If you’ve been feeling whiplash from trying to keep up with events in the USA and the trickle down of many of the White House statements into the utterances of Australia’s opposition leader Peter Dutton, you’re not alone. We are getting all the feelings, from frustration at Google Maps abandoning international cartographic naming conventions to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico, through to despair as the information on sudden mass sackings of US federal workers across health, climate, aviation safety, nuclear stockpile management, agriculture, Veterans Affairs, consumer protection, welfare, education … and so on … rolls in.
What is causing hope to surge however, is people everywhere flexing the power of their dollars to send a clear signal to the billionaires that are enabling and executing what looks a lot like the dismantling of US social infrastructure.
It’s happening at the consumer level, and the investor level.
Walmart investors for example, have expressed their displeasure at the board abandoning DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), while thousands of shoppers have been switching to Costco or Trader Joes, which are keeping it.
In Canada, shelves of US products sitting untouched have become the new “look at what I didn’t have for dinner” photo on social media, while Canadian goods are being celebrated. Reducing food miles has always been a core DIY sustainability move, and Trump is inadvertently helping that happen in Canada.
DEI becoming a line in the sand
At Apple’s AGM this week, a motion was proposed to join the anti-woke brigade and take down DEI policies and programs, and the majority of shareholders voted against it. JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft and Unilever are also retaining DEI as part of their business strategy.
Amazon, Meta and McDonalds, meanwhile, are learning that abandoning DEI also means losing reputation, customer base and revenue. A poll published by The Guardian found that a quarter of US shoppers have changed their habits in response to the far-right pivot.
In Australia the head of a leading engineering firm said his team looked at whether they too should exit DEI and said nope – these are our values and we’re sticking to them.
The whole policy fiasco is having a major ripple effect.
The latest information from Swiss financial analyst, Ipek Ozkardeskaya, is that the US share market, which experienced a brief Goldilocks moment after the election, is now running a tad scared. Sessions are getting ugly, he reckons. The S&P500 has extended losses, and the Nasdaq 100 has retreated by over a percentage point.
“The increasingly heavier weight of Trump talk, deteriorating relationships across the globe – except Russia – combined with higher inflation expectations on tariffs, the uptick in inflation and weakening expectations from US consumers are certainly to blame for the selloff in equities.”
He also notes that inflation expectations are at the highest level since 1995, and consumer confidence has dropped across the board.
“Small businesses that have grown more optimistic about the America First policies are losing that optimism and have been severely cutting their capex plans.”
Only consumer staples and healthcare are safe US stocks that show marginal gains.
At the root of this plummet in optimism are the thousands of individuals not only in the US but also abroad who are changing their habits and preferences. Tesla, especially, is having a financial car crash, and according to Bloomberg has now shed 47 per cent of its value since December 2024.
European sales wound back by 45 pe rcent in January, with less than 10,000 vehicles sold across Europe, a continent where the electric vehicle is rapidly becoming standard. Ozkardeskaya cites Musk’s attempts to interfere in Europe’s domestic affairs as the primary cause.
Meanwhile, in the US, sales of both the standard Tesla and the monstrous truck-thing are flatlining. Factories are also being targeted with protests, graffiti and other grassroots forms of dissent.
In Mexico, they have unveiled the first notaTesla EV designed in Mexico, for the domestic market. Take that, hombre.
Could this be what scales back Airbnb?
Musk isn’t the only wealthy Trump ally whose actions are generating pushback. When billionaire Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia was reported to have joined Trump/MAGA’s inner clique, and refused to publicly deny this, Airbnb hosts across the USA started to pull their properties off the platform.
The San Francisco Chronicle, reporting on the backlash, noted the protesting hosts come from across the political spectrum and are galvanised by what they are seeing happen in their local areas because of recent executive orders. In one case, for farmer Steve Gabriel from New York state, the impact of the orders is also being immediately felt.
As the article states:
…He has already been affected by Trump administration cutbacks. On top of renting out space on their farm, he and his wife occasionally take government contracts — many of which have been put on hold thanks to federal spending freezes.
“Contracts we have with the [US Department of Agriculture] have a very uncertain future,” he said. “We’ve started a few things and now might not get paid for them.”
Because of this, Gabriel and his wife – self-described political independents – pulled their listings when they saw reports that Gebbia was joining DOGE. “While Airbnb has been an incredibly important part of our rental business and farm as a whole, it’s important for us to know the companies we’re working with have a thoughtful approach to the welfare of our fellow citizens,” he said.
We know that here in Australia Airbnb is already enormously problematic because it has resulted in a vast number of homes and apartments being held back from the residential rental market because owners prefer the higher cashflow of holiday letting.
In Sydney City of Sydney councillor Jess Miller recently called for closure of loopholes so that existing houses could not be used as “cash cows” for absentee landlords.
Such short term accommodation businesses were preventing thousands of existing houses to be used as homes, Miller said.
So, if anyone out there feels like putting their assets where their ethics are and shifting out of Airbnb to the regular rental market, it’s common knowledge there’s no shortage of good tenants out there looking for a long-term place to call home.
Upping the ante
On Friday 28 February, the consumer backlash is set to ramp up even further, with a national People’s Union consumer strike. The campaign urges people to make no purchases from major brick and mortar or online retailers for a 24-hour period, with exceptions for essential foods, medicines and personal care, which would ideally be purchased from a small, local business, not someone like Bezos or Walmart.
The campaign is circulating across social media platforms including BlueSky (and there’s another thing, all the cool kids are jumping off X and signing up to BlueSky instead, and X is seeing a drop in user numbers and more than a billion US dollars lost in ad revenue and has been shedding staff as a result).
Some people say they don’t see how much impact a 24-hour strike can have. But to that we say, do you remember the impact of the Women’s Strike of 1905 in Finland?
History – there’s a reason the new US administration is trying to silence so much of it… and every reason for all of us to ensure we are on the right side of it. As Jane Fonda said in her now-viral acceptance speech for the SAG Lifetime Achievement Award, “we are in our documentary moment.”