Research: Navigating the Business Risks of Changing Pro-America Sentiment

In 2010, Mark Andol opened a retail shop in Elma, New York, with a strict rule: If a product wasn’t made in the United States, it didn’t go on the shelves. Even the hangers and packaging glue had to be American-made. For Andol, “Made in USA” meant more than a label; it was a moral imperative—a response to the factory closures and offshoring he believed had hollowed out his community. His store used slogans like “China is a long drive to work!” and “For Country, Soldier, American worker, and Our Children of Tomorrow.”

Andol was not alone. Over the past two decades, a “Buy American” movement emerged among a loose but growing network of businesses, consumers, and advocacy groups promoting the purchase of domestically manufactured goods through pro-America language. It has grown rapidly in its ideological intensity and industry scope, from heavy manufacturing to consumer brands. Such economic nationalism has been around for centuries: It reaches back to Revolutionary-era boycotts of British imports and runs through the Great Depression, anti-Japan backlash, and post-NAFTA fights. But earlier waves were largely driven by governments, unions, and political elites. This one has been propelled by entrepreneurs and consumer activists.

In our research, we examined how pro-America sentiment among businesses has changed during this period. We compiled a dataset of 5,355 firms from 633 consumer-curated “Made in USA” lists and tracked 258,374 versions of their websites over time, including merchant information and identity narratives. We found a notable shift from patriotism and pride toward “us versus them” nationalism.

For companies, this shift creates both opportunity and risk. Pro-America messaging can open new revenue streams and forge loyal stakeholder bases. But once a message is absorbed into larger political movements, the company may lose control of its own narrative. Companies that avoid such positioning are not immune: they, too, can become entangled in narratives they never sought to join.

In this piece, we draw on our study to help U.S. companies map their exposure to potential risks.

The Complexities of Engaging with Pro-America Sentiment

Nationalism stems from identification with a national community: the desire to connect with, gain esteem from, and champion a group that shares a common history, culture, and place. Patriotism, which is the pride in one’s country and fellow citizens, is one expression of that identification. But when people perceive their economic standing or way of life to be under threat, pride can give way to grievance, resentment, or hostility toward perceived outsiders. A nationalist movement emerges when that shared identity is mobilized collectively—when businesses, consumers, and political actors organize around the idea that the national community’s interests must be asserted in public and economic life.

Recent research shows that companies have long associated nationalism with the “liability of foreignness”—problems multinational enterprises face abroad, especially in developing countries. But this view is too narrow. Patriotic and nationalist sentiment has become a powerful domestic force within the American commercial ecosystem, rooted in social grievances and sharpened by political polarization.

Since 2000, the number of companies using pro-national themes online has tripped, with more and more labeling of “Proudly Made in USA.” Much of that growth came after key political-economic shocks. After the 2008 Great Recession, grievance-based narratives focused on job loss, anti-foreign sentiment, and manufacturing revival gained force. After 2015, the movement expanded further as those appeals became more closely tied to electoral politics and “us versus them” nationalism.

For businesses, the implications are profound. A company may intend “Made in USA” as a straightforward marketing claim. But audiences may read domestic sourcing, American flags, worker imagery, or pro-America slogans as signals of where the firm stands on larger questions of identity and allegiance. Once that happens, the message is no longer entirely the company’s own; consumers, media, activists, and political actors may assign it meanings the firm never intended.

Nationalism Risk Matrix: Where Do You Stand?

Whether you run a multinational, a domestic manufacturer, or a consumer-facing brand, you can map your exposure to these risks along two dimensions:

Domestic embeddedness: The material depth of a firm’s integration into its home-country economy, reflected in domestic sourcing and production, workforce training, R&D collaborations, and sustained ties to local and regional communities.

Symbolic intensity: The moral and political weight of nationalism attached to a firm’s corporate identity, shaped by the firm’s own signals—flags, slogans, nationalist language, partisan associations—and by how audiences interpret them.

To assess exposure, ask: Where would your stakeholders say your value is created, and what would they infer from your language, imagery, partnerships, and supply-chain choices? Together, these dimensions create four positions:

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1. Global Optimizers: Low Embeddedness, Low Symbolic Intensity

Global optimizers avoid nationalist messaging and depend heavily on cross-border resources. Yet in grievance-driven markets, foreignness itself can be narrated as betrayal. When Carrier announced plans in 2016 to move part of its Indiana production to Monterrey, Mexico, a cost-driven decision quickly became a viral flashpoint and a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, where it was cast as a symbol of elite indifference and national betrayal.

Strategic imperative: Pre-emptive legibility

Don’t wait for the accusation. Make your domestic contributions easy to see before critics define your foreign entanglements. Leaders can:

• Build an “evidence pack” of domestic contributions: American jobs, local suppliers, domestic R&D, and community ties. Toyota has long practiced this under the principle of “build where we sell,” publicizing nearly $60 billion in U.S. investment and 48,000 American employees across 11 manufacturing plants, making its domestic footprint visible before critics could reduce it to its Japanese origins.
• Stress-test major operational moves for identity risk: not only cost and resilience, but also how the move could be narrated—and by whom.
• Invest in credible local validators, including suppliers, workforce partners, and community institutions. They can speak for your domestic footprint when the narrative turns.

2. Quiet Builders: High Embeddedness, Low Symbolic Intensity

Quiet Builders have substantial domestic operations but don’t market themselves as nationalists. They may mention U.S. production the way All-Clad emphasizes craftsmanship in cookware made at its Pennsylvania mill, which is a capability story, not a political stance. Our research suggests this is usually the safest position: embedded enough to substantiate domestic claims, but restrained enough to avoid symbolic targeting.

Strategic imperative: Guardrails

The risk here is meaning drift. As nationalism becomes more salient, outside actors may try to recruit you into the movement—“you’re one of us.” In 2017, a single board member’s personal donation to a pro-Trump PAC was enough for President Trump to publicly urge Americans to “Buy L.L. Bean,” drafting the apolitical retailer into a cause it had never sought to join. In 2016, New Balance saw a routine trade policy comment spiral into crisis when a VP’s remarks about tariffs were cast as support for President Trump’s trade policy, prompting boycotts and an unwanted embrace from partisan activists.

The leadership task is to set boundaries early. Leaders can:

• Define what language you will and won’t use, what affiliations you’ll avoid, and who can approve exceptions.
• Communicate domestic operations in capability terms—quality, safety, resilience—backed by data, not ideology.
• Implement a lightweight monitoring routine for meaning drift: track how others reframe your brand and decisions, then calibrate or draw boundaries early.

3. Patriotic Vanguards: High Embeddedness, High Symbolic Intensity

Patriotic vanguards build strategy around both domestic capability and an explicitly nationalist identity. In our data, this quadrant grew fastest after the 2008 Great Recession, as narratives of manufacturing revival and job loss surged.

Strategic imperative: Discipline

The opportunity is real: nationalist positioning can foster strong stakeholder loyalty. Mark Andol’s Made in America Store opened in 2010 with just 50 products in a vacant auto dealership. By 2024, before his death in 2025, it stocked 15,000 products from more than 500 American manufacturers and had attracted more than 1,500 busloads of shoppers.

The risk is the purity spiral.  Once you take a nationalist position, supporters may reward ever-stronger signals, raising expectations for what counts as proof of nationalist allegiance. In 2017, President Trump praised Harley-Davidson as “a true American icon.” But when Harley announced plans to shift some production overseas to avoid European retaliatory tariffs, he endorsed a growing boycott, tweeting “Great!” in response to reports that Harley owners planned to abandon the brand.

To keep control, leaders can:

• Translate identity claims into measurable standards—domestic content thresholds, audits, supplier selection criteria—and publish them, along with approval rules for partnerships and endorsements, red lines for affiliation, and definitions of what counts as national contribution.
• Separate pro-domestic welfare goals from culture-war signals that imply partisan allegiance. Such welfare goals can include creating jobs, building skills, and strengthening resilience.
• Scenario-plan for the moment you have to say “no” to a would-be ally, and how to explain it without triggering a betrayal narrative.

4. Symbolic Nationalists: Low Embeddedness, High Symbolic Intensity

This is the most precarious position: leaning on nationalist symbolism without a deep domestic material base. In our study, firms in this quadrant expanded after the 2016 presidential election, especially in consumer-facing sectors. Strikingly, consumer lists and forums increasingly included businesses less for their manufacturing origins than for their partisan alignment.

Black Rifle Coffee Company’s experience illustrates both the upside and the risk of this quadrant. The company does not hide that its beans aren’t grown in the U.S.; its FAQ page notes that it imports from Colombia and Brazil, and product pages list source countries for each roast. Yet it has built a massive following—and appeared on multiple consumer-curated “Buy American” lists—through values-based alignment with support for military veterans and conservative politics, especially gun rights.

But the company also shows how quickly symbolic control can erode. In 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot three people during unrest in Wisconsin, was photographed in a Black Rifle shirt. In January 2021, rioters breached the U.S. Capitol while wearing the company’s gear.  When the founder tried to draw boundaries against extremism, the backlash was immediate: hardline supporters framed the move as betrayal, labeling the company “Republicans in Name Only (RINO)” and launching counter-boycotts.

Symbolic gestures can also create legal risk. Walmart’s high-profile “Made in America” pledge to source $250 billion in U.S.-made goods by 2023 drew criticism because those purchases represented only a small share of overall sales and its supply chain remained heavily import-dependent. The criticism escalated into FTC complaints and class-action litigation.

Strategic imperative: Close the gap

Once your brand becomes a political symbol, supporters may demand increasingly stringent proof of loyalty and punish deviation, while alienating those who disagree with the political cause. Leaders can:

• Be radically transparent about what you mean and do not mean by being patriotic—for example, that your brand supports domestic manufacturing, not any political party.
• Tighten controls on how partners, influencers, and affiliates use your brand. Audit how they represent you, and act quickly when your products or logo appear in unauthorized political contexts.
• Prepare an exit ramp: language that lets you reset identity cues without seeming to repudiate your customers. Such resets are rare and difficult, but New Balance’s response—a Quiet Builder pulled into this dynamic in 2016—offers one useful clue: reframe the issue as bipartisan, anchor in substance (“we want to make more shoes in the United States, not less”), and connect the national claim to a broader value, such as community. The principle is to expand what the brand means so stakeholders can follow the transition rather than feel abandoned.

Ultimately, success in any of these quadrants depends on maintaining coherence between a firm’s actions and its statements. If that gap widens, the risk grows.

While we draw on U.S. data, similar nationalist movements have emerged worldwide, from China’s guochao (“China-chic”) trend to India’s “Vocal for Local” campaign. Across contexts, national labels rarely remain simple markers of production origin. In geopolitically charged moments, even supply-chain stances can become loyalty tests, as seen in South Korea’s 2019 “No Japan” boycotts and in Chinese consumer backlash against Western brands that restricted or questioned the use of Xinjiang cotton.

At the same time, not all nationalist claims evolve in the same way. Drift accelerates when labels are loosely defined, gatekeepers are weak or contested, and ambiguity invites competing interpretations. Where standards and certification systems are clear, meanings can be more stable, even if policing remains intense.

. . .

Nationalism is no longer something U.S. firms encounter in foreign markets. It now operates inside the domestic marketplace, shaping how ordinary business decisions are interpreted, moralized, and politicized. “Buy American” has become a contested identity claim, co-produced by firms and audiences who argue over what counts as loyalty, authenticity, and betrayal. Once symbolic stakes are activated, managerial control can erode quickly.

The firms that navigate this environment best will understand their position in this new landscape, recognize the gap between what they do operationally and what they signal symbolically, and govern that gap carefully. Manage this risk now—before you are forced to improvise.