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I’m guessing the executives of those companies intended to take the kickback Trump promised them and other rich folk and then flee into the hills with their money.
They’re in for a good shock when the US economy implodes and the USD starts to tumble.
In some ways he already is. I will give a few examples:
The Conservative party in Canada was set to win a historic landslide majority victory in the upcoming elections. Their embracing of US-styled politics combined with Canadians feeling more united than ever has lead to them absolutely cratering in the polls so badly that the incumbent party is polling ahead in some polls. It is now being considered as potentially one of the worst election blunders in Canadian history. Canadians are cheering on local brands and production and are very warm to the idea of closer ties with Europe and the UK.
President Zelenskyy is being heralded as a leader and hero of Ukrainian and European freedom and is seen as a model of just and honest leadership. Despite what Trump’s supporters think, many Americans still support Ukraine and Zelenskyy.
Prime Minister Starmer of the UK has united parliament, including their opposition, for increased support of Ukraine and European security and sovereignty. It is a huge shift from where they stood during the Brexit days.
The EU is currently working on rearmament plans to promote domestic production of arms and security measures. Canada appears to be interested in this and I imagine other countries will eventually be too. The era of everyone buying American arms is coming to an end.
Expanding on the last point more broadly: The US has shown to the world it is an unreliable partner and ally and the boycotts of American goods and services are spreading fast across its former allies. For example, there is a full on nation-wide boycott of American products in Canada right now and it is costing the Americans billions of dollars.
The days of tip-toeing around Russia for the sake of political niceties is over. Major nation leaders are now calling out Russia for being a bloodthirsty dictatorship and accusing Trump of being a Russian plant. We need more than this, but this is a good start. Such open challenges to fascism would never have flown 5+ years ago. The first step to fighting fascism is to recognise it exists and identifying it as a threat.
Biometrics harvesting under the guise of “convenience”.
Unfortunately it is quite effective. People love this stuff.
Every. Goddamn. Time.
Not going to happen. Not for a long time. As much as we would want it to.
The phone market is brutally, viciously competitive and an outsider trying to jump in without Android or iOS is almost guaranteed to fail. We used to have numerous options from all kinds of companies that came with a variety of operating systems but each one fell to the duopoly.
People are glued to their phones and social media more than ever. I would expect an attempt to get them to move to a non-American mobile operating system and phone would fail very quickly. Blackberry did used to make their own line of phones that ran BB10 and they were excellent. Nobody bought them though, or at least not enough to justify their continued production. Even fewer bought the following Android-powered BB phones and eventually Blackberry pulled out of the market. The same story for Windows mobile phones.
There are plenty of options for non-American cellphones and I’m sure in the coming years we will see Canadian ones too. The problem is that they will almost certainly run Android which means American control over your data and feeds. Getting Canadians to accept a sacrifice in short-term phone functionality to regain digital freedom in the long run is a tall order.