Trump’s Never Surrender High Tops embody the worst of sneaker culture

It was inevitable. Having infected every other part of culture, partisan politics has arrived in the world of sneakerheads. 

Last week, Trump announced that he would be at Pennsylvania’s Sneaker Con, to some consternation. “Donald Trump showing up to hawk bootleg Off-Whites is the closest he’ll get to any Air Force Ones ever again for the rest of his life,” snarked Biden campaign spokesman Michael Tyler.

So last Saturday, sniffer dogs and Secret Service security were among the hypebeasts, old heads and collectors. To boos and cheers alike, Donald Trump took to the stage, announcing his own sneaker line. He held up his first sneaker to be released, the limited “Never Surrender High Tops.”

They are the most generic-looking high-top sneaker you could imagine; a Jordan 1 knockoff sole paired with a Nike Blazer x Supra Skytop upper, with an American flag at the ankle, “T” on the lateral quarter panel and gold everywhere. In some ways, they have absolutely no connection to actual sneaker culture; but in others, they’re a funhouse mirror — a parody — of its worst excesses. For one, the value.  

The shoes are expected to start shipping in July and have a no-refund policy — but all 1,000 limited pre-ordered pairs sold out within the hour. There were a few pairs available at the event, with the first released to the public selling on the live auction app WhatNot for $9,000 to Ukrainian watch reseller and self-proclaimed sneakerhead, Roman Sharf.

The absurdity of the whole thing, and that remarkable figure, prompted a wave of publicity for Mr. Sharf, who was branded a “Russian oligarch” by several publications. Sharf then set off on a media tour around Fox News, Newsmax, Piers Morgan and Complex Sneakers. “I kind of like the whole ‘Russian oligarch’ thing,” Sharf told The Spectator, “but I looked at my bank account and it didn’t match.”

I spoke to a reseller who showed me his pre-order for more than a dozen pairs of the “Never Surrender” shoe — the website’s limit to three orders per person was easily overcome. When I asked if he liked the shoes, his immediately response was, “Oh fuck no.” But that didn’t matter. At worst, there would be at least enough people who would buy them from him at cost, but he expects to get more than $1,000 for them each when they release. Not only can you buy pre-order slots for the shoes on eBay, you can buy T-shirts with pictures of them, or cards, Trump sneaker yard signs and a bad AI picture of Trump wearing gold Jordan 1s, for some reason. One particularly savvy reseller exploited SEO and put “Never Surrender” and “High-Top Gold Trump” in the title of his ad for a pair of gold Nike SB Humidity Dunk. 

Sharf claims not to have bought the shoes to flip them; as a sneaker collector, he was interested in the rarity. “I was buying them as they are indeed Donald Trump’s sneakers, they are signed by him, and they are a limited pair; these are friends and family pairs of just fifty,” he told The Spectator.

Sharf has been offered more than $20,000 for the pair and bought them feeling confident he’d be able to earn his money back — but only in the way that a collector does. “It’s never about the money,” Sharf put it, “but in the back of your head, as a smart collector, you are always going to say, ‘hey, what do you think the value is behind something like this?’”

When you’ve caught the shoe collecting bug, you’ll sometimes buy shoes that you think are undervalued currently. When you’re right, the profits from reselling those pay for the rest of your collection, or allow you to upgrade to the “grails” you look for.

But in the case of the Colette Jordan 1s, the Yeezy Red Octobers and many other “grail” sneakers that sell for tens of thousands of dollars, they aren’t valuable solely because they’re rare; and even so, their rareness is less artificial than the forced 1,000-pair cap of the Never Surrenders. Instead, their value comes from some blend of cultural significance, design, importance for sneaker history and the stories behind them from the people and brands that made them. You can write thousands of words on the incredible history and influences behind the Louis Vuitton Air Force 1 — Brendan Dunne of Complex has — so their $5,000+ resell price makes sense.   

But other than being a shiny advertisement for the president and a symbol for the comic absurdity of this timeline, the Never Surrender lacks all of that. Trump said on stage that, “This is something I’ve been talking about for twelve years, thirteen years” — but he has no historic interest in sneakers, any more than he had in various products he’s slapped his name on for decades at this point.

This is particularly pronounced here as, despite building his political brand around “America First,” these shoes were almost certainly not made by Americans. US sneaker production is limited, with New Balance assembling a line of their shoes here, along with the independent brand Hersey, but even a thousand shoes at $399 a pair, is currently feasible to be made in America. For the Grammys, Nike’s Jordan Brand couldn’t get Usher’s chrome-plated Jordan 4s done in time for the Big Game, and so had to turn to celebrity sneaker customizer, The Shoe Surgeon.

While there has been some chatter that the Trump shoes are made in Wyoming (Sharf himself mentioned this), this is a misunderstanding of the fact that the company selling the shoes, 45Footwear LLC, is registered in a building in the small town of Sheridan, Wyoming. Unsurprisingly, the town of 19,000 does not have a sneaker factory; “Brian’s” shoe and boot shop is as close as you get.

45Footwear LLC is selling the shoes, using the trademarks of CIC Ventures LLC, the firm which released the Trump NFT collections. GetTrumpSneakers.com website clearly states the shoes “are not designed, manufactured, distributed or sold by Donald J. Trump, the Trump Organization or any of their respective affiliates or principals.”

Rather, these are almost certainly white-label sneakers, generic designs which can be altered for your particular branding (for example, adding a flag, a T and making them gold), and are manufactured in Vietnam or China in small batches for commercial clients. Go through Alibaba and you will find pages and pages of generic leather high-tops. Having done so, I wasn’t able to find the exact white-label shoe that the “Never Surrender” high was adapted from (no, it isn’t this pair on Temu). But speaking to a range of sources in sneaker manufacturing — including three from sneaker-production capital, Putian, China — there was no doubt they are a white-label product. The cost per pair varies based on the order quantity and manufacturer, but my sources estimated these shoes would cost between $13 and $17. 

This gets even worse for the upcoming Yeezy 350 knockoff “T — Red Wave” and “POTUS 45” knit sneakers (which Ginger Gaetz happily tweeted she was buying as an “early birthday present” for her congressman husband Matt). The pictures on the website are clearly, unquestionably made with AI, and then tweaked afterward, and the website even includes a disclaimer: “The images shown are for illustration purposes only and may not be an exact representation of the product.”

The likely plan here is to get a rough production number from the pre-orders, then solicit one of the many companies selling white-label 350 knit sneaker knock-offs, getting the lowest price per shoe. Despite the $199 retail price, they will likely cost less than $10 per pair; and those with pre-orders should pleasantly surprised if they look close to as good as the pictures suggest. 

In short, despite Sharf’s claims that the quality seems fine, the No Surrenders are almost certainly white-label shoes, sold with a 300 percent retail margin, to fans with little knowledge of and interest in sneaker culture. 

Sharf isn’t a stupid man, nor the raging MAGA lunatic that some have portrayed him as; he likes the shoes, as is his right. And frankly, they’ve more than paid for themselves in advertising. But the No Surrenders embody the absolute worst of sneaker culture. They’re boring, generic, ugly shoes, which have no redeeming unique qualities in and of themselves, yet are seen as valuable because they are rare and hyped up. They didn’t sell out because they were cool, but in part because people thought they could flip them for more money; in part because collectors thought they could be something valuable to hold onto; and in part because Trump supporters want to support their candidate and overlook the red flags.

The Trump shoe move is not as blatant as AOC selling $58 “Tax the Rich” sweatshirts, but it is worse. Those sweatshirts are American-made Bay Side blanks, and though AOC’s team could have used many cheaper blanks, from merch providers, they chose to take a lower margin. AOC should clearly read The Art of the Deal.