Tesla, Ben and Jerry’s and Real Chocolate

Tesla, Ben and Jerry’s and Real Chocolate

It wasn’t surprising to see the left’s attack on Elon Musk manifest itself in an attack on Tesla. Not content to simply boycott Tesla, the left took to vandalism. It scratched the cars, torched others and picketed dealerships. Tesla’s sales plummeted worldwide. It got me wondering why conservatives don’t protest Ben and Jerry’s ice cream? That product has been an advertisement for the left from its inception.  If not the conservatives then why are the Jews silent? Recently Ben and Jerry’s board issued a statement calling the Israeli invasion of Gaza “genocide.”  Ben Cohen was actually kicked out of a congressional hearing when he disrupted a senate hearing saying that “Congress is paying to bomb poor kids in Gaza and paying for it by kicking poor kids off Medicaid in the U.S.” Cohen, although Jewish, has been long critical of the Israelis’ relationship with the Palestinians. Remember when Ben & Jerry’s halted sales of its ice cream in Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, saying selling there was inconsistent with its values? Again not a peep from US Jewish leaders. On a personal note, I do not buy Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and never will. I guess if Ben Cohen had been Elon Musk that the lefties would have tossed the ice cream on supermarket floors and harassed employees at the plant’s headquarters. One could point to Target (trans displays) and Bud Light as successful efforts by those on the right to protest leftist positions by corporations. But why the silence on Ben and Jerry’s? BTW, my favorite ice cream is chocolate chocolate chip.

My daughter and her family took their annual trip to Europe and spent most of their time in Italy with a stopover in Lucerne. They sent me back chocolates from the chocolatier Laderach. I was stunned. It was outrageous. I texted them “so this is what chocolate is supposed to taste like!” It was as far from Hershey’s as a Yugo is from a Ferrari. Seriously good. Why can’t American chocolate be this good? I now understand why Europeans differ from us in the consumption of chocolate. Americans tend to be impulse buyers while Europeans consume chocolate more as a staple with it being a regular item on their grocery lists. “They’ll buy a bar and break off a few squares every day,” says one chocolate executive. If our chocolates were this good I would also break off a few squares every day.

Cocoa prices are rising worldwide and European demand has proven to be less elastic than American demand for chocolate. European companies are better able to pass on the price increases than American ones. But, hey, if our chocolate were as great tasting as theirs, our demand would be less elastic too! Trump’s tariffs will harm American producers since most of the world’s cocoa comes from West Africa. Swiss chocolatiers are finding demand for their product to be relatively inelastic and have been able to pass the price increases in cocoa on to their customers. Not so much in the US market where the cocoa prices and tariffs have caused the stocks of candy makers to plummet. Hershey’s earnings per share has gone done 30 percent and its stock is off 35%. Contrast this with Switzerland’s Lindt whose stock is up 20 percent.

All this reminds me of beer. I had my first taste of beer at my high school’s senior picnic. It was awful. I had an occasional beer in college but never developed a taste for it. Then came light beer and I was aghast. How could something that tasted this awful be so popular? Apparently there was something wrong with my taste – or is it the fallacy of composition? Then I went to the University of Konstanz am Bodensee to write my dissertation. At lunch one day I tasted the local brewery’s signature beer and was stunned. I couldn’t believe the difference in it and American mass produced lagers. I became a one a day beer drinker. But when I came back to the states I stopped and did not start again until micro brews came onto the market. Now a good stout or porter – but never an IPA – is welcomed. So why can’t we have a chocolate equivalent to beer?