In 2026 the leaders of America’s (former) trading partners will have to deal with the political consequences of tit-for-tat tariffs. A tariff is a tax paid by consumers and if the last four years have taught us anything, it is that the public will not forgive a politician who presides over a period of price increases, whatever the reason.
Fortunately for the political fortunes of world leaders, there is a better way to respond to tariffs. Tit-for-tat tariffs are a 19th-century tactic, and we live in a 21st-century world – a world in which the most profitable industries of America’s most profitable companies are vulnerable to a straightforward legal change that will make it cheaper for billions of people around the world, including the U.S., at the expense of the companies whose CEOs posed with Trump at the inaugural podium.
In 2026, countries that want to win the trade war have a unique historic opportunity: They can repeal their “anti-circumvention” laws, which make it illegal – in many cases a crime – to modify devices and services without manufacturers’ consent. Over the past two decades, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, responsible for developing and coordinating U.S. policy on international trade, goods and direct investment, has pressured much of the world to adopt these laws, making it more complex for foreign startups to compete with Apple (by providing a jailbreak kit that installs a third-party app store), Google (by blocking tracking on Android devices), or Amazon (by converting Kindle and Audible files to formats that run in competing apps) or John Deere (by disabling systems that block third-party repairs) or the Substantial Three automakers (by decoding the encrypted error messages that mechanics need to service our cars). The rents these digital locks aid U.S. businesses run into the hundreds of billions of dollars a year. World governments have agreed to protect this business in exchange for duty-free access to American markets. Now that the United States has withdrawn from its side of the agreement, these rights serve no useful purpose.
American tech giants (and giant American technology companies) have used digital locks to amass immense amounts of ill-gotten wealth. In 2026, the first country that dares to raid this treasure will have turned hundreds of billions in U.S. rents into hundreds of millions in domestic profits that will lift the country’s tech sector into stable orbit – and the remaining hundreds of billions will be collected by all of us, all of us in the world (including Americans who buy prison-breaking tools from abroad in the gray zone) as consumer surplus.
In 2026, many countries will respond to tariffs as they did in the 19th century. But a few countries will have the vision, boldness and political smarts to kick Donald Trump to the curb. The country that gets there first will have the same relationship with, say, third-party app stores for game consoles that Finland enjoyed with mobile phones during the Nokia decade.
There are many countries that have the technical ability to do this. Of course, Canada and Mexico get pride of place because Trump tore it up USMCA Agreement he screwed them over in 2020 and hurled racist rhetoric at Mexico while threatening to annex Canada. By talking about annexation goals with the participation of significant communities of technical experts, the Danes could lead the EU out of the desert into which the bloc has entered by passing Article 6 of the Copyright Directive 2001. Then there’s the global south: African tech powerhouses like Nigeria, South American giants like Brazil, and the tiny, developed nations of Central America that saw Trump abdicate Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), as does Costa Rica.