The US has a population of 340 million, but chose someone called Trump to (again) be their President at age 78 .. he then imposes tariffs on most of his allies and sides with Russia against Ukraine, declaring that Ukraine started the war … any upside?
No obvious immediate upside but it makes a clear declaration that the US in decline – even should the good citizens of American, who are probably in a majority, regain control in 4 years, the fact that they gave the nuclear car keys to Trump signals deep systemic problems.
One potential upside, if we can take it, is to start a move away from reliance on some on the large US corporates – such as Meta, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet – who have grown without adequate control simply because the US has intervened, directly and indirectly, to shield their operations from tax and antitrust concerns. US companies are not good tax citizens in Australia – for example, on revenues of $6.3B in 2022-23 Microsoft Australia paid tax of $120M, a rate of 1,9%; Apple on revenue of $9.3B paid $137M, a rate of 1.48%, and Meta on revenue of $1.15B paid $120M or 1.91%.
While we find a way to tax and control these companies more effectively we need to find non US alternatives – and we should already be thinking in those terms, much like Canadians and Europeans. Particularly Europe should be able to offer hardware and software alternatives to most US services and products – and I would feel more comfortable dealing with Europeans than the US for the forseeable future. Consumer boycotts should precede political action because it 1) provides our politicians with some support/spine and 2) security issues means that the politicians will need time to withdraw from certain treaties – even if the US president isn’t even aware they exist.
The problem will always be what happens when outrage and enthusiasm begins to wane. Lets look at some of the companies/activities Canadians and Europeans are looking at as boycott targets:
Amazon, Netflix, Any American Whiskey, Tesla, X, any American based cloud and SAAS services, Google/Alphabet, McDonalds, KFC, all things Meta – including Facebook and Instagram, Microsoft, Adobe, Kraft Heinz, Mars, Mondelez, Coca Cola, Pepsi …
I would argue that some targets are more important than others – retail businesses are less important than business and cloud services which are of strategic business importance – US business and defence connections should be wound down over time to lessen our exposure, regardless of who might be in the Whitehouse.
