Under the leadership of President Donald Trump, the United States has consistently violated international norms and law over the past year. The roller-coaster tariff barrier, the sham negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, and the false declaration of a “ceasefire” with Israel, all while openly considering turning Gaza into a “land by the sea,” would have been bad enough on its own.
But in just a few months, the United States has bombed Nigeria to “defend” Christians, invaded Venezuela, arrested President Nicolas Maduro after months of blowing up Venezuelan ships in international waters, and openly threatened Iran, Greenland, and Mexico with military intervention.
In the United States, President Trump’s ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) continues to inflict extrajudicial harm in fulfilling its promise of mass deportations. Since the beginning of 2026, federal immigration agents have shot and killed at least three Americans. They are Keith Porter Jr., 43, of California, and Renee Nicole Good and Alex Preti, 37, of Minnesota. Mr. Good and Mr. Preti were killed on camera in an incident that was recorded from multiple angles, fueling public anger over the increasing use of deadly force by federal immigration authorities.
If this were almost any other country like Iran, which has repressively and indiscriminately killed thousands of protesters over the last month, the Western-led international community would already be calling for sanctions and an embargo against the United States. But given America’s threats and actions at home and abroad, the world now needs to take a page from the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s leadership in the early days of the civil rights movement. The world needs to boycott and divest from American companies, American-made products, and American-led events.
Short of civil war, civil war, or military action, the only way the world can stop US aggression is through massive economic pressure. On a much smaller scale, Dr. King and many other blacks in the 1950s understood that hitting the wallets of those who had long benefited from black labor and suffering was effective in the United States. It was one of the few tools available in their fight against the daily onslaught of violent racism.
Alabama’s 381-day Montgomery bus boycott was a response not only to Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her “whites-only” seat at the front of the bus on December 1, 1955, but also to decades of public transportation segregation. During the year-long protests, approximately 40,000 black Montgomery residents carpooled or walked to school, work, and church. Dr. King defended the boycott, saying, “In the long run, we have learned that it is more honorable to walk with dignity than to get into a car in humiliation.”
White Montgomery residents responded with mass arrests, threats, and other acts of intimidation, including the bombing of the King House on January 30, 1956. Montgomery officially ended its bus segregation policy on December 17, one month after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Browder v. Gale, a decision that included the late activist Claudette Colvin as a plaintiff and made racial segregation on public transportation illegal. In 1956, white residents harassed, attacked, and even lynched black bus passengers and civil rights activists for years. “Our goal is never to put bus companies out of business, but rather to bring justice to the business,” King said.
In the case of the United States, applying “justice for business” will require a global effort. The world should build on the Palestinian-led BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement against Israel and apply its lessons to the United States. BDS was launched in July 2005 with the support of 170 Palestinian organizations as a nonviolent effort to apply economic and cultural pressure on Israel to end its apartheid rule over Gaza and the West Bank. BDS founders Omar Barghouti and the late Ingrid Jaradat Gassner drew inspiration from the global anti-apartheid boycotts, divestment and sanctions against South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s.
BDS has three objectives in its 20-year commitment to Israeli oppression and systematic atrocities: “To end the[Israeli]occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and to dismantle the Wall; to recognize the full equality of the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian people of Israel; and to respect, protect and promote the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties, as set out in UN Resolution 194.”
It is true that powerful lobby groups and other supporters of Zionism in the West have labeled BDS as “anti-Semitic.” But it is also true that those opposed to social justice will do everything they can to discredit and destroy movements that challenge their power. Over the years, BDS has helped raise global awareness of the daily and systematic destruction of Palestine and the lives of Palestinians living under Israeli apartheid and occupation. This movement is also believed to be a key reason why the ongoing genocide in Gaza never gained broad international support or sustained support from ordinary Americans.
Regarding the global boycott movement against US oppression and aggression, some have already begun calling for a boycott of this summer’s 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup, with most of the scheduled matches set to be held in stadiums across the United States. Social media posts calling for people to cancel World Cup tickets and travel plans to the United States and impose sanctions on athletes and companies went viral after ICE officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good on January 7th. Given the rise in xenophobic, homophobic, and racist civil wars and persecution at home and abroad, a backlash against U.S. tourism is on the horizon as the world approaches June’s World Cup dates. tournament match.
But the stakes are high for the United States and the world at this point, and boycotting the world’s biggest sporting event, while important, is not enough to put pressure on an increasingly bellicose and authoritarian regime. One starting point would be to boycott and divest from American companies that support the oppression of marginalized people, particularly those with surveillance investments in Israel, such as Google, Amazon, and Palantir. Disinvesting from US-based media monopolies, whether it’s News Corp, the Washington Post, or Paramount Global, would go a long way toward loosening the stranglehold US monopolies have on Western media. There will also be pressure to boycott the America 250 celebrations scheduled for July, the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and annual international cultural events based in the United States such as Coachella and the Met Gala.
Boycotting prominent US supporters of repression and militarism, whether it’s Trump, Bari Weiss, or Elon Musk, will draw even more attention. If the world wants the United States to do better with its people and act as a better nation-state on the world stage, the United States must act collectively to boycott and usurp American influence.
It wasn’t that long ago that the former Soviet Union regularly labeled Americans as “capitalist pigs” or “imperialist pigs.” Such Cold War-era propaganda was accompanied by films depicting the once self-proclaimed “leader of the free world” as a society torn apart by a racist civil war and violent repression of those who spoke out against injustice.
Years after Dr. King gave the first speech that galvanized the Montgomery Bus Boycott, he came to understand that much of what had been dismissed as Soviet propaganda, in which he described the “weapons of protest” as “the glory of America with all its faults,” was actually an underlying reality. “The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and racism. Problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a fundamental redistribution of political and economic power,” Dr. King said in 1967. This is what the world needs to remind America of in 2026.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
