Will The ‘Right To Repair’ Movement Survive Trumpism 2.0?

Policy

from the convenient-lip-service dept

U.S. consumer protection has been beaten to a pulp over the last few decades. Consumer protection regulators are routinely on the ropes, left understaffed, underfunded, and boxed in by an increasingly corrupt and radical 5th Circuit and Supreme Courts stocked with Trump sycophants.

One bright spot, however, has been the “right to reform” movement, or efforts to ensure that it’s easier and cheaper for consumers to repair their own technology, without being boxed in or overbilled by corporations (across numerous industries) looking to monopolize repair.

Last March Oregon became the seventh state to pass “right to repair” legislation. The bill’s passage came on the heels of legislation passed in Massachusetts (in 2012 and 2020), Colorado (in 2022 and 2023), New York (2023), Minnesota, Maine and California. All told, 30 states contemplated such bills in 2024.

While it seems extremely unlikely that any federal right to repair legislation takes root during a second Trump administration, right to repair advocates are trying to keep the faith. In part because right to repair reform historically has broad, bipartisan support:

“Right to repair has been firmly bipartisan from the beginning,” says Kyle Wiens, the CEO of iFixit and an occasional contributor to WIRED who has testified before the House Committee on the Judiciary about repairability policy. “I’m really not ‘doom and gloom’ on any of this. We feel very strong going into this. We have a really great working relationship with a lot of conservatives on the Hill, and we’re looking forward to continuing that.”

Of course Trumpism (read: authoritarianism) doesn’t really hew to traditional understandings of partisanship. The ideology professes to be populist, but broadly supports hugely unpopular policies across the spectrum — most notably the coming disintegration of consumer protection and public safety standards, environmental reform, female bodily autonomy, and labor rights.

Similarly, just because something has bipartisan appeal doesn’t mean it has a chance in hell of surviving Trumpism (see: net neutrality). Trumpism is populist when it’s convenient. In reality, it’s a highly performative ideology that coddles corporate power at every conceivable opportunity (see: the appointment of telecom industry coddling Brendan Carr to the FCC).

Trumpism’s primary belief, buried under all the racism, sexism, and populist bullshit, is utterly unchecked wealth accumulation free of government oversight regardless of broader public or market harm. That doesn’t gel particularly well with cracking down on corporate power’s efforts to monopolize repair.

So while I greatly admire Wiens and his work, I’m not sure the optimism he expresses in Wired is particularly realistic:

“Even if the FTC takes a hard swing to the right, I don’t think that impacts right to repair too much,” Wiens says. The position is just popular and gaining steam, he says, and he anticipates a wave of repair friendly-policies will come to red states soon. “I think it’s critical mass. I think the time has come. People see the economic benefits for their community.”

I mean yes, right to repair will remain hugely popular, because consumers across partisan ideologies don’t like being bullied by big corporations. But the idea that a Republican Congress or FTC will take this issue seriously strikes me as wish-casting.

The hope is a little brighter on the state level, where state laws continue to be passed. The problem is I’ve yet to see states actually enforce any of them, and most corporations are simply ignoring the laws without penalty. With state and legal resources about to be strained to an historic limit by a flood of battles across everything from immigration to environmental law, right to repair could easily get lost in the mix.

That’s not to say the right to repair movement won’t continue to gain traction and popularity, that advocates should abandon any hope, or that this groundswell of public support can’t be leveraged into expanded real-world change on the state or local level. But I do think keeping fascism from destroying democracy and the rule of law will overshadow more than a few reform efforts for the foreseeable future.

Filed Under: donald trump, drm, hardware, parts pairing, right to repair, software, software locks, state laws