Why Are We Boycotting Starbucks?
Tiktok Activism at It's Finest
Recently on the internet, many people have been calling to boycott Starbucks for their alleged involvement with Israel. The boycotts are actually working too, having at least partially caused an $11 billion dollar loss in value. However, after looking into their involvement, it seems there are no significant ties at all. In this article, I will look into the claims and where they stemmed from, and get to the bottom of what seems to be online political fervor.
DISCLAIMER: Obviously, boycotts are politically effective; however, I think that if you are going to boycott Starbucks for their support of Israel, they should probably actually be supporting Israel.
Firstly, the extreme claim that Starbucks is directly funding Israel does not seem to be true. Of course, if presented with information to the contrary, I will accept it, but at this point, I have found nothing supporting that claim. The onus is on the people making the positive claim that they are funding them. Starbucks has also come out and said that they do not use their profits to fund any government operations, which is shown below.
Now, another argument is that Starbucks is supporting Israel because their investors support Israel, which is a wildly different claim than Starbucks supporting genocide or funding Israel. The name I’ve seen brought up the most is BlackRock, a multinational investment company. Now, I won’t act like I’m an expert in finance, but from my understanding, BlackRock does not make money from the companies they invest in, they just collect fees from investors. So when you look at BlackRock ownership in a certain company, it's not that BlackRock itself owns it and is profiting off the success of the company, but rather the people who invest in those BlackRock funds. So it seems that even though BlackRock funds include many companies who may or may not support Israel, there is no link between Starbucks, BlackRock, and those other companies. So, it doesn’t seem to be the case that BlackRock profits off the portion of Starbucks they hold, but rather that money from the shares goes to the people holding investments in the BlackRock funds. Again, I AM NOT A FINANCE EXPERT! If I am wrong about this, please correct me. But, assuming this is the case, this means that buying from Starbucks is not indirectly funding Israel through its investors.
Another argument I have seen in the area of investors is the claim that former Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz, financially supports Israel; and since he still holds shares of Starbucks, you are supporting Israel by supporting Starbucks. This is 99% percent incorrect. The idea that Schultz uses Starbucks funds to support Israel is based off of a fabricated newsletter from Shultz that claims your money spent at Starbucks is a contribution to Israel. On top of that, Starbucks said that, “neither Starbucks nor the company's chairman, president and CEO Howard Schultz provide financial support to the Israeli government and/or the Israeli Army in any way"1. The closest thing to an investment into Israel from Schultz is his investment in cybersecurity startup Wiz, which is based in Israel. So although he is not directly funding Israel’s war efforts necessarily, you could argue he is bolstering their economy by investing in this company since it is based in Israel; you have to admit this is a crazy stretch though. So, to sum it up, investors like Blackrock aren’t necessarily supporting Israel’s war efforts, and neither is the former CEO Howard Schultz.2
Lastly, some people are justifying the boycott because Starbucks filed a lawsuit against Workers United after the Starbucks Workers United Twitter account tweeted in solidarity with Palestine following the attacks on October 7. They are suing for trademark infringement. According to the AP3, Starbucks also said that the union’s post caused a hostile work environment through hostile customers and phone calls. Now, I think it is reasonable for a company to want to distance itself from controversial political topics, especially when it is causing people to vandalize the stores. This is something I believe we should expect and encourage as the only purpose they need to serve is to provide us with a product. Let’s be honest, any time a company decides to take a stance on a political issue, it’s probably because it will bolster its sales. Starbucks suing the union here does not at all mean that Starbucks is pro-Israel, saying so would be quite a leap. You shouldn’t expect your favorite company to take a stance on any given issue.
So to sum it up, there seems to be no evidence that Starbucks is directly funding or supporting Israel. Starbucks has come out and said that they are not. Starbucks’ investors like BlackRock and former CEO Howard Schultz are also not funding Israel. And finally, it seems like a stretch to say that Starbucks distancing itself from a union tweet, and suing them for trademark infringement means that they are supporting Israel, or is even against Palestinians. Please be critical about what you support, especially if you want to propagate it further, or you can end up in a situation like this where it seems people are caught up in a protest created from completely fabricated grounds.
If you have any other angles supporting the boycott of Starbucks that you feel I have missed, or feel that I have any weak or unsubstantiated arguments, please let me know, especially regarding the finance/investors stuff.