The Liberty Daily 
It wouldn’t be fair to say Nike CEO John Donahoe hates America. He just loves China a whole lot more. He declared as much during an earnings call when he told everyone “we are a brand of China and for China” while touting how big they were in the Communist nation.
“We are the largest sport brand there, and we are a brand of China and for China,” Donahoe said. “And the biggest asset we have in China is the consumer equity. Consumers feel a strong, deep connection to the NIKE, Jordan and Converse brands in China. And it’s real.”
The statement came after pressure from Beijing to walk back comments made by Nike Corporate about the Uyghur crisis. The statement was resurfaced as many nations engaged sanctions over kidnapping, torture, and murder by the government in the region. According to Fox Business:
Nike recently came under fire in China for a comment it made raising concerns about forced labor practices in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). It reassured customers that it does not source textiles or products from the region, like cotton.
After the U.S. and other Western countries responded to the forced labor allegations with sanctions, its statement was resurfaced and resulted in calls among Chinese consumers to boycott the brand – as well as others like H&M.
The practices of the Chinese government should make Americans rethink doing business with companies that are beholden to Beijing. It isn’t just the humanitarian crisis that everyone knows about but that the Chinese Communist Party continues to deny. It’s also the fact that when we buy from companies like Nike, we’re perpetuating the type of anti-American sentiment held by people like Donahoe.
Despite the lockdowns, business is booming for Nike who just hit their highest ever stock price on Friday. Much of this can be attributed to the earnings call when Donahue noted how much sales have increased both in China and the United States. According to CNBC:
“In Greater China, sales were up just 17% at $1.93 billion. … Management said Thursday that Nike is seeing improvement in China sequentially month by month,” CNBC reported.
Likewise, the company’s earnings in the U.S. also spiked.
“In North America, Nike’s biggest market, sales more than doubled to a record $5.38 billion as the company surged from a year earlier when the Covid pandemic was hitting the retail industry the hardest. The region’s sales were up 29% on a two-year basis,” according to CNBC.
This is one of dozens of valid reasons for those of us who love America to stop doing business with such “woke companies. Nike bows to China only because they think they have American business locked up. We need to show them otherwise.
