Scott Galloway, economist, calls for massive national strike: “Trump does not respond to outrage. He responds to markets”

Imagine the ideology of the United States as a line that extends out towards the horizon. All along the line are, laid out flat, the meaning, essence, and foundational ideological motivations behind the creation of what quickly rose to become the most powerful country on Earth. The closer you are to the start of the line, the closer you are to what was, and still remains today, fundamentally ‘American’. The Constitution is right there; Page One is looking up at you.

Now take some steps along the line. Don’t worry, you’re still in the realms of the United States’ ideology, but you’re moving away. Keep going, continue to take steps along the line that is now not bathed in sunlight but mist and a creeping darkness.

You don’t look back until eventually you scan around and find yourself within the world of The Antithesis, the exact opposite of everything it means to be from the USA. Here, hate reigns along with fear, obedience, and repression. Freedom is as forgotten as a lonely fingerprint on an abandoned handrail.

But focus hard and the storm becomes clearer - you can see another step takes you right back to where you began. But how can that be? You’re in an inverse realm; the straight line was a circle all along.

Donald Trump inhabits this space, the crossover point where the purest US ideology meets The Antithesis. His wide stance has one leg over the boundary into the dark forest, while he is screaming constitutional benevolence in the other direction.

His position shows how easy is it to go from democracy to fascism. It does not need to be via the long road: a simple step in the opposite direction is all it takes. But is coming back the other way so easy?

“Trump does not respond to outrage, he responds to markets”

A prominent New York University business scholar is calling for a new kind of response to Trump’s position as America’s dictator (and I mean the continent) as tensions grow over his reckless policies. Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at NYU Stern School of Business and a well-known online commentator, has proposed what he describes as an “economic strike” to challenge the Trump administration’s use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers across the United States.

During a recent episode of his popular podcast Pivot, Galloway argued that traditional protest marches and public outrage have had limited impact on federal decision-making. Instead, he urged listeners to rethink the way they express dissent by focusing on consumer behaviour and economic influence.

“If you want to understand real power and the difference between being right and being effective, stop watching protests and start watching gross domestic products,” Galloway said, “Trump does not respond to outrage, he responds to markets.”

“Consumers have power in their purse, not their vote”

The concept of an economic strike, as put forward by Galloway, centres on deliberate shifts in everyday spending habits. The goal, advocates say, is to create measurable disruptions in economic indicators that could in turn attract political attention and force policy reconsideration.

“I’m not talking about labor strikes, this isn’t about picket lines or collective bargaining. I’m talking about something quieter, far more unsettling to the system. And that is an economic strike. A short-term, economic withdrawal from spending and maybe work."

When pressed, Galloway insisted that “it can’t be a day”, as “a day is an annoyance. It has to be a week or a month, and it needs to be national. The US economy is 27 trillion, that’s 74 billion a day, and here’s our power: our economy is 70% consumer-driven. Consumers actually have more power, not in signs or in guns, even in their vote right now - they have it in the power of their purse. A very small change in behaviour could have an enormous effect.”

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“It’s not cinematic, it’s not romantic, it’s not going to be written up in great history novels, but if you could figure out a way to basically kick a small number of companies in the tech economy that are to account for 40% of S&P right now, and who are the people he cares about, if you cancelled all of your steaming media platforms, if you cancelled OpenAI and Anthropic and said ‘I’m not updating my Apple phone’, and there was a real movement that they had to disclose in their earnings, the show would come to an end, pronto.”

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