【Rapsa (2025)】

Donald Trump's presidential win has already caused a lot of ups and Rapsa (2025)downs for various major companies.

But perhaps none have seen quite as visceral a reaction as New Balance, which is facing customer outrage after one of its statements was interpreted as an endorsement of the president-elect.

It started when Wall Street Journalreporter Sara Germano quoted a spokesperson for the sneaker giant on Twitter who seemed optimistic about a Trump administration and claimed Pres. Barack Obama "turned a deaf ear" to the company.

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Germano specified in a later tweet that the comment was made in reference to the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership bill, an Obama-led free trade agreement that Trump has promised to block.

But some angry Twitter users seemed to take the quote as a full-throated show of support for Trump. Sneaker magazine Sole Collectorstoked the uproar with a story claiming that New Balance was the first major sportswear brand to publicly back the newly elected president.

Upset New Balance owners responded with photos and videos of shoes being thrown in the trash or set ablaze and boycott threats.

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New Balance posted a lengthy statement to its Twitter account Thursday morning in apparent response to the outrage. In it, the brand touted its five factories in New England but didn't explicitly address the quote or the anger surrounding it.

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A New Balance spokesperson elaborated on the response in another statement emailed to Mashable.

"As 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," the spokesperson said.

"New Balance publicly supported the trade positions of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump prior to election day that focused on American manufacturing job creation and we continue to support them today."

Brands have been relatively quiet as the nation's passions have run high in the wake of Trump's presidential win, despite a surprising willingness to engage in electoral politics in the preceding months.

As New Balance points out, Trump's vows to tighten free trade rules could have big implications for companies that manufacture goods abroad as reflected in the stock prices of some of the companies he's targeted on Wednesday.

Update, Monday, Nov. 14, 6 p.m. PST:

Neo-Nazi website "The Daily Stormer" has called New Balance the "official shoes of white people" in celebration of its comments.

The shoe company was forced to respond in a second statement in which they disavowed the white supremacist endorsement.

“New Balance does not tolerate bigotry or hate in any form,” a spokesperson said.

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