Will Under Armour Be the Latest Sneaker Brand to Suffer After Trump Endorsement?

Sneaker wars rage on this week, as Kevin Plank — CEO of sportswear brand Under Armour — became the latest in that world to take a public stand on Trump.

“To have such a pro-business president is something that is a real asset for the country,” Plank, whose company is in the midst of a sales slump, told CNBC about Donald Trump on Tuesday. “People can really grab that opportunity.”

The CEO added, “He wants to build things, he wants to make bold decisions and be really decisive. I’m a big fan of people that operate in the world of publish and iterate versus think, think, think, think, think.”

The Twitterverse reacted immediately with comments from both sides of the aisle:

Plank’s comments come on the heels of statements from Nike and Adidas — and, less directly, Puma — that disagreed with Trump’s court-challenged immigration ban.

Those statements were in sharp contrast to what the public heard from New Balance after the election, when a spokesperson for the company referred to policies of the Trans-Pacific Partnership by saying, “With President-elect Trump, we feel things are going to move in the right direction.” That was all white-supremacist site The Daily Stormer needed to call New Balance the “official shoes of white people,” prompting a counter-statement from New Balance about not tolerating bigotry, as well as an offer from Reebok to offer new sneaks to anyone who had tossed or burned their NBs.

Since when has athletic footwear been so polarizing? It has been since the sneaker’s introduction in the early 19th century, actually, when they were “tainted by connotations of delinquency, being the proverbial choice of pranksters, muggers, and burglars,” according to a recent Atlantic story that explores the link — mainly through discussion with the curator of a recent exhibit, “Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture,” which traveled from Toronto to cities in the U.S.

“The cultural meaning behind sneakers is a constantly evolving dialogue between the people who produce the sneakers and the people who wear them,” said show curator Elizabeth Semmelhack. “As the exhibition shows,” the story said, “over the last 200 years, sneakers have signified everything from national identity, race, and class to masculinity and criminality; put simply, they are magnets for social and political meaning, intended or otherwise, in a way that sets them apart from other types of footwear.”

Related: Already Trending at New York Fashion Week: Politics

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.