It’s time to boycott American goods and services. Buy British. Buy European. Buy Chinese. Buy anything except American

By Tom Arms

It’s time to boycott American goods and services. Buy British. Buy European. Buy Chinese. Buy anything except American.

Non-Americans hit by Trumpian tariffs cannot influence American politics through the ballot box. But they can vote with their pocket books. And a point-blank refusal to buy American products would have more of an impact than retaliatory tariffs that make those products more expensive.

Individuals are already turning their backs on American merchandise. Last month Europeans registered their displeasure with Donald Trump and his billionaire backer Elon Musk by cutting Tesla sales by 50 percent. Others have shown their disapproval by refusing to buy Coca-Cola or taking their coffee breaks at Café Nero instead of Starbucks.

But these are haphazard kneejerk boycotts which may give the individual a momentary self-righteous glow. They will have little if any effect on the Washington policymakers. What is needed is a coordinated effort that organizes pickets, produces literature and stuffs it through letter products. A well-oiled machine with foot soldiers, a PR team and a website that identifies products and services to boycott and names non-American alternatives and goes on to monitor success.

A boycott would also help the re-ordering of trade patterns away from the United States. If people are not buying American goods than they are buying goods from other countries. The businesses in those countries will quickly realize the opportunity and divert their supply lines accordingly

The government can’t do the job of organizing a boycott. Not because it is incapable of the task but because it would be politically irresponsible. A successful government-organized boycott would almost certainly result in retribution from the ever-mercurial Trump. It would be in character for Trump to retaliate with restrictions in vital areas such as intelligence gathering or weapons procurement.

Read: Consumers are boycotting US goods around the world

No, what is needed is an existing political machine that has significant representation in parliament but is separate from the government. There is no time to re-invent the wheel. The public requires an existing political party whose leader has already firmly staked out a firm anti-Trumpian position and called for a coordinated response to tariffs and other unacceptable behavior by the current tenant of the White House.

What is needed is for Britain’s Liberal Democrats—led by Sir Ed Davey—to organize a proper boycott of American products. The government can’t do it. The Tories won’t do it. That leaves the Liberal Democrats – with a leader committed to doing something—with the opportunity and the responsibility.

There are roughly 100,000 Liberal Democrats in the UK. In addition 3,519,199 people voted for the Lib Dems in the last election and put a post-war record of 72 MPs in the House of Commons. The 100,000 joined a political party because they want to influence policy. The vast majority of Lib Dems—if not all of them—see the American president as a major threat to democracy, liberal values, British national interests and global peace and prosperity.

They would jump at the opportunity to be exploited in a way that politically damaged Donald Trump. A well-organized and well-publicized boycott across the UK would do just that.

Better still a global boycott. Based in the National Liberal Club at 1 Whitehall Place is Liberal International. It has affiliated parties in 100 countries. Those countries constitute a third of the world’s population. It is no exaggeration to say that Trump’s tariffs, cuts in aid and other policies are threatening every person in those countries.

Britain’s Liberal Democrats are well-placed to take the leading role not just in Britain but across the world. The UK is recognized by other countries as having a special relationship with the US. If one of its major political parties organizes an effective boycott of American goods than other countries are more likely to follow.

Finally, it should be made clear that the boycott is not against the American people. It is against the dangerous policies of its government. To be more specific, one man’s policies—Donald Trump.

World Review

France’s Marine Le Pen has been hoisted upon her own petard. At the National Rally’s annual convention in 2015 she stood at the podium and declared that any politician found guilty of a crime should be barred from office.

Of course, she wasn’t talking about herself. She was referring to the long parade of French political leaders who had fallen foul of the law and been convicted of everything from incitement to hate crimes to pimping to old-fashioned corruption. They included her own father (Jean-Marie Le Pen) and two French presidents (Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy).

Most of them got off fairly lightly, heavy fines and mostly suspended sentences. Only one senior French politician in recent memory has been barred from office—former prime minister Alain Juppe who in 2004 was found guilty of an almost identical crime as the one committed by Ms. Le Pen: misusing public funds for political purposes.

In the case of Ms. Le Pen and her 24 co-defendants in the National Rally, they were found guilty of taking $4,412,000 earmarked for European Parliamentary business and using the money to pay people working for National Rally. Ms. Le Pen was responsible for $520,000 of the money.

The parallels with the legal travails of Donald Trump are obvious. But the American courts took the position that they should go easy on him because he was on the cusp of becoming president. Ms. Le Pen is also leading the polls. But the French judges have argued the opposite to their American counterparts.

They judged that because Ms Le Pen was a leading candidate for the presidency of France she should receive a harsher sentence. To do otherwise, argued the court, “would cause a major disruption to democratic public order.”

Ms. Le Pen and Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin, Giorgia Meloni, Viktor Orban and just under half of French voters think that the sentence is unacceptable interference by the courts in the political process. Everyone else thinks that it is important that the law be upheld—a law which Ms. Le Pen herself supported.

________________

It’s called the “Trump Factor” in Canada and it is defined as the out-sized impact that the American president is having on the Canadian elections scheduled for 28 April.

The focus of Canadians is not surprising as Trump has taken it upon himself to threaten Canadian sovereignty by calling for it to become the 51st state and is about to slap tariffs on Canada which will destroy the country’s economy and tens of thousands of jobs.

Which brings us to Canada’s conservative leader Pierre Polievre who has been referred to as “Trump light.” He favours private enterprise; wants some immigration controls; is an anti-vaxxer; is so-so on the issue of climate change; has promised the biggest crackdown on crime in Canadian history; and is seriously anti-woke.

Back in January—before Trump launched his anti-Canadian crusade—Polievre’s policies were enough to put him an apparent shoe-in for the premiership as his party polled 25 points ahead of the governing Liberals.

As of this week, the Liberals are 25 points ahead of Polievre’s conservatives.

The complete reversal is partly down to the resignation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. After nine years in office, the pretty boy of Canadian politics, had run out of steam and was deeply unpopular.

He was replaced by technocrat Mark Carney whose impressive cv includes stints as the governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. Carney then played the card that was the second, bigger reason for the reversal in political fortunes—the Canadian public’s growing hatred of Donald Trump.

Carney has broken with diplomatic convention and refused make his first visit to Washington. Instead he flew to London and Paris. He has been adamant that Canada will never be part of the United States. He will retaliate against any Trumpian tariffs and work to reorganize Canada’s trading patterns away from America. “Our relationship with America will never be the same,” Carney declared.

He doesn’t need any policies other than being firmly anti-Trump.

The Trump factor is also playing a role in Australian elections scheduled for 3 May. Although in the case of Australia Trump is more the elephant in the room while in Canada he is a thundering herd.

Australia is facing a choice between the governing Labour Party led by Tony Albanese and the Liberals (who are misnamed and actually conservative) led by ex-policeman Peter Dutton.

Australia is not being threatened with annexation and the Trump-imposed tariffs are in the lowest category—ten percent. But Australians feel justifiably hard done by because their trade deficit with the US is $63.5 billion in America’s favour.

So Australians—like Canadians—are not feeling well disposed towards Donald Trump. And Australian politician who espouse Trumpian values and policies are likely to suffer. Ex-policeman Dutton is the Australian Trump. He opposes immigration, climate change policies, wokeism and called for White South African farmers to be given refugee status because “they need help from a civilized country.” He even wants to create a Ministry of Government Efficiency—a MOGE– as the Australian version of the Musk-run DOGE.

Dutton’s policies are having the same positive impact on the prospects for the Australian Labor Party as they have had for Canadian Liberals. In January, Dutton’s Liberal Party were ten points ahead. This past week the two parties were neck and neck.

The lesson to be learned? Trump is having a positive impact on political parties espousing liberal, centrist, center-left and left-wing policies.

_________________

The Chinese are laughing into their dim sums. Alright, Trump has slapped a 67 percent tariff on them. But there is an upside and it is very up indeed.

One of the main reasons is the impact American tariffs will have on the rest of the world. Already major American trading partners are looking for alternatives to the US market. China, as the second largest economy in the world, is a logical alternative, especially for China’s near neighbours such as all of Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea.

And, as British imperialists discovered, the flag follows trade. If trade shifts towards China from America then political allegiances will not—by necessity—be far behind. The United States could easily see the web of Asian alliances that successive administrations have carefully constructed to contain China start to unravel under the weight of Trumpian tariffs and redirected trade patterns.

The Chinese economy, however, does have systemic problems which could hold it back from taking full advantage of Trump’s brave new world. The property bubble is still bursting and demographically-speaking, China has the serious problem of an ageing population. On top of that there is the dead hand of statism and suspicion of Chinese motives.

But on the other hand, Xi Jinping’s policy of economic and technological self-sufficiency means China thrashes the US on the production of everything from electric cars to drones. It has even challenged the supremacy of Silicon Valley with its own version of AI—Deep Seek.

_________________

A rather attractive 31-year-old woman named Laura Loomer recently visited Donald Trump at the White House. She was there to tell him that three senior members of his National Security Council were not sufficiently Trumpian. He promptly fired them.

So who is Laura Loomer? For a start she is a self-confessed “White Nationalist” (“nationalist, not supremacist,” she insists). She is also a devout Islamaphobe.

Ms Loomer is behind a number of conspiracy theories. She was, for instance, the origin of the story that Haitian immigrants were eating the pets belonging to long-time residents of Springfield, Illinois.

She also claimed that the attack of 9/11 was “an inside job” organised by the American government and that the 2018 shootings at the school in Parkland, Florida and in Santa Fe, Texas, were staged by actors.

The snowstorm which disrupted the Iowa Republican presidential caucus, according to Laura Loomer, was created by the American “Deep State” to help the campaign of Nikki Haley.

The conspiracy theorist said that October 13, 2023 was “Global Day of Jihad” and that Muslims around the world would rise up to attack non-Muslims. This led to a 71-year-old Illinois stabbing to death a six-year-old Muslim boy.

Laura Loomer has been banned from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, although Elon Musk allowed her back on Twitter. She has also been barred by several web-based payment sites, Uber and Lyfft websites and, for some strange reason, food delivery websites. Basically, her name is toxic within the social media community.

In September 2024, Ms. Loomer started appearing at Trump’s side on the campaign trail and travelled with him on his plane. There was talk of him hiring her for the campaign, but Susie Wiles (who became Trump’s White House Chief of Staff) blocked her. She appears to have sneaked back in.

_________________

Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He can be emailed at Tom.arms195@gmail.com

Read: Observations of an Expat: Signalgate