Trump’s Trade Negotiations Should Include Push For Free Speech

Much has been written about President Donald Trump’s tariff policies. Regardless of the short or long-term economic impact of those policies, some negotiations with trading partners have begun. If they continue, the Trump administration should not miss the opportunity to promote an arguably more important global agenda of free speech and true equality.

Many American businesses have begun to embrace the cultural moment and movement away from disastrous and counterproductive DEI policies and toward meritocracy. Likewise, respect for diversity of viewpoint on controversial social and cultural issues among employees, customers, and shareholders is waxing while forced celebration of and participation in a month dedicated to Pride wanes.

For example, a coalition of shareholders filed resolutions this year at Alphabet, Morgan Stanley, Intel, Apple, PayPal, Lululemon, Netflix, and John Deere calling on the companies to re-evaluate or cut ties altogether with the Human Rights Campaign, which has pressured companies into publicly endorsing only one viewpoint on LGBT issues. John Deere is among the more recent American brands to recognize and correct the self-inflicted damage.

American companies that have learned from the cautionary tales of Bud Light, Disney, Target, and others are recentering their focus on the telos of business — producing quality products and services, profiting their shareholders, and providing employment opportunities. For companies that do business exclusively in America, aided by like-minded organizations like the Good for Business Coalition, all that is required is the will to do so.

But for American-based companies that do significant business in the European Union and other regions still clinging to the failed ideology of “woke capitalism,” the road back to business as business is fraught with impediments. Herein lies the opportunity for the Trump administration.

There should be more to economic and trade policy than merely the price of goods. The freedom to run one’s business in accordance with deeply held convictions, time-tested business principles, and without interference by ideologically driven bureaucrats is priceless. Moreover, when government-backed policies, like DEI or social justice virtue signaling like Pride month, degrade productivity, they add to the production cost of goods.

Tariffs are often labeled as “protectionist” either as an epithet or commendation, depending on the perspective of the labeler. Yet efforts by this administration to protect free speech could only be viewed in the positive sense of protection.

One significant item of concern for free speech is the European Union’s draconian Digital Services Act. In short, the DSA threatens to inflict Europe’s most censorious restrictions on American citizens via U.S. companies like Apple, Meta, and X. Proponents claim the DSA “only” applies in the EU, censoring 500 million people and blocking them from accessing content deemed “illegal,” including possibly U.S. speech. But tech companies are heavily incentivized to censor or else face crippling fines. Further, they may be inclined to adopt the DSA’s censorial standards across the globe beyond the EU.

That means, once the EU’s DSA goes live, Americans could experience the very same online censorship standards as European citizens. In short, your ability to speak freely online is in the crosshairs not just from censorious state officials in the U.S., but also from Brussels bureaucrats you’ve never heard of.

President Calvin Coolidge, who presided over the economic boom of the roaring ’20s, said, “After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing, and prospering in the world.” A century has passed and much has changed since Coolidge described the business of the American people. The global marketplace has opened opportunities and challenges heretofore unimaginable. The world is simultaneously bigger and smaller. Could there be another roaring ’20s in America’s future? Maybe. Are Americans still profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing, and prospering in the world? Definitely. In fact, in the global marketplace of today, competing internationally is no longer an admirable corporate goal, it is a necessity.

To that end, the Trump administration, and any future administration for that matter, should press our traditional trading partners and allies to respect the rights of American business owners to run their businesses as they see fit. If American corporations continue their course correction of respecting free speech and diversity of viewpoints, abandoning defunct ideology, and wading needlessly into divisive political and cultural debates, they should not be forced to navigate into international headwinds imposing the very agenda they left behind in America.

International trade agreements are a tempest of competing interests for a president to navigate, as is doing business internationally for American industries. American shareholders, employees, and consumers who depend on them both will be watching closely and wishing them Godspeed.

Lathan Watts is the vice president of public affairs for Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal). He earned his juris doctor degree from the University of Mississippi.