Tariffs, sanctions or bans? What will Trump really achieve when the US says ‘no’

Sorry, not sorry, for splitting that hair. Confounding tariffs and sanctions is a serious matter, which will lead to poor policy outcomes and worse living conditions for your average world citizen. Only pedantry can save us now.

It could save sex, too, and the joy of human relations. To celebrate this No-vember, American women unhappy with Donald Trump’s win imported the 4B movement from South Korea. The name translates to the Four Noes – because adherents say no to dating men, no to marrying men, no to having sex with men, and no to having children with men (which presumably means no entirely to the last, given the tricky gamete situation faced by our dioecious species). This is a classic case of imposing a sanction where a tariff would be better suited.

It must be assumed that the women committing themselves to 4B are heterosexual women (otherwise there’s nothing to give up) who have decided, on the basis that some men have political or social attitudes that they disagree with, to place sanctions on the entire gender.

Not only is this a neat illustration of the fact that sanctions can also have consequences for the sanctioning party – these women are denying their own urges to inflict a punishment on others – but it demonstrates the importance of choosing the right tariff, sanction or ban to achieve your objective.

In this case, a tariff would be more beneficial. Instead of swearing off men entirely, heterosexual women (who want those things) could impose an extra cost on sex, dating, marriage and children by only engaging in those activities with men who treat women well and respect their physical autonomy. There are no rules that tariffs have to be levied in dollars and cents.

You could say that, before social norms changed, the tariff levied on sex used to be marriage; selecting for character was called being choosy. Sure, it’s harder to find a decent man than settle for one who’s handy, randy and willing. But as we’ve already established, while tariffs might protect something we consider desirable, they do it by making goods dearer for the consumer. At least, unlike sanctions, tariffs don’t render them unavailable entirely.

So the power of pedantry to clarify the different types of “no” is crucial to getting the best out of national and social relations. But it could also create a better conversation around the so-called social media bans for under 16s. This legislation has been rammed through parliament just in time for parents to spend Christmas trying to explain it to their children. The trouble is, the ban is not a ban – it’s an attempt to respond to the damage that autoplay and algorithms are doing to attention spans and to discourage a scrolling spiral of harmful content. And that needs, somehow, to stop. Most people don’t necessarily want to ban social media; we want it to be better.

Targeted modifications could help, but even more powerful would be a subscription fee that would force platforms to verify users through a credit card payment.

So, yes, it would cost the consumer to fix social media. But if there’s one thing we can learn from this November, it’s that saying no – whether through tariffs, sanctions or bans – can, in the right circumstances, be worth the price.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.