So far, every country in the world has had one of two responses to the Trump tariffs. The first one is: “Give Trump everything he asks for (except Greenland) and hope he stops being mad at you.” This has been an absolute failure. Give Trump an inch, he’ll take a mile. He’ll take fucking Greenland. Capitulation is a failure.
But so is the other tactic: retaliatory tariffs. That’s what we’ve done in Canada (like all the best Americans, I’m Canadian). Our top move has been to levy tariffs on the stuff we import from America, making the things we buy more expensive. That’s a weird way to punish America! It’s like punching yourself in the face as hard as you can, and hoping the downstairs neighbor says “Ouch!”
And it’s indiscriminate. Why whack some poor farmer from a state that begins and ends with a vowel with tariffs on his soybeans. That guy never did anything bad to Canada.
But there’s a third possible response to tariffs, one that’s just sitting there, begging to be tried: what about repealing anticircumvention law?
If you’re a technologist or an investor based in a country that’s repealed its anticircumvention law, you can go into business making disenshittificatory products that plug into America’s defective tech exports, allowing the people who own and use those products to use them in ways that are good for them, even if those uses make the company’s shareholders mad.
But many things are quietly changing around the world by Americans
Trump is not a lone mad man. Consider that the US can have coordinated their steps with western elites. E.g. why else would they have reacted indifferent to Venezuela?
You might well be right, but I don’t think enough time has passed to call this indifference just yet.
China is mad because it was already sourcing oil from there. Apparently, they had a contingent that met with M the day he was taken. So I don’t think their vague threat really counts in this scenario yet.
America does have a decent-sized military and someone at the head who needs to prove himself every time he’s challenged. Most countries don’t really like it at least on the basis that they’re next, but challenging him would be more likely to make them next.
These are the kind of things that take a long time to iron out. If they’re going to do something about it, they’re going to wait until a few others start to do things about it.