There is a great rejection of US products in Denmark.Image: www.imago-images.de
Anger at the USA over the Greenland conflict leads the Danes to boycott supermarkets. For many people, things that come from the USA no longer end up in their shopping carts.
01/22/2026, 03:5301/22/2026, 05:52
The Danes can now use apps to scan food to determine its origin. Together with his friend Malthe Hensberg, 21-year-old Dane Jonas Pipper developed the app “UdenUSA” (“OhnedieUSA”). The idea came to the two of them last year when US President Donald Trump first seriously threatened to take over Greenland.
A wave of protest in Denmark gave rise to the Facebook group “Boycott goods from the USA”, in which Danes exchange ideas about how best to avoid American products. The group now has more than 100,000 members. To put it into perspective: Denmark has around six million inhabitants.
“We noticed that it was important for many people to avoid food from the USA,” says app developer Pipper to the German Press Agency. “But it’s not always so easy to recognize them in the supermarket.”
App comes first in the App Store
The app also suggests alternatives to US products so that consumers can support European companies instead. The idea seems to be well received: “UdenUSA” was number one on the download hit list of free apps in the Danish app store on Wednesday.
Last year there had already been initiatives in Denmark with which the Danes wanted to send a signal against Trump’s trade policy – for example, some Danish supermarket chains had marked goods from European producers with a star on the price tag.
Does the boycott achieve anything?
However, it is unclear what effect such a boycott could have. The Danish economy is comparatively small – and only a few foods come directly from the USA. Even if a relevant proportion of Danish consumers avoid US products, this is unlikely to be enough to have a noticeable economic or political impact, says Sascha Raithel, professor of marketing at the Free University of Berlin.
“Larger boycott movements usually only form when a rejected event is not just threatened, but actually occurs or has occurred,” says Jan Landwehr, professor of marketing at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. However, smaller boycotts could already occur in certain groups. But it also depends on whether the products are easy to replace, says Katharina Gangl, director of the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions.
Danes want to vent their anger
For many consumers, the conscious decision not to eat US food is simply a way of venting their anger, says behavioral researcher Pelle Guldborg Hansen from the University of Roskilde to Danish radio. “Many people watch the news and are angry about something – and in this case it’s about us and about Greenland,” says the researcher.
“You just want to do something about your anger. No matter how small it is.”
(sda/dpa)