A wave of criticism is crashing down on Barron Trump’s yerba mate startup before it even hits store shelves, with social media users accusing the president’s youngest son of cashing in on Latin American culture while his father’s administration ramps up deportations targeting Latino immigrants.
The 20-year-old NYU student serves as a director of SOLLOS Yerba Mate Inc., a Delaware-incorporated company that filed Securities and Exchange Commission paperwork on Jan. 23 showing it had secured $1 million through private investment. The venture, which also counts Barron’s high school friends Spencer Bernstein and Stephen Hall among its five partners, is scheduled to begin selling a pineapple-and-coconut flavored yerba mate drink in May after delaying an originally planned April rollout.
Critics flooding the brand’s Instagram account have seized on what they view as hypocrisy: profiting from a beverage with deep roots in Indigenous Guaraní and Paraguayan communities while President Trump’s White House pursues aggressive immigration enforcement against the very populations whose ancestors created the drink. One commenter captured the sentiment bluntly: “Nice cultural appropriation…They don’t want Latinos in the U.S. but they want their products. Buy yerba from Latin American countries and do this beverage the natural way!”
Yerba mate is a caffeinated herbal tea native to South America with centuries of cultural significance in the region. Its recent surge in U.S. popularity as a coffee alternative has made it one of the fastest-growing segments in the energy drink market, which was valued at roughly $85 billion to $90 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach between $125 billion and $157 billion by the early 2030s.
The company operates from a 4,500-square-foot Palm Beach address less than a mile from Mar-a-Lago, owned by Jay Weitzman, a longtime Trump associate, campaign donor and former tennis partner whose parking business has maintained federal contracts since 2005. Weitzman told Newsweek he has no ownership interest in Sollos and no connection to the business, explaining that the company uses his address only because his grandson, Bernstein, resides with him.
Bernstein chairs the company and serves as chief operating officer, while Hall holds the vice president position. Both are childhood friends of Barron from Oxbridge Academy in West Palm Beach who stepped away from studies at Villanova University and the University of Notre Dame to pursue the venture. The other listed partners are Rudolfo Castello and Valentino Gomez. State business filings show the company was incorporated in Delaware last December before registering in Florida.
Promotional materials showcase light blue cans bearing “SOLLOS” in bold letters above an orange-and-yellow sun graphic moving along production lines. The brand name plays on “sol,” the Spanish word for sun, with company marketing explaining that “SOL” represents sunrise while “LOS” — “SOL” backwards — symbolizes sunset, embodying what they call the complete solar cycle under the tagline “It Begins Where It Ends.”
That branding has only intensified the backlash flooding the social media account with critical comments. Another Instagram user wrote: “Oh wow, a family tied to anti-Latino rhetoric profiting off something deeply rooted in Indigenous (Guaraní), Paraguayan, and South American culture. Yeah… no!” Others suggested the brand “should be called ICE or WHITE” given the administration’s immigration stance. The pile-on has intensified as May approaches.
Sollos announced its inaugural flavor — a 12-pack pineapple-and-coconut blend available for purchase at sollos.com — in a mid-April LinkedIn post. The company’s messaging emphasizes its South Florida roots, with founders stating on the platform that growing up in the region shaped their outdoor lifestyle and inspired them to create a drink “designed to complement life in the ‘Sunshine State.'” Marketing materials position the brand as capturing “the vibrant lifestyle of South Florida” and “the perfect summer drink.”
The beverage venture marks another business endeavor for Barron, who is currently in his second year at New York University’s Stern School of Business, signaling his intention to pursue business rather than politics. He appears alongside his father and brothers Don Jr. and Eric as a co-founder of World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency project in which Forbes has estimated his stake at around $150 million, though much of that valuation remains tied up in illiquid tokens. He also briefly co-founded a real estate company in 2024 that dissolved following President Trump’s election victory.
Sollos has not publicly addressed the mounting controversy, and the startup’s Instagram presence continues drawing a steady stream of pointed criticism. For a company betting on the yerba mate market’s explosive growth, the political firestorm igniting before a single can reaches consumers may present challenges no amount of South Florida sunshine can overcome.
