It's not political: People really aren't buying Ivanka Trump's clothes

Fourth quarter earnings reports show that, in fact, people have stopped buying Ivanka Trump's fashion line and that the decision by Nordstrom, Inc. and other retailers to discontinue their relationship with her company was based on free market principles, not on politics.

The A.V. Club reported on Friday that the White House's decision to lash out at Nordstrom on Twitter this week was ill-advised, "Because, as we all know, multinational corporations hate making money, and love scoring cheap and meaningless political points against misdirected adversaries."

"CNBC reports that Nordstrom wasn’t lying, and that group of pasty-faced authoritarian weirdos strolling the abandoned ruins of a once-bustling focus of American democracy were, as has been consistently the case, lying for no discernible reason outside of blind hubris," wrote Alex McCown-Levy.

"Ivanka Trump’s line of goods at Nordstrom fell 63 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016 compared to the previous year, and were additionally down 26 percent in January 2017 compared with 12 months earlier. Her items experienced similar drops at other retailers like Zappos and Amazon (43 percent and 21 percent)," he continued. Sales were up at Macy's and Bloomingdale's, but they rose at a slower pace than in the previous year.

"Nordstrom cut the cord for the most basic reason imaginable," said McCown-Levy. "They weren’t making enough money."

This week has seen Trump's senior advisor Kellyanne Conway plugging Ivanka's brand in a TV interview, a decision that many considered to be skirting into ethically questionable terrain.

After the president's outburst on Twitter -- both on his personal Twitter profile and on the official @POTUS account -- Nordstrom issued a statement reiterating that their decision had nothing to do with politics, but with sales.

By the end of trading on Wednesday, Nordstrom, Inc. (JWN)'s share price had risen 4 percent, contrary to Breitbart.com's report that the controversy has caused the company's stock to tumble and devastated the brand.