PM May expresses concern on trade war
stricter guns laws. Their actions came in response to protests by the students who survived the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and to growing calls by consumers for boycotts against companies that do business with the NRA or gun manufacturers.
And their decisions didn’t represent much of a sacrifice from a strictly business point of view. Most of Dick’s business, for instance, is in other types of sporting goods, such as sneakers and basketballs. Guns and ammunition are estimated to account for only eight per cent of sales.
Walmar t has not said how much of its business comes from guns, but when the company stopped offering AR-15s in 2015, it cited declining sales.
The actions of those retailers will have ver y little prac tical effect on the availability of guns.
Roger Beahm, a professor of marketing at Wake Forest University School of Business, said smaller retailers will probably capitalise on the situation by selling the weapons the major chains will no longer handle. IT REMAINS to be seen what effect the corporate reaction will have on the wider gun debate.
Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA who has written extensively about gun policy, said the NRA is unlikely to budge, but politicians might.
“I don’t think the NRA is going to bow down or buckle to pressure,” Winkler said. “However, the gun debate may change to the extent that this is being driven by companies’ sense of what consumers want. That might affect elected officials on election day. Today, they are consumers. On election day, they are voters.”
RARE MOVE
It is rare for a company to drop products out of social concern. When it happens, the calculation is that any loss of revenue will be offset by increased customer loyalty in the long term, Beahm said.
He cited the example of CVS Health, which stopped selling cigarettes and other tobacco products in 2014, a decision that cost $2 billion in revenue but was well received by its customers.
That move was a rare example of a company taking a socially conscious step under no public pressure. Most of t he ti me corporations act when it becomes untenable for them to ignore the pressure, as i n t he case of Woolworth and the corporations that left South Africa.
In t he case of guns, t he calculation of whether to jump into the debate or sit on the sidelines is tricky because the country is so divided on the issue.
Delta Air Lines, for example, faced swift retribution for cutting ties to the NRA. Georgia’s Republican state l awmakers voted Thursday to kill a proposed tax break on jet fuel that would have saved the airline millions.
While polls show the country is split on the broad issue of gun controls, there is widespread suppor t for some measures opposed by the NRA, such as universal background checks.
“The business leaders who make these decisions are betting on the future as opposed to a distorted view of the past,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at Yale School of Management.
LONDON (AP):
PRIME MINISTER Theresa May has spoken with US President Donald Trump and expressed “deep concern”about his threatened trade war with the European Union.
May’s office says she discussed the issue with Trump during a telephone call Sunday.
Trump has threatened to tax European cars if the EU boosts tariffs on American products in response to the president’s plan to increase duties on steel and aluminum.
May’s office says she “raised our deep concern at the president’s forthcoming announcement on steel and aluminum tariffs, noting that multilateral action was the only way to resolve the problem of global overcapacity”.
The leaders also discussed Syria and humanitarian concerns in eastern Ghouta. May ’s office says they agreed that “the overwhelming responsibility” for suffering falls on the Syrian government and Russia, its main backer.