Socialist Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson stood at a Starbucks picket line and declared war on the company her city built.
Now she’s publicly walking it back – and Starbucks is already moving 2,000 jobs to Tennessee.
What she said this week to walk it back made Starbucks’ next move even worse.
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson Attacked Starbucks and Now the Jobs Are Going to Nashville
Starbucks was born in Seattle in 1971.
Howard Schultz bought the company in 1987 and built it into a global institution that put Seattle on the map.
Democrat Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson called for a boycott of it before she had spent a single day in office, standing outside a Reserve Roastery and telling the crowd: “I am not buying Starbucks, and you should not either.”
Wilson is a self-described democratic socialist in the mold of New York City’s Zohran Mamdani – the same ideology, tax-the-rich playbook, and contempt for the employers funding city services.
She also regularly received checks from her professor parents to cover her personal bills until she took office – a detail that did not stop her from lecturing Seattle’s job creators about economic fairness.
Then in April, a reporter at a Seattle University forum asked Wilson whether the state’s new 9.9% millionaire tax might push wealthy residents out of Washington.
“I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are, like, super overblown,” she said, laughing and waving her hand at the crowd. “And the ones that leave – like, bye.”
The clip went viral.
In the wake of Washington state’s approval of a new income tax on millionaires, Seattle mayor Katie Wilson, a democratic socialist, brushes aside concerns about wealthy residents fleeing the state.
“The ones that leave—like, ‘bye!’” pic.twitter.com/vmfWcXQfvD
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) April 30, 2026
Schultz had seen enough. He relocated his family to Miami in March – the same day state Democrats passed the income tax.
Then he published a Wall Street Journal op-ed addressed directly to Wilson and every lawmaker who applauded her.
“Seattle’s mayor, Katie Wilson, has chosen to cast business as a foil rather than a partner,” Schultz wrote. “Her socialist rhetoric vilifies employers, even while she continues to rely on them for revenue. She has encouraged residents who disagree with her policies to leave.”
The op-ed ran the same day Starbucks announced 61 more layoffs at its Seattle headquarters.
Starbucks Leaving Seattle for Nashville as Washington Millionaire Tax Drives Out Employers
A hundred million dollars and 2,000 jobs are headed to Nashville – a state with no income tax – as Starbucks builds a new corporate hub there over the next five years.
Fox 13 reported Seattle stands to lose up to $750 million in tax revenue as the company expands in Tennessee instead of Washington.
The New York Times ran a piece this week calling Wilson a “socialist” in the headline and describing her approach toward Seattle’s business community as taunting the rich.
Wilson sat for an interview and offered her retreat.
“Those comments were not productive in the sense that they caused more harm than good,” she told the Times.
She insisted she has a good relationship with Starbucks, noted the company is sponsoring a new homeless shelter, and said she wants them in Seattle.
The company acknowledged her reversal and kept packing boxes for Nashville.
Seattle Business Exodus Follows the Same Pattern That Destroyed New York in the 1970s
New York City Mayor John Lindsay waged ideological war on his city’s business community in the late 1960s.
The city lost a quarter million jobs.
The fiscal ruin that followed nearly destroyed New York by 1975.
Seattle is running the same experiment on a faster timeline.
The city already faces a $250 million budget deficit and a net loss of 13,000 downtown jobs.
Amazon has slowed hiring. Microsoft has cut headcount. Fisher Investments relocated to Texas after Washington introduced a capital gains tax. Jeff Bezos moved his fortune to Florida years ago.
Now Schultz is in Miami, and the Wall Street Journal headline Wilson earned reads: “Seattle Turns Hostile to the Great Businesses It Made.”
Schultz put it plainly in that op-ed: the companies that built Seattle anchored an interconnected system of suppliers and startups for decades. As they reduce their local role, the city has no answer for what provides the next round of jobs.
Wilson does have an answer – spend more, tax more, and hope the wealthy don’t notice the exits.
Every employer Schultz named has already found them.
Wilson apologized for calling for a boycott. She never apologized for the ideology behind it – the same ideology that is writing checks Seattle’s tax base can no longer cash.
Sources:
- Howard Schultz, “Seattle Turns Hostile to the Great Businesses It Made,” The Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2026.
- Caleb Parke and Rachel del Guidice, “Starbucks Cuts Jobs in Seattle as Former CEO Howard Schultz Blasts ‘Socialist’ Mayor,” Fox News, May 12, 2026.
- Staff, “Howard Schultz Blasts Mayor Katie Wilson’s ‘Socialist Rhetoric’ as Starbucks Cuts More Seattle Jobs,” 570 KVI, May 12, 2026.
- Staff, “NYT Calls Seattle’s Socialist Mayor Out Over Starbucks Rift,” Seattle Red, May 18, 2026.
- Staff, “Katie Wilson Mocks Millionaire Exodus as Washington’s 9.9% Income Tax Empties Seattle,” Seattle Red, April 2026.