Why the Rest of the World Should Boycott Trump’s America
Trump is effectively boycotting the world by withdrawing from international institutions and violating international norms. The world should return the favor.
The Trump administration objected so strenuously to a recent speech by South Africa’s ambassador that it expelled him from the United States.
What did Ebrahim Rasool say that was so objectionable? Honestly, the speech he made at a webinar sponsored by a South African research institute was rather boring.
But embedded in his remarks is this observation: “Donald Trump is launching… an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilizing a supremacism against the incumbency at home.”
Don’t come here, don’t invest here, don’t buy from Tesla or Amazon or any of the other corporations that have kissed Trump’s ring.
This sentence requires a bit of interpretation. The “incumbency” in this case is the federal bureaucracy; the diversity, equity, and Inclusion programs in government and business; anti-racism initiatives more generally; and even elements of the Republican Party that haven’t been Trumpified. “Supremacism,” meanwhile, is white supremacy.
Essentially, the ambassador was pointing out that Trump and MAGA have launched a campaign to advance white supremacy in a country where the civil rights movement achieved enough progress to qualify today as the mainstream.
This isn’t a wild accusation. Among all the racist actions of the current administration, perhaps the most outrageous is Trump’s promise to expedite American citizenship for white Afrikaaners from South Africa that, Trump insists, are experiencing discrimination.
So, while the administration is deporting Black and Brown people by the thousands and trying to claw back birthright citizenship from even more people of color, it is offering to fast-track citizenship for a bunch of white people from Africa. This is not an Onion headline. It’s white nationalism. Even if Afrikaaners were experiencing discrimination in South Africa—which they’re not—privileging their entrance into the United States over Afghans terrified of returning to Taliban rule, Haitians escaping social collapse, or Sudanese fleeing civil war would still count as racist.
Trump’s overtures to the Afrikaaners are also a startling reversion of U.S. policy to the apartheid-friendly positions of the 1980s, when the Reagan administration bucked world opinion by maintaining strong relations with the white minority regime in South Africa. At that time, the anti-apartheid movement in that country was calling on the world to boycott, sanction, and divest from (BDS) South Africa.
Now that a white nationalist has (again) become president of the United States, it’s time to take inspiration from the anti-apartheid movement. As the Trump administration imposes restrictions on travel from 43 countries to the United States, as it slaps tariffs against allies and adversaries alike, as it cozies up to autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as it dismantles federal programs designed to help people in need all over the world, as it withdraws from the Paris climate accord and the United Nations Human Rights Council, as it illegally deports thousands of people and sends some of them to horrific prisons in El Salvador, as it voices support for far-right, neo-Nazi political parties, as it threatens to seize Greenland and absorb Canada, it’s time to call on the world to treat this country as a pariah.
András Schiff has just done that. The great pianist announced this week that he has cancelled upcoming engagements and will not perform in the United States. This comes after he has refused to play in Russia and his native Hungary as well. “Maybe it’s a drop in the ocean; I’m not expecting many musicians to follow,” Schiff said. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s for my own conscience. In history, one has to react or not to react.”
Such a boycott should not be a permanent shunning but a specific response to policies that are in clear violation of international law and universal values of democracy and human rights. Yes, the United States has been in violation of such principles in the past. But this time, the Trump administration has crossed so many lines that it threatens to overthrow the very system of international law.
Once the U.S. government abandons its policies of white nationalism, among other unacceptable positions, it can be welcomed back into the community of nations. Until then: Don’t come here, don’t invest here, don’t buy from Tesla or Amazon or any of the other corporations that have kissed Trump’s ring. Trump is effectively boycotting the world by withdrawing from international institutions and violating international norms. The world should return the favor.
Isolating the Trump Administration
The Trump administration’s indiscriminate tariffs have already prompted a number of countries to respond in kind. Canada has imposed $32.8 billion in tariffs against the United States, while Europe has imposed $28 billion worth. China announced a “15% tariff on U.S. coal and liquefied natural gas, along with a 10% tariff on other products, including crude oil, agricultural machinery, and pickup trucks.”
The residents of these regions are also adjusting their travel plans accordingly, a move that Robert Reich recently endorsed. The Washington Post reports:
Canadians are skipping trips to Disney World and music festivals. Europeans are eschewing U.S. national parks, and Chinese travelers are vacationing in Australia instead. International travel to the United States is expected to slide by 5% this year, contributing to a $64 billion shortfall for the travel industry, according to Tourism Economics. The research firm had originally forecast a 9% increase in foreign travel, but revised its estimate late last month to reflect “polarizing Trump Administration policies and rhetoric.”
Trump’s policies are hurting the United States, from the travel industry and research institutes losing federal grants to the average consumer who is paying for all the tariffs through higher prices.
Some observers recommend that other countries resist the temptation to shoot themselves in the feet by imposing penalties of their own. Economist Dani Rodrik, for instance, suggests that retaliatory tariffs will only hurt the countries imposing them, so the best strategy “is to minimize the damage by staying as far from the bully as you can and waiting for him to punch himself out and crumple in a corner.”
Another option, economist Gabriel Zucman urges, is to apply tariffs to U.S. oligarchs: “If Tesla wants to sell cars in Canada and Mexico then Musk himself, as main shareholder of Tesla, should have to pay tax in Canada and Mexico. Put a wealth tax on him, and condition Tesla’s market access to him paying the tax.”
Changing travel plans, slapping tariffs on U.S. goods, taxing U.S. plutocrats: These are all potentially useful strategies. But they don’t go far enough.
Hit the Hornets’ Nest
You’ve heard this advice before: Don’t antagonize him, don’t make him lash out, don’t further endanger those around him. But abusive husbands only continue their unacceptable behavior in the face of such coddling.
Many international leaders hope that they can avoid Trump’s wrath by praising him, treating him to military parades when he visits, or at least laying low in the hopes that he won’t direct his wrath in their direction.
Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for instance, has done his best to curry favor with Trump, particularly after the disastrous White House meeting last month. In this way, he was able to restart U.S. military aid and intelligence-sharing. But he’s still on the verge of being sold out at the bargaining table if and when the Trump administration accepts Russia’s hardline terms for a cease-fire and peace deal.
The alliance against fascism worked in World War II. The anti-apartheid movement was successful. Let us now stand against the Trumps and Putins and Netanyahus of the world.
Still, you might object, no country is powerful enough to put Trump in his place. And those that might have a shot at doing so—China, Russia—are more interested in working with Trump to divide the world into spheres of influences.
But that still leaves a lot of countries that can band together, like an army of small and mid-sized Lilliputians to tie down the power-drunk Gulliver. They simply have to hit the United States where it hurts. Don’t buy products from American companies that support Trump. Don’t allow those businesses to invest in your countries. Reorient your currency transactions away from the dollar.
These measures should not come all at once. Rather, they should be staged strategically to force Trump to back down from his most noxious policies. Name-and-shame tactics don’t work with leaders who have no shame. Grab him by the wallet—it’s the only language he understands.
Will such measures hurt ordinary Americans? Probably. But no more than Trump is already hurting us. The tariffs that countries have imposed in retaliation against Trump’s actions will adversely affect nearly 8 million U.S. workers, the majority in counties that voted for him. But these costs are nothing compared to what the world will suffer as a result of Trump’s cuts in foreign assistance, which will likely kill hundreds of thousands of people a year.
One last recommendation: Don’t cut off all communication with the United States.
In the 1980s, the anti-apartheid campaign fostered considerable contact between the United States and South Africa. But it was a relationship based on solidarity between civil society organizations. My dear friends in Canada, Mexico, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America: Please do not equate Trump with the United States. Yes, a lot of people here voted for him. But they are starting to have buyer’s remorse. Let’s join hands across borders and party lines and say, “We will not tolerate racist bullies.”
The alliance against fascism worked in World War II. The anti-apartheid movement was successful. Let us now stand against the Trumps and Putins and Netanyahus of the world. They are the 1%, and they are vastly outnumbered.
