World leaders must stop appeasing Donald Trump
Conceding to Trump’s demands only guarantees new threats. It’s time to reject the US and its tech companies.
Donald Trump is a busy man. He’s invading his country’s capital city, taking over cultural institutions, restricting democratic rights, running an influence campaign inside a supposed allied nation, and seemingly preparing to attack Venezuela as he continues to enable Israel’s genocide in Gaza — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. On Tuesday, he must have received a reminder of whose money paved his way back to the White House.
“I will stand up to Countries that attack our incredible American Tech Companies,” he declared from his Truth Social account. “With this TRUTH, I put all Countries with Digital Taxes, Legislation, Rules, or Regulations, on notice that unless these discriminatory actions are removed, I, as President of the United States, will impose substantial additional Tariffs on that Country's Exports to the U.S.A., and institute Export restrictions on our Highly Protected Technology and Chips.”
Despite the recent wave of supposed deals — most of which aren’t even written down, showing how truly useless they are — his declaration of (economic) war against any country trying to rein in US tech companies or wrest back some semblance of control over their tech sectors should put to bed any notion the intense period of trade hostilities is over. Trump is continuing to wield what might the US has left, and will do so for as long as he has it.
The United States is a rogue nation spurred on by rogue companies in Silicon Valley and beyond that are intent on using the power at their disposal to extract maximum short-term benefit regardless of the long-term cost. It’s about time other countries give up their appeasement campaign and get serious about isolating the declining hegemon and its tech oligarchy until they’re forced to play nice.
Bootlicking world leaders
In my own country of Canada, we’ve been treated to months of concessions to the tech industry and the US government with little to show for it. Previous efforts to regulate AI have been thrown in the bin, as the new AI minister brags about using Google Gemini to make podcasts about legislation he’s supposed to understand about his job. The Justice Minister announced rules meant to protect young people online are also effectively dead, while Prime Minister Mark Carney has killed a capital gains tax increase that angered tech CEOs then rescinded the digital services tax to try to keep US officials at the negotiating table. Trump levied 35% tariffs anyway, then moved on to targeting lumber imports.
Carney’s actions are cowardly in their own right, but no image better sums up the appeasement campaign of Western allies of the United States than European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sitting next to Trump at his Scottish golf course, trying to justify accepting a terrible trade framework. It was at best marginally better than taking no deal at all, and even then the two sides started disputing what the actual terms of the deal were only days later. Some European officials felt disagreements over its tech regulations were settled. Trump and US tech CEOs clearly had other ideas. As one European diplomat put it, “Concessions are seen by him as a sign of weakness making him come back for more.”
These are just a few examples of the cowardice put on display by Western leaders in recent months. As Trump threatens their sovereignty, seeks to destroy key sectors of their economies, and tries to extract even greater gains for the United States regardless of the cost to supposed allies, these supposed leaders have barely been able to mutter criticism of his actions toward them — let alone his belligerence toward other nations and the crackdown on his own citizens. They have become adept at appeasement, and it’s about time they break out of it.
The US president will not change, regardless of the pleasantries they use when they greet him or the investment commitments they make to keep him happy. There might be pain to breaking with the United States or refusing to fold in the face of demands from the White House. But how far can they let this go while maintaining some degree of legitimacy and being able to look their own citizens in the eyes as they watch their leaders shy away from threats, bullying, and attacks on their countries? In Canada, Carney came to power promising “elbows up” against the United States. The opposition leader recently noted his “elbows have mysteriously gone missing.”
Tech dependence empowers the US
Trump’s broadside on tech policy should be an opportunity for other Western governments to end this embarrassing charade and show not only some self-respect, but that they have other options available to them. The global reach of US tech companies gives them immense power over governments, and grants them advantages that no company without such scale can match. Their billions of users improve their products and give them more data than most companies could ever imagine, and that becomes a clear competitive advantage.
On top of that, every time foreign governments, companies, and users pay for or even use the services that US tech companies offer, they are creating value that ultimately flows back to the United States. In recent years, there has been a lot of focus on why US GDP per capita was growing faster than its peers or why the US stock market was comparatively performing so well. The truth is that having many of the world’s dominant tech companies, which also happen to be some of the most valuable corporations on the planet, headquartered there makes a big difference.
That advantage granted to the United States by our collective dependence on US tech companies will not change unless we ween ourselves off their products and services. We certainly cannot allow generative AI to be used to entrench and expand the extent of that dependence, which some critics are even comparing to a colonial relationship. The only way to challenge the tech industry’s power is to challenge their global scale, and that means ramping up regulatory efforts and even forcing them out of their most important non-US markets. Appeasing Donald Trump and the Silicon elite will never deliver that outcome.
All we need to do is look at India to see the futility of making concession to a US regime that will only keep demanding more. Modi and Trump were assumed to have a good relationship, the country made trade concessions to keep the White House happy, and it killed its 6% digital ad tax in March in response to US trade concerns. Yet that didn’t save the country from the imposition of a 50% tariff rate — among the highest in the world. Now India is openly talking about self-reliance and getting closer to China.
Instead of sleepwalking into a “century of humiliation,” as some commentators suggest Europe could be heading toward because it’s so yoked to the United States, it’s time for countries to defend their sovereignty and spurn US demands, even if it comes with some short-term pain. This is a time to be bold.
Cooperation is essential
New alliances are possible in this moment. Non-US Western countries are already building stronger defense alliances. The European Union is looking at forging closer ties to members of the CPTPP, which includes Canada, Australia, Japan, and other Pacific nations. Members of the BRICS are also making a play to wrench back some of their sovereignty from a world order that privileged the US and, to a lesser degree, other Western states. The more countries that shift from dependence on fossil fuels to electrification will also reduce the influence of the United States.
At this crucial moment, the European Union should reach out its arms to traditional allies like Canada, Australia, Japan, and South Korea rather than turning inward, not to mention working with a broader grouping of countries like Brazil, Chile, and South Africa (just to name a few) to develop a common front against US aggression and, in particular, the colonial nature of its tech monopolists. It’s long past time to implement sweeping restrictions on data collection and transfer, stronger labor protections to end the push to precarity enabled by digital platforms, and stringent regulations targeting the harms of the tech infrastructure developed over the past several decades, including everything from social media to the pervasive surveillance culture that has come along with the business model of Silicon Valley.
Earlier this year, the European Union was floating a much more aggressive retaliatory policy toward the United States. Whereas the trade war is hitting goods, EU officials were explicitly looking at options to target trade in services, with a specific focus on the immense quantity of services it contracts from US tech companies. For companies trying to use the Trump administration to get rid of foreign taxes and regulations, it would have been a major blow. But the European Union backed down and other governments have not tried something similar. They didn’t want to provoke the ire of the White House and Silicon Valley — but they should do just that.
If countries want to escape the belligerence of the United States and its tech industry, they need to form stronger alliances and stop allowing the Trump administration to pick them off individually. Defense cooperation should be a stepping stone to deeper and broader alliances focused on tech development. Europe, Canada, and other countries may feel limited because they’ve allowed their security to become dependent on the United States, but even if they build up their militaries to claw that back, they’ll find that if they’re still dependent on US tech, they won’t have regained much real authority.
We must stop US tech dystopia
For decades, Silicon Valley has put growth, profits, and the expansion of its power ahead of all else. Those goals used to be obscured behind effective public relations campaigns to make people believe they were building the future and would not “be evil,” but that was only a strategy to displace incumbents and ultimately take their place. For the past decade, the drawbacks of the model they built have become increasingly apparent, but governments restrained themselves from properly addressing them for fear of appearing to spurn “innovation” and scare away precious tech investment dollars.
Today, as the United States lashes out at friend even more than foe, the harms of the tech reality we’ve been made to depend on are impossible to ignore. Private companies have built out the most comprehensive surveillance apparatus in human history. Social media platforms are designed to keep us tethered to screens, fearful of the world beyond, and feeling terrible about ourselves. Gig apps turn us into algorithmically controlled wage slaves with no power over our work. Now generative AI has entered the picture to fill our feeds with engagement slop and convince us we should confide in chatbots instead of building real relationships — even as the cases of “AI psychosis” and AI-enabled suicide grow by the day.
This cannot continue. Governments have a responsibility to their citizens to end the madness the tech industry has unleashed on us through strict and aggressive regulatory efforts, while getting serious about a form of digital sovereignty that builds an alternative much more focused on public benefit than maximizing shareholder value. Any campaign seeking to achieve those goals will come into conflict with the US government and the titans of Silicon Valley. There couldn’t be a better time to pick that fight and find new allies in the process.
Finally, someone said it! Thank you so much for this, Paris. It should be front page news around the world.
Our leaders are clinging to the last scraps of the status quo instead of casting a new vision. It needs to stop, but it won't unless the people tell them to.
The whole "deal" is pointless other than dissuading the US side to set unilateral sanctions. This is no trade agreement, just a political memorandum.