It was a social media moment that every US company dreads. Last Wednesday, US president Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that Coca-Cola had agreed to change the domestic formula of its namesake drink to feature “REAL Cane Sugar” rather than high-fructose corn syrup.
The company patently was not ready. Though it thanked the president for his “enthusiasm”, it also defended high-fructose corn syrup on social media as “just a sweetener made from corn”. Six days later it confirmed it would launch a US cane sugar cola in the autumn.
The episode is one in a long line of Trump efforts to use his presidential clout to influence corporate behaviour, starting with his 2016 tweet attacking Boeing’s price tag for Air Force One while he was still just president-elect. But few industries have drawn as much sustained attention as food and drink.
Just days after the Coke post, WK Kellogg pledged to take artificial dyes out of its Fruit Loops cereal by the end of 2027. It joins PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz and dozens of other big companies that have recently forsworn artificial ingredients for their Cheetos, Kool-Aid and other brands.
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None of the changes involved an enforcement or regulatory action. Rather, Trump and Robert F Kennedy jnr, his secretary of health and human services, have cajoled, convinced or cornered these companies into signing up to their “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
Their attack on ultra-processed foods is undeniably popular. Recent polling shows that six in 10 Americans want to remove artificial dyes from food and 87 per cent think the government should be doing more to make sure food is safe.
Trump and Kennedy have also achieved results faster than the ordinary regulatory process. I first wrote about efforts to ban Red 3 dye more than 30 years ago after studies showed it caused cancer in rats. The Biden administration finally revoked that dye’s authorisation in January.
But this administration’s methods also raise questions about fairness and what will happen next. Kennedy’s health agenda encompasses a variety of goals, many of them deeply controversial.
In some ways, this is the Trumpian equivalent of what critics call “regulation by enforcement”, a strategy often employed by progressive administrations.
[ Why Donald Trump is determined to change Coca-Cola’s recipe in the USOpens in new window ]
Rather than proposing a rule, watchdogs bring a criminal or civil case and use the settlement to set a new industry standard. Critics say this method short-circuits the rule-making process and deprives companies of the opportunity to point out problems and work with regulators to come up with solutions.
Is regulation by presidential shakedown any better? Many Trump supporters would say yes. They say he is taking personal responsibility for delivering his agenda, rather than relying on people they consider unaccountable bureaucrats.
They further contend that voluntary agreements work well when the changes are feasible and public opinion is solidly behind them. More than a dozen states, including heavily Democratic ones, are working on synthetic dye bans, and many of the affected ingredients have already been removed from food in Europe.
However, Trump’s strategy lacks crucial guardrails needed to prevent it from doing lasting damage to US innovation.
Companies need predictability to give them the confidence to invest in research and manufacturing capacity. Rules that change on a presidential dime to reach “voluntary” agreements make that impossible.
There is also no guarantee that Trump and Kennedy will confine their penchant for intervention to areas where they have overwhelming support.
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Techniques honed in the campaigns against childhood obesity and artificial dyes can be turned against less consensual targets such as abortion pills, vegetable oil and measles jabs.
We have already had at least two tastes of the uncertainty the Trump approach can bring. Last month, Kennedy’s reshaped vaccine panel rewrote the recommendations for flu jabs to disfavour a common ingredient that conspiracy theorists link to autism.
Some manufacturers are already rethinking their investment in upcoming vaccines for fear the panel will unexpectedly decide they do not like something else.
Similarly, Trump’s Coke intervention had serious consequences. Before the soda group eventually clarified that the cane sugar version would “complement” its corn syrup offering, shares in corn processors ADM and Ingredion plummeted on Trump’s initial post.
Coca-Cola works hard to keep its recipes secret. Government policy should not be equally mysterious. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
