bob writes:

    > Hillary was going to change the electorate enough with refugees and immigration that a right leaning candidate would never have won again

    I’d love to know what propaganda machine delivered that nonsensical notion to your receptive mind.

    Demographics are shifting, yes, but it’s not driven by refugees and immigration. Those numbers don’t even move the needle.

    There are 320 million people in the US. We take in about a million immigrants per year under Obama. We took in more immigrants per year (both as a percentage of population at the time, AND in raw numbers) under Bush I and Bush II than under Clinton or
    Obama.

    So, respectfully, what are your sources for that statement?

  12. Given that around 50% of Americans receive government benefits I would have thought that any US business contributing funds to the treasury is to be welcomed rather than shunned. Any reduction in Ivanka’s business is likely to be bourne by employees and sub-contractors rather than that daughter of a billionaire.

  13. “Demographics are shifting, yes, but it’s not driven by refugees and immigration. Those numbers don’t even move the needle.

    There are 320 million people in the US. ”

    But elections are insanely close in the US for president. That is no accident of course. Big-data and billions of dollars on polling and advertising ensure that modern elections are won by razor margins, with parties putting their advertising dollars and adjusting their platforms just enough to get majority in each subgroup. 15% difference in an election is considered a “landslide”, and the typical difference between the winner and loser is almost statistically insignificant. So importing even a few hundred thousand immigrants can swing a modern US presidential election pretty easily.

  14. It is all about signalling to your friends that you are a moral person, not one of the new Nazis. That’s all. really simple actually. And given the calculated cruelty and pure depravity of the immigrant pogrom sweeping the country right now, not to mention an almost point for point slam-dunk emerging correspondence between Trump and early Hitler, I expect many people feel a compelling need to express some form of resistance.

  15. There is no correspondence between Trump and early Hitler. That sort of derangement is why people are protesting Trump’s totally awesome and super cool daughter Ivanka. Also she is Extremely Attractive and for some reason people have problems with that. Her excellent looks seem to govern the boycotting much more than her father’s politics.

  16. To clarify, I mean that people are getting swept up following deranged ideas such as the one that Trump resembles Hitler rather than his actual inspirations, Eisenhower, Jackson, Grant and Nixon. The emotional hysteria leads them to think protesting Ivanka is meaningful, but it’s only meaningful to demonstrate the power of mass hysteria.

  17. Some representative answers so far:

    > people in power and their families

    > She is accompanying the president

    > she is the face of the first family

    I.e. the answer to “Can it be a desire to see a Communist-style purge
    of an entire family if the parents are guilty of heterodoxy?” is Yes.

    This answer

    > If she stayed in New York and ran her little licensing duchy instead
    > of shadowing her dad at work, she wouldn’t get any flak for it.

    indicates a further resemblance. Family members could sometimes save
    themselves by denouncing their father (husband, brother, etc) to the
    authorities. Ivanka has failed to denounce and therefore shares in the
    guilt.

  18. 1. Ivanka-branded products have been shamelessly promoted through her access to the White House. (Probably illegally.)

    2. By your environmentalism logic, one could never protest against the sale of anything, because not using the environmentally unsafe products would just result in the creation of new products! Recommend you start using up old asbestos, otherwise someone will have to start manufacturing more insulation, which will harm the environment!

    3. Ivanka supported a manchild ignoramus that ran for president using racist and bigoted rhetoric.

    4. The Trump family is worth far less than $4 billion. For rich people the net worth is the “score of the game” that sets the pecking order among other rich people, they are extremely sensitive to financial losses.

    5. I suspect you already knew all of this, but perhaps are hoping to get some alt-views?

  19. Hey , PC, “correspondence” doesn’t mean penpals. Of course they weren’t penpals; Hitler was dead before Trump learned to write. “correspondence” as I used it means things matching up point by point. To wit: Hitler’s police sate matched by Trump’s police state (dire new penalties for any backtalk to the police) , Hitler’s persecutions (gypsies, Jews, homos, people of conscience) matched by Trumps persecutions (blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, people of conscience), Hitler’s press attacks matched by Trumps press attacks, Hitler’s perversions of state power matched by Trump’s perversions of state power Agencies headed by people with the mission to destroy them), Hitler’s disregard for the rule of law matched by Trump’s disregard for the rule of law (pushing Ivana’s brand being just one of many crimes that would have been impeachable offences in any of those administrations that PC pretends that Trump admires (please stop bad mouthing Eisenhower!), even worse Hitler’s use of the law for evil ends is being matched by Trump’s use of the law to evil ends(Hitler-against the law to help a Jew—Trump-against the law to help an immigrant), Hitler’s lust for war matched by (well just look at what Trump said at Netanyahu’s press conference–full on Hitler with Iran the new Poland!). Yeah no Reichstag fire—YET. And of course Conservatives everywhere are sharpening their knives for the coming American KrystalNacht.

    He’s not a Mussolini anymore.

  20. @ZZAZZ – …first as tragedy, then as farce. He’s a better match to Berlusconi. He doesn’t seem to care enough about anything (even himself) to be a Hitler.

  21. “Endorse an a-hole, suffer the consequences. It’s that simple. Don’t be an a-hole.”

    On the other hand, who would trade her family for the approval of the moneyed filth of the world? Her actions are a great sign of good character, now that you’ve put it that way.

  22. Bobby Bob Bob: “Pretty sure most of those Asians are too embroiled in cheating scandals to have time for studying semiconductor physics.”

    I’m not sure most Asians need fluency in this stuff, only enough to run TSMC’s and Samsung’s fabs which make all the chips of such American companies as Apple and Nvidia. If TSMC gets there by cheating, perhaps you can explain how to take a GDS-II file and fraudulently make a few hundred millions chips implementing the given design without your customer or the end users finding out that you cheated.

    If you don’t know of such a method, could it be that Asians are good at some of the things they do, and explaining away their success as cheating is as much a waste of time as protesting Ivanka Trump’s apparel?

  23. Yossi, Obviously Asians can run chip fabs. I’m counter-signaling one of Phil’s strange ticks. He really likes signaling about the superiority of East Asians as studious, rational, and industrious in comparison to frivolous and stupid Americans. This picture is badly at odds with the reality of much higher levels of corruption and cheating, chintzy workmanship and maintenance, and insane voodoo beliefs predominating in China, in particular. Talk to anyone who has taught in China to get a picture of pervasive cheating, and disturbing levels of angry national chauvinism detached from geopolitical reality. Basically the opposite of the contrast Phil tries to draw. The PISA results coming out of China are widely regarded as fake/gamed. I can’t dig it up right now, but there was some serious effort to sample and verify published research results coming out of China and outright data fraud was obviously rife.

  24. @bobbybobbob: I think it’s a valid point that China’s competitiveness in general, and the resulting US trade deficit in particular, in large part follow from currency manipulation, and perhaps differences in labor regulation as well, as opposed to any advantage a Chinese worker has relatively to some other worker, and that Western governments should make an effort to change the situation.

    Furthermore, I think it’s a legitimate choice to not live in a country or to object to immigration from a country or otherwise avoid contact with people from a country for any reason whatsoever. (It is of course false that, as you said elsewhere, America “cannot” have “immigration policies like Israel’s” (which in reality if not on paper are I think far from what you think they are, and I doubt that you’d want a similar policy); America will have whatever its citizens vote for, after Trump was elected running on an anti-immigration platform despite everything his opposition threw at him, I think it’s hard to doubt this.)

    However, I think it’s a stretch to claim that one’s understanding of a country of over a billion people is complete and objective, even if you lived there or talked to people who did. A claim that the Chinese are worse at something than Americans can be settled where you can measure the result, to the extent that you trust the measurement; calling them corrupt does not settle it.

    If you say that Asians can’t do semiconductors because they’re busy cheating, you ought to explain the competitiveness of Samsung and TSMC; if you’re simply annoyed by contrasting “lazy Americans” with “industrious Asians”, I guess I think you have a point, but then why does the counterpoint have to be smearing Asians? (Also the text here merely said that Asian students don’t spend time protesting someone’s apparel; I’m not sure if it’s true but it very well might be, and if it is, indeed here’s something to emulate, IMO.)

    Regarding the “strange tick” – I think it makes sense precisely to the extent that a part of China’s competitiveness is due to something other than an artificially weak currency and the labor conditions. I have no idea what that extent is.

  25. I don’t believe the currency manipulation explanation at all. When Trump talks this aspect up he’s either lying or stupid. The Chinese are currently rapidly burning through their foreign reserves trying to keep the RMB from collapsing; exactly the opposite of what certain people are claiming.

    The main reason we see the trade patterns we do is simply the Triffin paradox with the petro-dollar. Everyone all over the world needs dollars for fuel, and they get them by sending stuff to an America that pays with deficit dollars. The arrangement artificially subsidizes the American standard of living to a massive extent on the one hand, but on the other hand guts the country of a lot of production and know-how, is morally corrosive, and will eventually come to a screeching and disastrous halt.

    The other big reason we see a lot of tech and production in Asia rather than the west is they play sneaky hard-ball with trade whereas we play “fair.” Governments in Japan and Korea and China systematically exclude American products and companies, often through extra-legal means of harassment immune to “trade deals.” They also steal tech and IP. This Trump gets. For a recent example read about how the Chinese government railroaded Uber out of the country after they’d spent a billion dollars and forced them to sell everything to Didi. For another example read about how Japan has steadily stripped Boeing of high tech American production in order to keep JAL and ANA as customers. In return we simply lay out the red carpet for their companies. The solution here is we need to start playing tit for tat. Maybe we can all try to play fair down the road, but right now we’re getting screwed by shrewder governments that collude with industry. A lot of this happened as it did because a substantial class of Americans were getting wealthy off the process and labor took the brunt of the injustice. Also Americans tend to believe in fair play rather than pulling tricks, in a way that most foreigners don’t reciprocate.

    > America “cannot” have “immigration policies like Israel’s”

    Israel is uncritically allowed a set of national policies that recognizes the Jewish people as a distinct identity in need of territory and protection. I wish them well. The instant you claim there even is such a thing as the American people, distinct from citizenship, you will be viciously attacked. All discussions of immigration and related policies *must* be framed in abstract economic terms rather than deal explicitly with the interests of the historic American people and their future as a nation. If you do the latter you’re painted as some sort of evil racist.

  26. > The Chinese are currently rapidly burning through their foreign reserves trying to keep the RMB from collapsing; exactly the opposite of what certain people are claiming.

    True, but they’ve kept their currency weak for a long while in the past.

    > The other big reason we see a lot of tech and production in Asia rather than the west is they play sneaky hard-ball with trade whereas we play “fair.”

    That is very true and it was a mistake on my part to omit it. In general a proper government should insist that they don’t do that as a precondition to a bilateral trade agreement. Things like Uber and FB are a bit special IMO, BTW as the natural outcome with them is becoming a monopoly and then one of the 2 countries (or really N-1 out of N countries) is sort of screwed; I think the solution is regulating such things very differently than they are regulated today but I haven’t thought it through.

    > A lot of this happened as it did because a substantial class of Americans were getting wealthy off the process and labor took the brunt of the injustice. Also Americans tend to believe in fair play rather than pulling tricks, in a way that most foreigners don’t reciprocate.

    The first sentence sounds true, the second sentence is not only another broad smear but also contradicts the first (unless wealthy Americans are completely not representative of Americans or unless you consider their getting wealthy “fair play” more than “a trick they pulled”.)

    > Israel is uncritically allowed a set of national policies that recognizes the Jewish people as a distinct identity in need of territory and protection. I wish them well.

    By “uncritically allowed,” you ought to imply that (1) the endless criticism of Israel in the media doesn’t count as criticism and (2) that it does things a sovereign state should not be “allowed” to do (I guess through trade sanctions or war). You can always elaborate instead of hinting at some unstated presumably nefarious things.

    The Israeli immigration policy is a lot like US policy – one thing on paper and another in practice, with the same illegal foreign workers and importation of voters by politicians that you see in the US (the way Obama prefers Mexicans to Cubans because of who’s more likely to vote for his party.) On paper, US citizenship is very hard to obtain, and illegal immigration and amnesty are not official US policy, it just tends to happen; guess what, in Israel the letter of the law is not what happens, either.

  27. > The instant you claim there even is such a thing as the American people, distinct from citizenship, you will be viciously attacked.

    Incidentally, the US and Israel have unique difficulties in defining what their “peoples” are. Jews are a religion more than a nation, definitely it’s not a single ethnicity, and if you like our shit sandwich better than your own, you can convert and immigrate into Israel. What the American people is, distinct from citizenship, does not sound like a trivial question, either, though since I’m not an American I haven’t thought about that very much.

    > All discussions of immigration and related policies *must* be framed in abstract economic terms rather than deal explicitly with the interests of the historic American people and their future as a nation. If you do the latter you’re painted as some sort of evil racist.

    Actually a lot of people with the opposite views of yours will resent having it framed in economic terms (Ann Coulter wasn’t popular with Bill Maher’s audience for her proposal to choose immigrants who “raise the averages.”) In this sense you and your most staunch opposition are very similar, at least you understand each other very well and look at things from the same angle, just in opposite directions.

    “Painted as a racist” – perhaps, on the other hand “open borders” people are painted by their opposition as race-mixing degenerates, which sorta cancels out; it is true that the racist smears are more prominent in mainstream media than the race-mixing smears, on the other hand you do have very popular media outlets which object to illegal immigration or at least feature voices who do. I’m from Soviet Russia and whatever covert censorship exists in the US, I still say you have a functioning Democracy and can vote whichever way you like and I think you just proved it, and I’m not sure why be a sore winner about it.

    Also – if you say “I don’t want immigration because I want to preserve the character of my country”, painting you as a racist is unfair. But at what point is “painting you as a racist” (maybe not evil, but a racist) an accurate portrait? What do you have to say, for instance about Asians, to qualify?

  28. And another thing regarding say Uber: part of the American “fair play” in this area is the NSA data collection program. Perhaps the Chinese would like to covertly collect data on where their citizens travel themselves but not let Americans covertly collect this data.

  29. Phil,

    I wonder where you get your $4B from? Negative -$1.5B is probably closer to the actual number. How do we know this? Well, if DJT was actually worth any money, he, like all his billionaire appointees, would be all over moving his assets into a blind trust at the peak of asset prices, both real estate and the stock market, in order to indefinitely postpone paying capital gains taxes. Pretty sweet deal offered to federal appointees. Being that he is not doing so can only mean there is nothing to cash out.

    DJT lives by the the motto: when you owe a bank $100 dollars, it’s your problem, when you owe the bank $100 million, it’s the bank’s problem. He is hoping to be back in the green before his term is up.

  30. Andy: Thanks for your estimate of -1.5B. I was relying on Forbes magazine. They estimated $3.7B (net of all debt) in September 2016. See https://www.forbes.com/donald-trump/#1f3cf67b2899

    There has been a huge run-up in stock and other asset prices between Sept 2016 and now, so Trump’s personal assets would be over $4 billion right now if Forbes is correct about the Sept 2016 number. If Trump has been at all thoughtful about estate planning he has presumably been finding ways to transfer valuable assets to his children. So the “Trump family” including Ivanka, Eric, et al., would have at least hundred of millions of dollars in assets beyond Donald Trump’s personal net worth.

    The idea that Trump is broke is, I am sure, an attractive one to many. And it might have been true in the early 1990s after the real estate collapse that started in the late 1980s. But I don’t see how it makes sense in our current environment of high real estate prices. Nor does it square with Trump having relatively recently upgraded to a personal Boeing 757. If he were in trouble he might unload that to a Chinese billionaire and just ride around in his Citation X business jet.

  31. The public display of pettiness is the point itself. It is a form of [threat] signalling used for enforcing political hegemony.

    To explain by comparison: take a man who is dressed extremely formally in a suit with a boring tie everyday you see him. Never an open collar on casual Friday, never a Hawaiian shirt before vacation. Then on day opening day for the Red Sox, completely against character, he is actually wearing an old tattered Sox jersey. Clearly this man is a TRUE fan, as he is openly flaunting a reputation he spent dearly to acquire.

    Now take a [facebook] friend who professes unending tolerance for everybody, unwavering promotion of women in business, how we can’t judge by association, etc. It might seem hypocritical to boycott Ivanka in these given these beleeifs but that is the point: Listener beware! Any associations to Trump immediately terminates all previously advertised values. Kind of like opening an electronic device does to a warranty.

    As is already the case in MA or Hollywood, anyone who voted for the Donald is advised to keep this fact to themselves. If discovered, you won’t necessarily be on the receiving end of a ‘defend your position’ request, more likely you’ll be the victim of snubbings, rumors, and other dark arts practiced by the Real Housewives of MA suburbs. One in three voters still showed up to polls to do this most dastardly act, but the norm that its friendship-ending level offense, is one of the huge political advantages Dems have, and can not be forfeited by “normalizing” this president or his support.

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