In the swarm of post-election chaos that threatens to upend the goals of countless communities, at least one group is holding steady: the right to repair advocates.
With a second Trump presidency ascending in the US, experts have been furrowing their brows about what the incoming administration will mean for the tech industry. But the right to repair movement—aka the people with the shared dream of being able to fix your own stuff without having to take it to the manufacturer or void the warranty—seems to be on stable ground.
Right to repair efforts have broad support across party lines. Citizens of every political affiliation want to be able to change the battery in their phone. Farmers in both red and blue states want to be able to tinker with their John Deere tractors without getting locked out of the software.
“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.”
It also helps that the right to repair movement is not contained within US borders, and is building out quite well internationally. Canada recently passed two acts to amend its copyright laws that aim to make devices more interoperable and more repair and maintenance friendly. The European Union is responsible for several rulings that force companies to make devices more repairable. Since the affected electronics are sold globally, it is usually easier for companies to bring all their devices in line with a regional regulation than try to make different devices for different zones. Rules in one country tend to benefit the users in others.
Though right to repair efforts are very popular in the US, they have often failed to break through on the federal level. Wiens says this is less about any particular political climate of the moment, but the plodding nature of lawmaking in the US.
“It’s just a question of, is it possible to get anything through,” Wiens says with a laugh. “That’s generally how we feel about the right to repair. We often can get everybody onboard. The question is, can Congress pass laws of any kind?”
Right to repair has already been a talking point of the Trump campaign. At a campaign trail stop in October, Donald Trump visited a McDonald’s and said when he is president, McDonald’s ice cream machines—which are notorious for often being broken and out of service—will work great again. But it was right to repair efforts that actually made that happen. Just a week later, the US Copyright Office ruled in favor of a petition put forth by iFixit and the nonprofit Public Knowledge that asked the office to allow restaurants to circumvent the digital locks put on the machines by the manufacturer, enabling them to be fixed more easily. It was a move supported by both the US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission.
In the US, many people are watching the FTC, where Biden-appointed agency chair Lina Khan has waged battle after battle against companies in the name of limiting monopolistic mergers. Vice president-elect JD Vance has praised Khan in the past, but the chances of her keeping her post seem slim.
“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.”
Trump has proposed policies like tariffs on imports from China that would greatly affect product-focused companies like Apple. Wiens says an underlooked bright side of this policy might also have the effect of encouraging people to simply buy less, and focus on keeping the devices they have in working order rather than tossing them out in favor of something new and cheap.
“If Trump really follows through, if he imposes 30 percent tariffs on new electronics,” Wiens says, “that’s going to drive product life extension focus. All of a sudden it’s 30 percent more expensive to import something from China. Well, let’s fix the things we’ve already got. That could be very good for the repair world.”
Wiens hopes that the wave of populism that Trump catered to, and that led him and Republican lawmakers to victory in the last election, as something that could actually help the right to repair movement.
“The big question is, can we continue this pro competition populist movement?” Wiens says. “Can populism really infect and take over both parties? Because both parties have been very corporate for so long.”
That populism may translate to consumer-focused measures in the new Trump era, but it isn’t certain. Vance has talked at length about his support for more competition in the tech market, as well as policy that would aim to break up big companies like Google. Trump has also signaled his opposition to some of the Big Tech companies—often the ones that have upset him personally—but in his last term generally made lives easier for corporations and the wealthy with tax cuts and favorable legislation. The administration may be up for helping to push policies that address the right to repair efforts. (Though we’ll see how the newly created government efficiency department helmed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy decides to prioritize government spending.)
“Are we going to enable an era of increased competition, which will make America more resilient on so many levels, or is Trump going to go with his billionaire buddies?” Wiens says. “We just don’t know with Trump.”
Of course, the US isn’t the only battleground for reparability movements. The European Union will also drive legislation on product design and repair requirements that will ripple out to devices sold elsewhere. Nathan Proctor, the senior director of the campaign for the right to repair at the nonprofit interest group PIRG, says the best strategy is a varied one that incorporates repair allies from all over.
“I’m probably not going to put too many eggs in the federal basket,” Proctor says. Instead, he says that PIRG is focused on repair efforts on a more local or state level. “There are a lot of other great state and local lawmakers, other folks that really care about the right to repair. And there’s a lot of opportunity to keep going. I’m not counting anything out.”
Ultimately, both Wiens and Proctor say they will continue their fight no matter what political turmoil swirls around the White House and Congress. And appealing to a wide range of political views will certainly help. For example, Proctor cites efforts that PIRG has made to work with veterans groups to advocate for more repairability in the armed forces. Because it turns out that even active duty military and medical equipment aren’t immune to software locks and being bricked by service updates that the user can’t fix themselves.
“We just have to get to work,” Proctor says. “I don’t want to prognosticate, like, ‘Oh, everything’s fine.’ Because I don’t know that. I don’t have that information. But I do know that no matter what hand gets dealt, we have things that we can do to speak truth to power and to protect our communities and to move things forward.”