Getting the global cold shoulder
Time to reorganize and redomicile outside the US
To selected global American global corporations:
Your global brand is tarnishing, your global market is decreasing and your bottom line is probably suffering from the rest of the democratic world’s hostility to Trump’s tariffs and his administration’s utter disregard of law, including those treaties, global practices and agreements hammered out in multilateral organizations. Any American entity or person is tarred and feathered by Trump’s rants about NATO, the UN and his disrespect and slandering of other democracies like Canada, Mexico, Panama, Denmark, Greenland and other democratic member states in these multilateral organizations Your brands are known around the world and your business grew beyond American borders because of the very multilateral system and international laws that the Trump administration is now attacking. Now, the global consumers are giving you the cold shoulder because you are American.
Even your domestic market is endangered. The Trump administration imposition of tariffs, the evisceration of anti-corruption, diversity and environmental laws, the dismantling of independent government regulators and bureaucracies are already impoverishing the American economy and destroying your domestic customer base. Without excellence in education, without adequate safety nets like Social Security, when women and others targeted by the Trump administration lose their jobs and as the population gets sicker because of medieval policies, who is going to buy your products or use your services in the US? DOGE cuts and Trump’s executive actions directly slight and harm significant parts of the American population who had formerly purchased your goods and services, but now are being beggared, targeted, slandered or deported. Even in the US, consumers are boycotting products whose corporate image or whose significant shareholders are too closely associated with the Trump administration and its policies.
Apart from the shrinking domestic market, your global market is being infected by Trump’s tariffs and his cozying up with brutal autocracies. Canadian , European, Australian, New Zealand consumers are boycotting American goods and pressuring their leaders to not purchase American goods and services. Together all of consumers in these countries represent a much larger market share than that of the United States.
Your business is being tarred and feathered simply because you are identified as “American”, regardless of whether you have incorporated in, pay taxes and comply with the laws of other countries. Many non-American consumers do not care to spend the time to distinguish between those American corporations actively supporting the Trump administration and policies and those American corporations who have stood against the Trump administration because they believe that ESG policies are good business.
Explanation and public relations are not likely to win back these global consumers or their governments. The anger and sense of betrayal against the United States and all things American cannot be understated.
If you want to continue to be a player in global democratic markets, it is time to change citizenship and to move governance to a democracy which abides by international laws and upholds human rights. This can be done by reorganization or by redomiciliation.1
In addition to changing citizenship, corporations need to commit to follow international laws and to participate in addressing those global problems that the Trump administration is causing or contributing to. Like, their global consumers, global businesses must give the US the cold shoulder and pay their fair share in taxes to protect democracy and the multilateral system that has served world so well for the last eighty years. Global consumers’ distrust of the United States is now so great that no half-measures will suffice.
It is time to stand up for democracy and multilateralism. Alternatively businesses can stand behind Trump and his fellow autocrats and sell only in autocracies.
This is not the first time that American businesses have had to change their nationality to continue to do business around the world. During the US entrance into World War II, a number of American ships were reflagged into Panama to be able to deliver supplies to the Allies. After WWII, Standard Oil flagged its tankers under the newly created Liberian flag so they could trade without an American flag on their sterns in areas behind the Iron Curtain.