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If you’re a technologist or an investor based in a country that’s repealed its anticircumvention law, you can go into business making disenshittificatory products that plug into America’s defective tech exports, allowing the people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.
In light of recent events, other countries should simply stop recognizing US intellectual property claims as valid.
In light of recent events, other countries should drag Trump to the ICC and thence straight to the gallows.
LOL have you never heard of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Protection_Act
Oh and guess who isn’t part of the ICC?
I’d like to see these “other countries” drag Trump there. How? With what? This isn’t Star Trek, you can’t beam him mid-poop to the Netherlands.
If we can’t do it legally, we’ll just have to do it illegally. What’s important is that it gets done.
I mean, he’s set the precedent - apparently it’s now allowed for a country to just snatch the leader of a sovereign nation and run off with them
just nuke the motherfuckers trash of the earth.
I am a 4x year old father that voted for Kamala, and my 11 year old son does a lot for various charities without me asking him too. He’s been choosing a charity to help children, LGBTQ, immigrants/refugees, etc for the past few years by selling lemonade during the summer with 100% of the proceeds going to the charity. I am involved with groups dedicated to opposing ICE and authoritarian groups in the USA.
I may be White and male, but not all of us are monsters or want this.
Iirc this is an actual (as in offical and described in legislation) lever the EU can pull, unfortunately regardless of public sentiment many of its leaders are beholden US economic interests.
They are becoming less beholden by the day for reasons Doctorow laid out.
Like, all IP? That seems very dangerous.
Dangerous to whom?
Patent trolls.
“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.” Be-fucking-Cause they voted for Trump and they do not give one single fuck about how it affects anybody. But now they are like I didn’t vote for this bullshit. Yes they did. They just thought it would not touch them.
Farmer was a pretty bad example. American farmers have it coming to them and do deserve a punch in the face for overwhelmingly voting Trump.
That fails to acknowledge the force of the argument which is that tariffs affect innocent people.
Point is, it’s too important. If you fight back when you’re invaded, innocent people (like your own soldiers) will be killed. Consequences will be worse if you just roll over though.
Maximum pressure needs to be exerted on the US, through retaliatory tariffs, ceasing to recognise American intellectual property, and sanctions.
Very much agree with this argument though it’s not new. IP law has always been a secret weapon against US which is mostly a service economy country.
EU just seems too weak to take advantage of this though
Give him the Sudetenland, I’m sure he’ll stop after that. Appeasement always works!! /s
Something not often discussed is the possibility that the UK and France might not have been capable of stopping Hitler through military force at that time.
I mean even later even after building up a bit more, France got curb stomped and the UK barely got out of Dunkirk. And that happened while Germany was occupying Czechoslovakia and part of Poland which took significant military resources from fighting the UK and France. There’s a very real possibility that standing up to Hitler over Czechoslovakia would have gone even worse than standing up to Hitler over Poland. Sure the Soviets might have helped at that time, but their military wasn’t even capable of taking on Finland at that point.
At any rate at the present time, the world needs to build up it’s military power before standing up to Trump. We’re saying it’s because we’re fulfilling NATO obligations (like Trump told us to!) or getting ready to fight Russia maybe. But military build up is happening but it’s not going to happen overnight.
The only real solution isn’t reactivating roombas but cutting dependence on US goods and markets. The US market is highly desirable from a purely population angle but isn’t essential today. Moving to an alternative to the dollar, expanding production of essential goods to other nations, etc.
If you really want to spite the US use retaliatory IP lifting. “Ok, US IP protections are now invalid.”
Just declare any simple script that does a wget on copyrighted information to be “AI”. AI is immune from copyright infringement it seems.
Please do. Let this cess pool rot. Its not salvagable.
I like the DisEnshittification. Actually why not call it Deshittification ? Just like DeGoogle.
Coincidentally, Doctorow is the one who coined ‘enshittification’ originally.
Moreover, Trump introduced major tariff exceptions for some countries. For example, the integrated North American auto industry would have been devastated if he hadn’t decided on 6 March to exempt goods from Mexico and Canada from the 25% levy that had gone into effect two days earlier. Goods from these countries now face no penalty if they are imported under the US-Mexico-Canada agreement.
This softening was predictable. US business would have suffered enormously if Trump had fully implemented the tariffs he had announced, let alone threatened, so it was never likely that he would persist with the worst of them. Trump regularly stakes out extreme negotiating positions, only to back down when the heat is on, even if he hasn’t gotten what he demanded from the other side. In fact, investors’ assumption that “Trump always chickens out” – known as Taco – has become a taunt. But when a madman threatens Armageddon, it is foolhardy to goad him into following through. The tariffs Trump has implemented are still very high.
Why haven’t Trump’s tariffs crashed the US economy?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/29/donald-trump-tariffs-us-economy-inflation-employment-2026I think the only real solution is to nuke the US before they can retaliate.
Annihilate them before they can destroy the planet with their own nukes.
It’s possible the US might have some radar systems that can detect incoming nukes and they might even have some submarines in unknown locations capable of hitting back after someone has nuked them.
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Then the world has to innovate and prepare a way to spam all of the US digital infrastructure before attacking.
… let’s maybe stay away from genocide, hm?
The US cant do its ethic cleasing if we genocide them first
- the well though out plan of someone online /s
I had to learn something useful after playing Stellaris for 800 hours
