Seattle Mayor Suddenly Changes Tune On Starbucks Boycott After Layoffs Hit!

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]All right, all right, all right, ladies and gentlemen, you saw the thumbnail, you saw the title, you know what we're about to do. We're We're heading out to Seattle. So, get your get your bean-infused water, get your coffee. I'm only drinking water today. Got the heavy Got the heavy Yeti. I'm just drinking water, I promise you. But, we are going to talk about what happened in Seattle with the whole mayor going against Starbucks and Starbucks saying, "Hold my latte, we're out of here."

[00:00:25]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Let's go. Let's go.

[00:00:36]>> Seattle Mayor Jenny Wilson sat down with the New York Times this week and walked back one of the most controversial statements she has made about a Seattle-headquartered company. Six months earlier, standing outside the recently closed Starbucks Reserve Roastery on Capitol Hill, Wilson had told a crowd of striking baristas, "Quote, I am not buying Starbucks and you should not either."

[00:00:56]>> November 13th, 2025.

[00:00:59]So, we're looking at somewhere in the ballpark, roughly 7 months. Okay, let's go. She said it on November 13th, 2025, 9 days after winning the Seattle mayoral race.

[00:01:11]She said it before she had spent a single day in the office she had just been elected to. This week, on May 20th, 2026, she told the Times her own words were, quote, "Not productive in the sense that they caused more harm than good." The interview ran the same week Starbucks confirmed 61 more corporate layoffs at its Seattle headquarters and continued building out a $100 million Nashville expansion expected to bring up to 2,000 jobs to Tennessee over the next 5 years.

[00:01:39]This is the story of how a sitting Seattle mayor publicly reset her relationship with the company that helped put her city on the global map.

[00:01:46]What changed in 6 months and what the numbers say about where Seattle's largest employers are moving next.

[00:01:52]And and that has to go without saying that elections have consequences and mayors with ideas that these niche ideas that don't ultimately help the betterment of your community, you're going to have to put those ideas to the side. I did a video sometime ago about I we need to bring back brainstorming and you have to be able to take your idea and put it before a small trusted group of people who agree and disagree, who are rich and who are poor, who are affluent, who have college degrees or GEDs. And be able to have them vet this idea cuz I guarantee you, I guarantee you sure as my name is Jason, she either A spoke to nobody before she made that comment about Starbucks or B only yes men and yes women agreed with her. That that's it cuz I guarantee you like how quickly Starbucks left from there it's going to have to be studied by science. I think they broke the land speed record. They said, "Oh, we up out of here. Let's go."

[00:02:55]To understand why this particular walk back matters, you have to start in 1971.

[00:03:00]That year three partners, Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker, opened a single coffee shop at Pike Place Market in Seattle and named it Starbucks. For 16 years it stayed a small Seattle chain that sold beans and equipment. Then in 1987, a 34-year-old marketing director named Howard Schultz Oh my god.

[00:03:19]>> bought the company for $3.8 million and rebuilt it around an Italian style espresso bar concept he had developed during a trip to Milan.

[00:03:28]By the time Schultz took Starbucks public in 1992, the company had 165 stores.

[00:03:34]By 2000, it had 3,500.

[00:03:37]By 2008, it crossed 16,000 locations worldwide.

[00:03:41]Today Starbucks operates more than 38,000 stores across roughly 80 markets, employs over 360,000 people, and generated over $36 billion dollars revenue in its last Let that sink in, man.

[00:03:55]They're not using crypto. They're not using thousands or hundreds of thousands.

[00:04:02]They're using billions with a B. That is some crazy work. Now, again, we could have two we could talk for 2 days about Starbucks, whether you like Starbucks, whether they're moving in the way that you agree with, but you cannot hate the you cannot hate the game. Most coffee houses that we know today, your your little niche coffee house owes it to Starbucks.

[00:04:27]Because otherwise, I think we would still be getting If it wasn't for Starbucks, I think most of us would still be getting coffee from McDonald's or your local gas station.

[00:04:35]Let me know. Comment down below. Do you think that again, I'm not saying that you agree that you have to change your opinion on Starbucks, but can we all agree or maybe you disagree?

[00:04:48]Is Starbucks the reason why we we have coffee and we take coffee like we do now?

[00:04:53]I mean, we almost get in an IV because of Starbucks. fiscal year.

[00:04:58]The corporate headquarters still occupies a former Sears distribution complex in the Sodo neighborhood of Seattle. For more than five decades, Starbucks has been one of the most recognizable Seattle exports in the world. And the Seattle headquarters has been I mean, you just can't beat that. I don't know how you That that is a serious I mean, the Space Needle's right there, man. I've never been to Seattle. I I need to go check that place out.

[00:05:22]>> one of the largest white-collar employers in the city. Wow.

[00:05:25]>> The relationship between Starbucks and Seattle has had moments of tension before.

[00:05:29]In 2018, the Seattle City Council passed a measure that became known as the head tax.

[00:05:35]The bill imposed a charge of $275 per full-time employee on companies with annual gross revenue above $20 million.

[00:05:43]Wow. The projected revenue was roughly $47 million a year earmarked for homelessness and affordable housing.

[00:05:49]Starbucks joined Amazon, Vulcan, Kroger, Albertsons, and Costco in funding a referendum campaign called no tax on jobs. That campaign raised between 300,000 and 350,000 dollars.

[00:06:01]Less than a month after passing the tax unanimously, the Seattle City Council reversed itself by a vote of 7 to 2 and repealed it. The council >> So, that should have been an indicator of the climate. There should have been an indicator of the temperament of the community for these type of ideas. And so, the mayor to come in here hadn't even stepped into her office yet. Hadn't even arranged the furniture to make a claim like that, like we should boycott Starbucks. To me, I think she she missed her opportunity to do right by the community by supporting Starbucks rather than what she did. Council president who called the emergency session for the repeal was a man named Bruce Harrell.

[00:06:43]Seven years later, Harrell would run for re-election as mayor and lose to Katie Wilson by about 2,000 votes. Come on, y'all.

[00:06:49]>> Wilson's victory on November 4th, 2025 was the closest Seattle mayoral race since 1906.

[00:06:56]Harrell had led on election night by more than 8,000 votes. Late ballots shifted the result. Mhm. The final margin was 7/10 of 1%. Wilson, 43 years old, co-founded the Transit Riders Union and ran as a self-described democratic socialist. Oh my god. Her platform included expanding the existing jump-start payroll tax that applies to large employers in Seattle. I do wonder and we might need to do a little deep dive. Let me make sure I like this video. We might need to do a deep dive.

[00:07:25]What was the previous mayor's platform?

[00:07:28]What was he running on?

[00:07:30]And to [clears throat] get beat by her is pretty wild.

[00:07:35]>> [snorts] >> I mean, now, let's let's keep it 100%.

[00:07:37]Seattle is a very interesting place.

[00:07:39]Now, that I do know. They're very interesting place. So, um I want to know what is what is policies were. Creating a local capital gains tax aimed at high earners and pursuing what her staff publicly described as progressive revenue options to close projected city budget gaps. On November 13th, 2025, 9 days after winning the election, Wilson walked into a Starbucks Workers United picket line outside the recently closed Reserve Roastery on Capitol Hill.

[00:08:05]Workers were rallying as part of a national Red Cup Day strike, one of several ongoing actions tied to broader unionization efforts across Starbucks' US store network.

[00:08:15]Standing before that crowd, the mayor-elect of Starbucks' own hometown delivered the line that would shape her opening months in office.

[00:08:22]The direct quote, captured by KUOW, was, "I am not buying Starbucks, and you should not either."

[00:08:28]>> [clears throat] >> The comment landed in a charged moment.

[00:08:31]The Reserve Roastery she stood outside of had been closed for several weeks.

[00:08:35]Starbucks' Seattle headquarters still employed roughly 3,500 people in the city.

[00:08:41]Labor negotiations between Starbucks and Starbucks Workers United had been active across more than 500 locations nationwide.

[00:08:48]And the incoming mayor had used her first major public appearance to call for a boycott of one of her city's largest private employers. Wilson was sworn in on January 1st, 2026.

[00:08:59]By April, she had made a separate comment that went viral on its own.

[00:09:03]Asked at a Seattle University event about concerns that wealthy residents were leaving Washington because of the state's new 9.9% income tax on earnings above $1 million. Wilson said the claims were, quote, "Like, super overblown."

[00:09:18]Then she added, "And the ones that leave, like, bye, Nick Hanauer, a long-time Seattle business figure who has personally funded a range of progressive causes in Washington state, including the $15 minimum wage and the state capital gains tax, told reporters shortly afterward, "Virtually every wealthy friend I have has either left or is planning to. That's crazy.

[00:09:40]>> Then on May 11th, 2026, Howard Schultz published an opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal under the headline, "Seattle Turns Hostile to the Great Businesses It Made." Right.

[00:09:51]>> ran roughly 1,200 words. I wonder do we say that Seattle made the businesses or the businesses made Seattle? I don't know. I did well Needless to say, I think it was mutual benefit for Seattle, for Starbucks, and those other big companies, but which one made which? I don't know.

[00:10:11]I'm going to probably say that Seattle did make Starbucks, but I I think it would I would not be surprised if somebody told me Starbucks made Seattle. I mean, well, wait. Hold on. We had Sir Mix-A-Lot though. They had Sir Mix-A-Lot, man. My posse on Broadway. Never mind. Seattle made Starbucks.

[00:10:26]>> of 73 and living in Florida in what he described as the retirement phase of his life, called Wilson out by name.

[00:10:32]He wrote that she had, quote, "chosen to cast business as a foil rather than a partner." And that her rhetoric vilifies employers even while she continues to rely on them for revenue.

[00:10:42]Schultz no longer held an operational role at Starbucks. His title is chairman emeritus. He holds no board seat. He chose The Wall Street Journal's opinion page anyway to make his case publicly.

[00:10:52]The op-ed did not appear in a vacuum.

[00:10:54]The same day Schultz published, Starbucks formally disclosed 61 new corporate layoffs at its Seattle headquarters.

[00:11:01]The same day, the company unveiled a $100 million investment in a new corporate office in National >> latte. expected to bring up to 2,000 jobs over the next 5 years. The timing connected the two announcements.

[00:11:13]Wilson's office released a measured statement the following day, calling Starbucks part of Seattle's culture and identity and noting that her administration maintained regular communication with the company's executive team on shared priorities, including homelessness, public safety, and affordability. Nine days later, Wilson sat down with The New York Times.

[00:11:33]The interview was on the record. The mayor was asked directly about the boycott comments she had made at the Reserve Roastery picket line 6 months earlier.

[00:11:41]And in 15 words, she stepped back from the position she had taken in November.

[00:11:46]"Those comments," Wilson told the Times, "were not productive in the sense that they caused more harm than good." That is the entirety of what she said about the boycott itself in the interview.

[00:11:55]She did not formally apologize. She did not retract her support for the work Let me see real quick. We got itself in the interview.

[00:12:05]She did not Okay, we got Mom Donny. We got uh Bernie Sanders.

[00:12:11]Interesting.

[00:12:13]Interesting.

[00:12:17]not formally apologize. She did not retract her support for the workers who had been striking.

[00:12:23]She did not address Schultz's op-ed by name. She did not announce any change to her actual policy proposals, including the Jumpstart payroll tax expansion or the local capital gains tax she has proposed pursuing.

[00:12:35]What she conceded, in her own words, was that the comments she had made caused more harm than good.

[00:12:41]Starbucks declined to comment on the reversal. The company has kept the same posture it has held throughout the entire sequence. No public defense of Wilson. No public criticism of her. Just continued execution of the Nashville expansion already underway. Brian Niccol, the company's current CEO who took over from Laxman Narasimhan in August 2024, has said nothing publicly about Wilson. The 2,000 jobs going to Tennessee are the company's clearest statement on where its growth Wait. He He did not say anything about Wilson, but he did say something about Wilson's policies. He got himself up out of Seattle and jumped three time zones over to Tennessee. He didn't Look, he might not have verbally said something. He might not have typed out a message, but he did in fact say something. He did in fact make a very c- clear statement.

[00:13:31]We're about to move our headquarters.

[00:13:33]We're going to have two headquarters.

[00:13:36]One in Seattle, one in Nashville. And everybody knows that that Seattle headquarters is going to be closed. It's going to be scuttled in 3 years. So, by by 2028, I'm sorry, by 2030, it's going to be closed. We all know that. That's why they're moving and putting so much infrastructure and so many resources into that Tennessee location. Shout out to Tennessee.

[00:13:59]dollars are going.

[00:14:01]What makes this particular reversal noteworthy is the timing.

[00:14:05]Wilson did not retract the boycott comment in November when she could have softened the message before taking office. She did not retract it in January when she was sworn in.

[00:14:14]She did not retract it in April when her millionaires comment went viral.

[00:14:18]She retracted it specifically after Schultz's op-ed and after the Nashville announcement made the corporate response to her opening posture visible in jobs and dollars.

[00:14:27]The reversal happened after Starbucks had already committed publicly to the Nashville expansion.

[00:14:31]The walk back did not change what was already in motion. It changed the city's official tone going forward.

[00:14:37]Here's what the broader Seattle picture looks like this week.

[00:14:40]The city faces a projected $140 million budget gap heading into 2027. Downtown office vacancy sits at approximately 35%. Wow.

[00:14:50]>> has just enacted a new 9.9% income tax on earnings above $1 million. Microsoft is offering voluntary retirement to thousands of employees.

[00:14:59]>> Mhm. Amazon is slowing Seattle hiring while continuing to grow in Arlington, Virginia.

[00:15:04]Oracle laid off 491 Seattle area workers in April 2026.

[00:15:09]Meta cut another 168 Washington employees in the same window. Boeing announced earlier this year that engineering work on the 737 >> on. Wait, wait, let me let me back that up. Did you see that comment? I wish he read these comments. When the company says Seattle is still the headquarters, people are just rolling their eyes. That is wild. Let me move myself out of the way. That is wild.

[00:15:32]So, it's clear. Like, I'm I'm not making it up.

[00:15:35]People know, like, hey, look, Seattle's not the headquarters anymore.

[00:15:40]Dude, like, come on.

[00:15:42]Can you imagine how much better off they would be if they weren't running with these type of policies that are basically Shanghaing and running amok and running people out of their places versus bringing them in and then treating them and bringing in more business?

[00:16:00]Boeing announced earlier this year that engineering work on the 787 Dreamliner program would be consolidated in South Carolina, affecting approximately 300 positions on top of the roughly 2,595 Washington positions Boeing eliminated through its October 2024 layoff announcement of 17,000 jobs nationwide.

[00:16:21]And the class action lawsuit filed against Costco in federal court in Seattle in March 2026 over alleged tariff billing practices remains pending.

[00:16:30]Each of these stories has its own causes, its own timeline, and its own internal logic.

[00:16:36]Taken together, they form the backdrop against which Wilson's walk back this week was published.

[00:16:41]In the same New York Times interview, Wilson reiterated that Starbucks is part of Seattle's culture and identity, and that her office maintains regular communication with company leadership on shared priorities. She has continued to emphasize partnership in her public statements since the Schultz op-ed published. The contrast with her November 13 boycott declaration is visible.

[00:17:01]The mayor who used her first major public appearance to call for a boycott of Seattle's most iconic brand is now consistently using the language of partnership and shared challenges.

[00:17:11]What has not changed is the underlying set of policy proposals she she on and won on.

[00:17:17]The JumpStart payroll tax expansion is still on the table. The proposed local capital gains tax is still being developed.

[00:17:24]The progressive revenue strategy that defined her campaign remains the centerpiece of her administration's fiscal approach.

[00:17:30]What shifted in 6 months was not the policy. It was the way the mayor talked publicly about the largest private employers in her city. Yeah, that's good. What happens next will depend on three things.

[00:17:40]The first is whether the Nashville expansion proves to be the start of a larger Starbucks corporate shift or whether the Seattle headquarters footprint remains intact at its current size. The company has stated repeatedly that the headquarters is staying in Seattle.

[00:17:53]The pattern of expansion dollars, however, is moving toward Tennessee where Starbucks is committing up to 2,000 new jobs in a new corporate office building.

[00:18:01]The second is whether the JumpStart payroll tax expansion and the proposed local capital gains tax that Wilson campaigned on actually advanced through the city council in the form she originally described. Either change would land directly on large Seattle employers.

[00:18:15]The third is what other Seattle CEOs and corporate boards decide to do in the months ahead. Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, Oracle, Meta, and Starbucks have all announced layoffs, voluntary retirements, or out-of-state expansion in the last 6 months.

[00:18:30]The cluster of announcements has put pressure on City Hall in a way that no single departure ever could.

[00:18:35]Schultz ended his Wall Street Journal essay with a question.

[00:18:38]"What replaces these companies?" he asked, "as engines of Seattle's job and revenue growth?"

[00:18:44]Wilson has not answered that question publicly.

[00:18:47]Bruce Harrell never answered it during his term as mayor, either. Oh. Seattle has spent the past decade diversifying its economy through tech, biotech, and a wider range of smaller employers, which is part of why the city did not collapse when Boeing moved its headquarters to Chicago in 2001 or when other anchor employers cut back.

[00:19:05]But the cluster of announcements in 2026 is different in scale from past cycles.

[00:19:10]The numbers are larger, the timing is tighter, and the public attention from outside the city has been higher than at any point since the early 1970s, Boeing downturn that produced the famous billboard reading, "Will the last person leaving Seattle turn out the lights?"

[00:19:25]For now, what is on the record is straightforward. Six months ago, the mayor-elect of Seattle stood outside a closed Starbucks Reserve Roastery and told a crowd not to buy Starbucks.

[00:19:35]This week, she told the New York Times, I think that's AI. I don't think that's real. I think that's AI.

[00:19:46]I think that store is spelled wrong. I don't think that's real. I think that's AI. I feel comfortable about that.

[00:19:53]Yeah, it's Yeah, that's AI. Okay. Those comments caused more harm than good. In between those two statements, Starbucks announced a $100 million Nashville expansion with up to 2,000 jobs, disclosed 61 more Seattle layoffs, and watched its founder publish a Wall Street Journal essay criticizing the mayor by name. The walk-back closed the loop on the specific boycott comment. It did not address any of the larger questions the past six months have raised.

[00:20:20]Those questions belong to the city now, to the council the mayor works with, to the employers who are watching her next moves, and to the Seattle voters who elected her by 2,000 votes in the closest mayoral race in over a century.

[00:20:33]What they decide to do with the information from the past six months will determine what comes next. The mayor has shifted her tone.

[00:20:39]The companies have already made their moves. The numbers are what they are, and the story is still being written.

[00:20:47]All right. So, shout out for sure. That was interesting. And And y'all know your boy Yeah, you know, I don't drink it as much cuz I'm drinking my water, y'all.

[00:20:55]I'm drinking my water. Got my heavy Yeti. But, yeah, your boy still likes Starbucks every now and then. Every now and then. Just a little bit. But, anyway, I thought that was super interesting, particularly because elections have consequences, and ideas must be vetted. I do think we we have to encourage people to vet ideas and not just be an idealogue but like hey, I'm giving this idea to the group. I want the group to parse through what are the problems that we we don't see. And we need contrary voices. Not just everybody that agrees. If you're around the table with a whole bunch of people that agree with you, well, vetting the idea is not actually vetting. It's just like petting it, right? So, anyway, let me know what you think. Comment down below. All that kind of good jazz. What do you drink? Do you drink coffee? Do you drink tea? Do you think that and do you agree with me that Starbucks, like them or not, is the reason why we have coffee proliferation here in the United States like never before and I really would say globally because of Starbucks.

[00:21:52]I I mean, tell me what make the case for that I'm wrong. How about that? I'm looking forward to hear what you got to say. See you real soon everybody. Until then, grace and peace.

[00:22:02]Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the J. W.I.P.

[00:22:05]podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please do me a favor and hit me up with a three-piece special. Like the video, subscribe, and of course share it with somebody who would also enjoy this type of content. And make sure you leave a comment because I do pin the best comments to the top. So, thank you so much for tuning in today and until next time everybody, >> [music] >> grace and peace.