‘Just like the NFL, whose ratings have gone WAY DOWN, Nike is getting absolutely killed with anger and boycotts. I wonder if they had any idea that it would be this way? As far as the NFL is concerned, I just find it hard to watch, and always will, until they stand for the FLAG!’
– President Donald Trump
That was President Donald Trump’s clearest response thus far to a controversial ad campaign that made its debut during the Labor Day holiday.
The new Nike Inc. advertising campaign featuresColin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who led player protests against racial injustice and police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem, which has been viewed as a highly political move that runs directly at odds with the rhetoric of President Trump.
On Tuesday, shares of Nike NKE, +0.40% shed 3.2%, leading declining components on a down day for the Dow industrials, suffering the sports-apparel company’s worst daily drop since April 2, according to FactSet data. Shares of the retailing giant — a retail tenant of the president’s real-estate business (“They pay a lot of rent,” Trump reportedly told the Daily Caller, though New York magazine noted that the Niketown location on 57th Street in Manhattan apparently in question is slated to close) — were attempting to rebound in early Wednesday action, posting a gain of 0.7%.
Thus far this year, Nike shares have climbed 28%. The company’s gains outstrip respectable year-to-date returns for the broader market, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.09% up nearly 5% in 2018, the S&P 500 SPX, -0.28% rising nearly 8% and the Nasdaq Composite COMP, -1.19% on track to advance more than 16% for the first nine months of 2018.
