The boycott that shows up in produce, not in phones
Reuters reported on September 12, 2026 that a growing Canadian push to buy local and shun U.S. products is reshaping supermarket shelves. Grocers are tightening country-of-origin labeling and hunting new supply. Ontario independent Vince's Market said most of its produce is now Canadian after angry emails about U.S. fruit. Canada's share of vegetable imports from the United States fell to 62.6% in July, from 69% in the same month of 2023. That is a real receipt, not a hashtag.
The same story is lighting Radar. A Reuters grocery post sat at 163.6K views, with twin posts in the 57K–62K range. Buy American industrial talk around Bombardier is a different lane. This post is about the checkout line: the brands Canadians still cannot fully unplug, and the scores those brands still carry on BuyWokeFree.
Do not confuse a produce swap with a culture swap. A grocer can source strawberries from Quebec. You cannot source a new operating system from a family bottler in Kentucky. The boycott is loudest where substitution is easy. The scorecard is loudest where it is not.
The stack you still pay
Radar named the "can't boycott" stack shoppers keep hitting anyway: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Coke, Pepsi, Netflix, Starbucks, Walmart. We do not invent scores for the mood of the week. We publish the ones we already have.
Apple scores 100 — published, extremely woke, a perfect mark across BuyWokeFree's six dimensions. ESG reporting, DEI defense (including a 97% shareholder rejection of an anti-DEI proposal in the record we scored), Pride campaigns, HRC history. A Canadian dropping an Amazon subscription, as The Washington Post described this weekend, is a personal protest. It is not a score change.
Amazon also scores 100, published. All six dimensions. If the protest is "cancel Prime," fine. The company still sits at the ceiling of the database. Microsoft is another 100, published. Yes, Microsoft pulled diversity as a core performance-review priority and ended the traditional D&I report in 2025. That is an established rollback, not a September 13 breaking strip. Ritual cut. Score still 100. Quiet is not clean.
Starbucks is 100, published — still one of the most aggressively scored coffee chains in the set. Workers United boycott pitch videos are a labor story. They are not a woke-score story until the underlying programs and political footprint move. Walmart scores 90, published, even after a late-2024 DEI rollback. Years of ESG reporting, DEI machinery, and political footprint do not vanish because a page got rewritten.
Meta Platforms is the mildest giant on that stack at 55, published. ESG and a perfect HRC CEI history sit next to a 2025 reversal on DEI. That is still woke on our label, not a saint. It is also not a 100. If you are ranking the stack by culture, Meta is not Apple.
Google's parent, Alphabet, scores 80 in our database. Netflix sits at 95 and is still in content review, so we are not hanging this piece on a streaming cancel wave that was not even in today's Radar Top captures. Stick to published scores when the flywheel needs a link, not a rumor.
Travel already took the hit. Groceries are catching up.
The travel receipt predates this week's produce photos. Statistics Canada reported Canadians spent C$3.3 billion less on trips to the United States in 2025 — about $2.4 billion in the U.S. coverage circulating on X. Return border crossings fell about 25%. Leisure, not family visits, drove most of the cut. That is last year's data still echoing in this year's boycott. Quote it as 2025 spending, not as a new September filing.
The grocery fight is newer and more photogenic. "Buy Canadian" started after tariffs last year and intensified after trade talks broke down. Reuters' shoppers talk about being "a little bit mad with America." Anger is not a score. Anger is a shopping list. The question for BuyWokeFree readers on this side of the border is simpler: if Canadians can see origin stickers, why do Americans still shop like scores do not exist?
Soda is the easy ladder. Use it.
You will not replace Apple with a regional bottler. You can replace a two-liter. PepsiCo scores 90, published. Coca-Cola scores 74, published. Both sit on Canada boycott shelf lists. Both sit on American refrigerators that never got the memo.
The zeros are still zeros. Cheerwine scores 0, published — no ESG scorecarding apparatus, no DEI bureaucracy, no Pride sponsorship, no HRC CEI, no CEO Action pledge. Ale-8-One scores 0, published, same pattern: family-run regional soda, not a culture department with a slide deck. If the Canada story is "we checked the sticker," the American version is "we checked the score." See the non-woke food and beverage brands before you pretend there is nothing on the shelf.
Retail will punish you for staying in or stepping out
Target is not the lead of this piece — the AFT "Shop Smart, Not Target" back-to-school push is an August 2026 left-flank campaign over silence on ICE, not a September 13 filing — but the score is still 71, published. Walmart at 90 is the bigger box on the Canada stack. The lesson is the same one we keep publishing: boycotts that ignore the database become fan fiction. One flank wants silence. The other wanted Pride. The score does not care which week you noticed.
Technology is worse because lock-in is the product. Browse non-woke technology brands if you want the category page. You will not find a drop-in iPhone. You will find a reminder that a 100 is a 100 whether a foreign grocer hates the label or you still pay for the phone.
A boycott without a scorecard is a mood
Canada's produce aisle is doing something American culture-war shopping often refuses to do: it is looking at the sticker. Origin is a crude proxy. Woke score is a better one for U.S. households that still have a choice on soda, coffee, big-box, and a handful of consumer goods — and almost no choice on the phone in their pocket.
So here is the honest ranking from this week's stack, using live BuyWokeFree numbers: Apple 100, Amazon 100, Microsoft 100, Starbucks 100, PepsiCo 90, Walmart 90, Coca-Cola 74, Meta 55, Cheerwine 0, Ale-8-One 0. If your protest ends at strawberries and never reaches the 100s you pay every month, you did not boycott a culture. You rearranged a crisper drawer.
Check the brand pages. Check the category maps. Then spend like the score is the sticker.