{"id":14714,"date":"2016-11-11T05:28:22","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T05:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=14714"},"modified":"2016-11-11T05:28:22","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T05:28:22","slug":"new-balance-faces-social-media-backlash-after-welcoming-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/new-balance-faces-social-media-backlash-after-welcoming-trump.html","title":{"rendered":"New Balance Faces Social Media Backlash After Welcoming Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 18pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\">New Balance Faces Social Media Backlash After Welcoming Trump<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>New Balance Faces Social Media Backlash After Welcoming Trump:-<\/strong> New Balance Athletic Inc. may be the first corporation to get hit by backlash against President-elect Donald Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The privately held sneaker company\u2014long an opponent of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement\u2014welcomed the election of Mr. Trump as a reprieve from the policies of President Barack Obama.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cThe Obama administration turned a deaf ear to us and frankly, with President-elect Trump, we feel things are going to move in the right direction,\u201d Matthew LeBretton, New Balance\u2019s vice president of public affairs, said in an interview on Wednesday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The comments sparked controversy on social media, with hundreds of users posting on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram that they would throw out their sneakers or boycott the brand. Some posted videos setting their shoes on fire. Others uploaded photos of the shoes in the garbage.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cI back your stance on the TPP but to support a hate monger like Donald Trump is disheartening,\u201d wrote Instagram user \u201cinasentimentalmood\u201d on the New Balance account. \u201cI believe I\u2019ve bought my last pair.\u201c The comments were posted beneath a statement by New Balance that the company believes \u201din acting with the utmost integrity and we welcome all walks of life.\u201dc<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Others, meanwhile, expressed support for New Balance and its stance against TPP. On the brand\u2019s Facebook page, user Matty Hervey wrote: \u201cI am not a Trump supporter, I didn\u2019t vote for him, and I don\u2019t like him. Knowing that NB opposes the TPP is a reason to support them and I will buy my athletic shoes from them from now on.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The Boston-based footwear maker, which operates five factories with about 1,400 employees in New England, has opposed the trans-Pacific free-trade agreement for jeopardizing its domestic manufacturing while rewarding rivals that rely more heavily on overseas production.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cAs the only major company that still makes athletic shoes in the United States, New Balance has a unique perspective on trade in that we want to make more shoes in the United States, not less,\u201d the company said in a statement Thursday. It said it continues to support the trade positions of Mr. Trump as well as those of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Mr. Trump has been a staunch opponent to free trade agreements, and has said he would use his first days in office to reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement and drop consideration of TPP. President Obama has said he hopes to pursue a long-shot bid at bringing the 12-nation TPP agreement to a congressional vote during his final weeks in office.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Free trade has been a contentious issue in sportswear manufacturing. Nike Inc., the world-wide industry leader, has been a very public proponent of TPP and hosted Mr. Obama at company headquarters in 2015 as the president was building support for the deal. Nike depends heavily on overseas factories, and the company stands to benefit from proposed lowered tariffs on imports of footwear. The Beaverton, Ore.-based company has said the passage of TPP would ease its ability to bring 10,000 manufacturing jobs to the U.S.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">On Wednesday, Nike reiterated its support for the deal and said in a statement that \u201cthe Obama Administration and Congressional leadership will determine the appropriate course of action on TPP.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 8pt;\">Source:-\u00a0http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/new-balance-faces-social-media-backlash-after-welcoming-trump-1478823102<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/new-balance-faces-social-media-backlash-after-welcoming-trump.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Balance Faces Social Media Backlash After Welcoming Trump New Balance Faces Social Media Backlash After Welcoming Trump:- New Balance Athletic Inc. may be the first corporation to get hit by backlash against President-elect Donald Trump. The privately held sneaker company\u2014long an opponent of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement\u2014welcomed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[8904],"class_list":["post-14714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-new-balance-faces-social-media-backlash-after-welcoming-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}