Business
Cracker Barrel and the Power of Conservative Boycotts
The uproar over the restaurant chain’s rebrand might appear trivial, but it carries a deeper significance.
Last week, another viral culture war story captured the headlines. The old-timey restaurant chain Cracker Barrel had rebranded, removing the old man and the barrel from its logo, and replacing it with a simple, modernistic, typography-only design.
At first, I dismissed the story as trivial. I have never set foot in a Cracker Barrel and, as such, have little stake in what is emblazoned above its doorways. But after speaking with conservative activist Robby Starbuck, I learned there was something beyond the logo that deserved our attention. According to Starbuck, Cracker Barrel, whose customer base is heavily white, conservative, and rural, had spent the last few years adopting all the fashionable left-wing corporate policies: DEI, Pride, pronouns, race politics, and the rest.
The logo change might have caught the public’s initial attention, but the underlying political story had real stakes. If companies that depend on conservatives adopt radical left-wing policies, they must face the consequences.
And, thanks to the work of Starbuck and others, the social media uproar seems to have made a difference. As the story circulated through the media, the company’s stock price plummeted by as much as 17 percent. Cracker Barrel has quickly walked back its changes.
All this is salutary. Beginning with the revolt against Bud Light, the Right learned how to flex its muscles in the marketplace. Rather than defer to corporations as they did in the past, conservatives have realized that corporations have a culture and must be constantly reminded that, if they deviate from core American values, the consequences will be felt in their bottom line. Starbuck has had enormous success on this point, leading boycott campaigns that have changed policies at Harley-Davidson, Tractor Supply, John Deere, and other major brands.
A number of lessons can be drawn from this experience. First, conservatives can win these culture fights. Second, corporations follow the narrative in the media. Third, behavior changes through reward and punishment.
This last point is especially important. Some might dismiss the Cracker Barrel campaign as minor, or even embarrassing, given that the company is a decidedly down-class brand. But there is enormous value in making an example of the company and cementing a fear that conservatives can spontaneously lash out at any institution that crosses the line. Today, it’s Cracker Barrel; tomorrow it might be Pepsi, Target, or Procter & Gamble. As we have seen in recent years, corporate CEOs are highly sensitive to shifts in public opinion—and marginal changes in revenues—and will drop left-wing policies as soon as they become a liability.
The question is how to gain leverage. We are all tempted to be polite in public. But the fight over corporate culture can’t be won without securing real, tangible victories—which means real, tangible losses for institutions on the other side. Even if we don’t care about Cracker Barrel in particular, we should all care about the ideological capture of American institutions and use whatever power we have to reverse it.
And for that to occur, the Barrel must be broken.
Business
President Trump Ending ‘Catastrophic’ Loophole Blamed For Funneling Drugs, Harming US Workers
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The Trump administration is ending a longstanding tax exemption on low-value packages, a move White House officials say will create jobs, raise revenue and even save lives.
By early Friday morning, tariff exemptions for packages shipped to the United States worth $800 or less, popularly known as the “de minimis” rule, will come to an end for all countries, senior administration officials said. The move comes months after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to end the de minimis exemption for China and Hong Kong.
The White House fiercely defended the action during a Thursday press call, framing it as defense against the flow of drugs and the protection of American workers.
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“Foreign post offices need to get their act together when it comes to monitoring and policing the use of international mail for smuggling and tariff evasion purposes,” Navarro added. “We are going to help them do that, but at this point, they are vastly underperforming express carriers like FedEx, DHL and UPS. In an age of AI, information saves lives.”
Established by Congress in 1938, the de minimis exemption has, for decades, allowed low-value packages to enter the U.S. duty free. The exemption threshold has risen over the years, with the last change in 2016 including products valued at or below $800.
The vast majority of shipped products fall within the exemption, with more than 92% of all cargo entering the U.S. entering via de minimis, according to Customs and Border Protection.
In April, Trump signed an executive order formally ending the de minimis exemption for China and Hong Kong. Shippers from the People’s Republic of China, the president said, hide “illicit substances” and “conceal the true contents of shipments” sent to the U.S. and avoid detection due to the de minimis exemption.
An executive order Trump signed in late July set the stage for the exemption to end for all countries by Aug. 29. In an accompanying fact sheet for the July order, the White House referred to the de minimis exemption as a “catastrophic loophole” used to evade tariffs, funnel deadly synthetic opioids and inundate the country with unsafe or below-market products that negatively affect businesses.
“The minimum loophole was one of the dumbest things this country ever did,” Navarro said Thursday. “If you do your homework, you look around the rest of the world, and nobody comes even close to the $800 de minimis standard. There’s other countries, they’re five bucks, 10 bucks.”
Not everything will be affected by the change. Personal gifts worth under $100 and letters remain under the exemption, senior administration officials said.
Without a thorough review, federal personnel spending could cost taxpayers upwards of $76 billion per year by the end of the decade, highlights the MEI in reaction to the latest report from the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO).
“Federal priorities are determined by federal spending, and it is clear that Ottawa’s priority has been expanding the size and scope of government,” says Gabriel Giguère, senior policy analyst at the MEI. “If Prime Minister Carney is serious about returning to sound public finances, personnel spending will need to shrink, and fast.”
Total personnel spending is projected to reach $76.2 billion by 2029-2030, if nothing changes, according to the new PBO publication released this morning. This is up from $65.3 billion in 2023-24, a 16.7 per cent increase.
Average compensation is expected to reach $172,000 per full-time employee by 2029-2030.
When Prime Minister Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, came to power in 2015, personnel spending was $39.6 billion—a bit more than half of what it is today. Over the course of his tenure, the federal bureaucracy grew by over 100,000 employees.
Certain departments have grown substantially since 2015, including:
- Employment and Social Development Canada: +15,497
- Canada Revenue Agency: +17,257
- Public Services and Procurement Canada: +6,362
“New spending, programs, and taxes have gone hand in hand with the expansion of the federal workforce,” says Giguère. “If Ottawa is serious about cutting wasteful programs, it should begin by cutting the bureaucracies responsible for them.”
The C.D. Howe Institute recently projected that Prime Minister Carney’s first budget could feature a $92-billion deficit for 2025–2026.
Carney’s government has pledged to reduce spending by 15 per cent in select areas by the 2028–2029 fiscal year, following reductions of 7.5 per cent and 10 per cent in the two previous years, by shrinking departments and cutting waste.
In its prebudget submission, the MEI recommended that the federal government be more ambitious in carrying out this pledge. It called on Ottawa to reduce the federal bureaucracy by 17.4 per cent, mirroring the Chrétien reductions of the 1990s, which would eliminate 64,000 positions and save $10 billion a year.
Rolling back Employment and Social Development Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency, and Public Services and Procurement Canada to their 2015 levels could cut more than 39,000 full-time equivalent positions, halfway to that 64,000 goal.
“The fact that personnel has gone up with no measurable improvement in services is an indictment of the current system,” says Giguère. “Restoring balance means ensuring Canadians receive fair value for their taxes, and for that to happen, Ottawa needs to stop seeing the bureaucracy as a job creation scheme.”
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The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.
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