In March, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order to combat false or inaccurate advertising of “Made in USA” claims, especially in digital marketplaces. It was part of sweeping trade policies that, according to the White House, “deliver on his promise to put America first”.

“American businesses building, growing, and manufacturing all, or virtually all, aspects of their products onshore are entitled to the undiluted branding benefits that come with supporting the American economy,” Trump’s executive order read, “and American citizens attempting to buy American products should have certainty as to what American-origin claims mean.”

In a world of growing national populism, country-of-origin labelling has become a political issue, as foreign brands can often seem – or easily be portrayed as – less aligned with national interests. This can be particularly problematic for certain products like Scotch whisky or French champagne, whose identity, prestige and branding are tied to their national origins, but our research shows that populism affects consumer and marketing behaviour across the board.

Election results affect marketing

To understand how a national-populist election victory shapes marketing, we conducted a study centered on the automobile industry in the US. Along with Daniel Brannon at the University of Northern Colorado, we analysed the impact that national-populist gains have on advertising and price promotion effectiveness for foreign and domestic brands.

First, we compared all new vehicle registrations in Texas before and after the 2016 US presidential election. We then re-created this test in France during the 2024 EU elections, when Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party saw unprecedented gains, this time focusing on the household textile industry.

What we observed in both cases was that advertising became more effective for domestic brands, whose market share grew by a larger amount than foreign brands as their advertising spending increased. In fact, we observed that foreign brands’ advertising actually became less effective – by 0.16% – after the national-populist party wins than it was prior to the election.

Similarly, domestic brands also benefited from more effective price promotions than foreign brands. Their market share grew by 0.30%, a larger amount than foreign brands for a similar level of increase price promotion spending.

Put simply, domestic brands’ advertising and price promotions were at a noticeable advantage when national-populist parties were in the ascendant.

Advertisers are already adapting

These results are of particular interest to marketers, who may consider concealing their brand’s country of origin as a result. But lack of transparency does not generally play well with consumers, and can backfire badly.

With some brands, just pinning down their country of origin can be tricky for consumers. Take upmarket ice cream company Häagen-Dazs. Despite its Danish-sounding name the company was founded by Polish-Jewish immigrants in New York City, and is now manufactured around the world, including in Canada, France and Japan.

Instead of hiding or highlighting this complexity, some global brands are instead spotlighting their contributions to national and local economies. These include emphasis on local manufacturing, job creation and supply-chain investments. But even this needs to be done carefully, as national populism does not receive the same support in all regions of a country, so strategies must be adapted to target certain regions.

Coca-Cola has made this move in Germany. A recent marketing campaign highlights the brand’s contributions to the German market, with ads featuring employees with German names – such as Heike or Jana – who produce and bottle Coca-Cola. The campaign’s slogan, “Made in Germany”, makes it very clear that they want consumers to know the whole process takes place in the European country.

This particular campaign is not just a product of Germany’s own populist turn. In a climate marked by strained US-German relations and boycotts of American goods across the world, it may currently be a wise marketing decision for certain brands to distance themselves from the US.

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Informing consumers

Marketing a brand as “domestic” or “foreign” is not always easy. The label is rooted in consumers’ perceptions – which was the criteria used in our study, as opposed to manufacturing location – but these are often at odds with the complex reality of global supply chains. For instance, around the time of the 2016 USA election, some “foreign” car brands actually manufactured more of their US vehicles domestically than “domestic” US brands.

The impact of populism is also not uniform across all brands. If a brand is associated with positive attributes like quality or reliability, it matters less to consumers whether it is labelled as a foreign, domestic or neutral. Among US consumers, for instance, Japanese manufacturers tend to have higher reliability perceptions, while Italian brands are associated with stronger styling.

Companies need to factor all this in as they devise their marketing strategies. Until recently, country-of-origin labelling was mostly informational, akin to a food product’s list of ingredients or an electronic product’s technical specifications. However, in a politically polarised world, it could be the thing that makes or breaks a brand’s sales and reputation.

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Europe is once again eyeing international energy markets with unease. The war in Ukraine, geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and the extreme volatility of gas prices are all stark reminders of a painful truth: the continent’s energy security is still at the mercy of external factors.

The standard response to energy crises is to hunt for new suppliers, bolster reserves, or accelerate the roll-out of renewables. While necessary, these strategies often overlook a less visible but equally critical lever: reducing how much energy our buildings actually use in the first place.

But there’s a major roadblock to making this happen, as Europe does not accurately measure thermal and energy properties. Instead, the continent’s energy efficiency ratings rely on generic data, usually derived from averages or regulatory default values of construction materials as opposed to a building’s actual thermal behaviour.

This makes it almost impossible to clearly predict how well energy-saving measures will work. What buildings need is something akin to the nutritional information we find on food packaging, which rigorously lists ingredients and nutrients. Just as we know exactly what we’re buying and eating, we should also know exactly how every building behaves – as opposed to an estimated average.

To achieve true energy resilience and sovereignty, we therefore need more than just new hardware; we also need a fundamental shift in how we handle material data. Precision here is not a magic fix, but the foundation of ensuring that efficiency efforts translate into real-world savings.

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The mirage of ‘average values’

Buildings account for a massive share of Europe’s energy consumption, and every improvement in insulation or design translates directly into less external dependency for heating or cooling.

Today, tools like Building Energy Modelling (BEM) allow us to simulate performance before construction begins. But these simulations are only as good as the information we feed them. If the data is generic or outdated, the resulting decisions are fundamentally flawed.

In practice, most digital libraries represent materials using average values, creating a precision gap that undermines strategic goals. We should think of materials as the DNA of a structure. Just as personalised medicine uses a patient’s specific genetic map to prevent disease, architecture needs the exact physical and hygrothermal “map” of its materials.

Without this, we are essentially treating buildings blind, relying on generic diagnoses that fail to predict thermal bridges or hidden inefficiencies. If we use generic data, a simulation might promise a high-performance building, but the finished reality often performs as much as 10% or 20% worse.

Put simply, we cannot achieve energy sovereignty if our buildings’ performance is based on approximations.

Leer más: Buildings consume 30% of global energy – digital twins could be the key to cutting their waste

From PDF spec sheets to digital passports

For decades, material data has been trapped in static PDF catalogues, making it useless for modern digital simulation. The solution is digital traceability. The EU is already pushing for the Digital Product Passport (DPP), a tool designed to provide electronically accessible information on products to improve sustainability and circularity throughout their life cycle.

This initiative works alongside the Construction Products Regulation (CPR), the EU’s legal framework that ensures all construction products speak the same technical language through standardised performance declarations, and the newly revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), which mandates strict efficiency targets to reach zero-emission goals.

Together, these measures mark a clear path from static data derived from averages to machine-readable precision.

Leer más: Why Europe’s ‘open’ economy of innovation is exposed to global trade shifts

Better building means better measuring

When designing a building, one single ill-informed material choice can lock it into excess costs and inefficient energy demand for its entire half-century lifespan. And in a landscape of high energy prices and uncertain supply, design deviations carry even more weight than they did in the past.

What once seemed like minor technical details have been transformed by geopolitical reality into a strategic imperative. Energy security is not just fought over in pipelines or ports, but also in the millions of technical choices made by architects and engineers every year.

Every energy crisis reminds us to secure our supply. But it should also remind us of something equally vital: the most secure, cheapest, cleanest energy is the energy we never have to consume in the first place.

To achieve true energy sovereignty, we must design and retrofit our buildings with greater technical precision. Just as no one would plan a rigorous medical diet using only approximate nutritional values, it makes little sense to project the future of our cities using materials described as mere averages. A truly efficient building does not start on the construction site; it starts with the quality of the data we use to design it.

A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

Andrés Jonathan Guízar Dena is a researcher at the University of Navarra. He receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the EXPLOIT4INNOMAT project (Grant Agreement No. 101058514). Within this project, he provides expertise in product characterisation for digital modelling, BIM environments, and energy simulation.