How Trump Might Affect My Life, and Mitigation Plans

2024-10-20 · ~1,111 words

Trump might issue executive orders to try to harm trans people, Democrats, or other groups that I'm a member of. There are many possibilities, but just as one example, he has said he will order the Justice Department to investigate companies providing trans healthcare.
Mitigation: Leave the United States, move to Costa Rica, we already have permission to stay in the country and moving plans
Listening to US news or US conservatives is demoralizing (as is listening to eg. Russian news, for that matter)
Mitigation: Avoid listening to US election news or political news in general, and avoid places like Election Twitter that have a high density of this
Trump has said that, if elected, he would require US agencies to say that gender is assigned at birth and cannot be changed. This could lead to the US invalidating my passport, and/or reissuing me a new passport with my gender or name change reverted, which would cause problems with immigration and/or international travel.
Mitigation: I have recently renewed my passport and it has ten years of validity, so I am fine as long as it's not invalidated retroactively. Internet rumors say that differences in gender marker aren't considered to invalidate a passport, so it's possible that even if this does happen, it might not matter from other countries' perspective.
The US has already changed tax law to make it harder for US companies to hire programmers internationally (15-year depreciation rule); this makes it harder for me to work remotely. There could be more such changes in the future.
Mitigation: I could maintain an address in the US (on paper). It's also possible that some companies will legally locate themselves outside of the US to avoid this, though this gets more difficult the larger the company is.
When entering another country, or applying for residency, they will check to make sure you aren't a wanted fugitive. Trump has already said he will pursue bogus criminal investigations against political opponents; he might try to charge me with made-up "crimes".
Mitigation: Even in the worst-case scenarios, me being relatively low-profile makes this sort of thing less likely. It's also possible that other countries would just start ignoring this, if the US indicts large numbers of people for reasons that are clearly bogus/political.
The US has a lot of power over the global financial system. The President can unilaterally decide to prohibit foreign businesses from transacting with US persons or companies, or block their access to the international financial system via SWIFT. This would prevent me from having US investors, selling products or services to the US, etc.
Mitigation: Unclear, although in a scenario where this happens to me, it probably also happens to lots of other businesses, so they might help develop plans for dealing with it.
The US, as the world's center for AI, hosts a lot of the data centers that AI models are trained on. These data centers are large, power-hungry, and hard to move, and so give the US leverage to require AI companies to act in its interests.
Mitigation: Physically, AI data centers can run anywhere where there's cheap electricity and it's easy to get construction permits, although as long as AI companies are based in the US it will be logistically easier for them to build stuff there.
Most of the world's top tech and AI companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, are based in the US and have the majority of their employees there. (The rest are in China, which creates different problems.) Past authoritarian regimes have twisted the arm of unfriendly businesses, by eg. offering them tariff exemptions if they cooperate and have government-friendly leadership, while threatening them with bogus tax, corruption, and regulatory investigations if they don't.
Mitigation: Unclear, maybe reference the consultant's doc on tech company responses to Trump?
Since COVID, a lot of companies have implemented mandatory return-to-office policies, which often means having to physically be in the US to show up at a US office.
Mitigation: In the bad scenarios, there are a large number of people who tech companies want to hire who would not be allowed into the US (because of immigration crackdowns/making it hard for anyone to get visas), which would create an incentive to allow remote work or invest more in foreign offices (many of which, as of now, nominally exist for sales or regulatory purposes but are not involved in core product development).
A large anti-trans push in the US could inspire other countries to copy them, such as Nayib Bukele in El Salvador cracking down on "gender ideology" (even though in El Salvador that's not really a thing).
Mitigation: Right now, countries opposed to the US generally suck, such as Venezuela, North Korea, Nicaragua, etc.; free, successful countries with strong economies find it easier to at least remain on OK terms with the US. However, if the US goes isolationist, authoritarian, and strongly right-wing, it seems plausible that at least some non-horrible countries will react negatively to this, and incorporate more anti-Americanism into their national identities ("reactive devaluation").
Many of the projects and social movements I care about (eg. anti-aging research, Effective Altruism, AI safety, YIMBYism, progress studies, etc.) are based in the US, and have most of their members there. Trump will likely attack these, which harms my interests even if it doesn't affect me directly.
Mitigation: I have limited leverage over what other people do, but it would be good to identify movements, groups, or companies that align with my values and are outside the US/not likely to cooperate with American fascism.
Executives and investors in the tech industry, such as Andreessen Horowitz and Elon Musk, have incentives to align with the "winning side". Some of them are also easily persuadable, or are pre-inclined to support post-liberal ultra-conservative ideology. Over the last few years, this has lead to more of them becoming publicly pro-Trump and anti-trans. This makes it harder to raise investment, do business, etc.
Mitigation: not yet super clear, probably not everyone does this?
Many people are not this. Most people are neutral and want to keep their heads down. Some others are just contrarian and will lose interest in being conservative as soon as there is a republican president. That said, you don't need to rely on these folks since you might reasonably be concerned about them being fair-weather friends. So, focus on people that are ideologically opposed to flipping. Get investment from the united therapeutics lady, from mark cuban, from apple, etc.