Category: New Cold War

Why Donald Trump’s obsession with Greenland is all about China

In the following article, which was originally published on TomDispatch, Joshua Frank dissects the reasons behind US President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to seize, possibly by armed force, the Danish colony of Greenland.

Frank looks in some detail at the influence of military bases and strategy, fossil fuels, and minerals, particularly those needed in green technologies, on Trump’s calculations and designs, but his essential conclusion is that, “it’s all about China”:

He wants to boost US mining of critical minerals because he knows that China, his archnemesis, is leading the global charge for their acquisition. [Note: This is one of a couple of places in the article where we believe the argument could have been better phrased. This, however, does not negate its essential validity or importance.] Trump doesn’t seem to understand that it’s hard to stimulate investment in critical minerals if the future appetite for the technologies they support remains uncertain. As a result of his battle against electric vehicles, manufacturing expectations are already being slashed.

While he may not comprehend how contradictory that is or even care, he certainly understands that the US depends on China for many of the critical minerals it consumes. Around 60% of the metals required for renewable technologies come directly from China or Chinese companies. Trump’s tariffs on China have even worried his buddy (and electric car producer) Elon Musk, who’s been working behind the scenes to block additional tariffs on graphite imports. Chinese graphite, an essential component of the lithium-ion batteries in his Teslas, may face new tariffs of as high as – and no, this is not a misprint – 920%. Such pandemonium around imports of critical minerals from China may be the true factor driving Trump’s impetus to steal Greenland from the clutches of Denmark.

Explaining Greenland’s colonial history and status, Frank writes: “Greenland’s Indigenous Inuit people, the Kalaallit, account for 88% of that island’s population of 56,000. They have endured vicious forms of colonisation for centuries. In the 12th century, Norwegians first landed in Greenland and built early colonies that lasted 200 years before they retreated to Iceland. By the 1700s, they returned to take ownership of that vast island, a territory that would be transferred to Denmark in 1814.

“In 1953, the Kalaallit were granted Danish citizenship, which involved a process of forced assimilation in which they were removed from their homes and sent to Demark for reeducation. Recently uncovered documents show that, in the 1960s, Danish authorities forcibly inserted intrauterine devices (IUDs) in Kalaallit women, including children, which post-colonial scholars describe as a ‘silent genocide’.

“In other words, the colonisation of Greenland, like that of the United States, was rooted in violence and still thrives today through ongoing systemic oppression. The Kalaallit want out. In 2016, 68% of Greenlanders supported independence from Denmark, and today, 85% oppose Trump’s neocolonial efforts to steal the territory.”

He quotes the island’s autonomous prime minister, Múte Egede, who leads the democratic socialist Inuit Ataqatigiit party, as saying, “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale.” [Note: The article mistakenly states that Inuit Ataqatigiit won 80% of the votes in Greenland’s last general election. In fact, whilst pro-independence parties, did win 80% backing, the support for Inuit Ataqatigiit was 36.6%. Siumut, like Inuit Ataqatigiit a left-wing pro-independence party, won 29.4%. Another pro-independence party, Naleraq, came third with 12.0% of the votes. Nunatta Qitornai, which advocates a more rapid transition to independence, won 2.4% of the votes but lost its sole parliamentary representative. These results gave pro-independence parties 26 parliamentary seats against five for the unionist parties. A detailed account of the outcome of the April 2021 election can be found here.]

So, for Frank, Egede’s statement “brings us back to what this imperialist struggle is all about. The island is loaded with critical minerals, including rare earth minerals, lithium, graphite, copper, nickel, zinc, and other materials used in green technologies. Some estimates suggest that Greenland has six million tons of graphite, 106 kilotons of copper, and 235 kilotons of lithium. It holds 25 of the 34 minerals in the European Union’s official list of critical raw materials, all of which exist along its rocky coastline, generally accessible for mining operations.”

He concludes: “Greenland and its resources are merely the latest potential casualty of Trump’s quest for global domination and his fear of China’s economic power. His interest in the green energy sector does not signify a change of heart regarding the dangers of climate chaos or the value of renewables but rather a drive for global financial supremacy. Like the billionaires around him, he desires it all – the oil, the gas, and the critical minerals essential for the global energy transition, while China is pushed aside. Regarding the Kalaallits and their aspirations, he could care less.”

Joshua Frank is the author of Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America.

A viewpoint from one of Denmark’s communist parties, supporting Greenland’s right to self-determination, may be read here.

In early January, Donald Trump Jr.’s private plane landed on a snowy airfield in Greenland. There was little fanfare upon his arrival, but his 14 million social-media fans were certainly tagging along.

“Greenland coming in hot…well, actually really really cold!!!” President Trump’s eldest son captioned a video he posted on X. It was shot from the cockpit of the plane, where a “Trumpinator” bobblehead (a figurine of his father as the Terminator) rattled on the aircraft’s dashboard as it descended over icy blue seas.

It was a stunt of MAGA proportions. Don Jr. was arriving in Greenland on behalf of his father who, along with his new buddy Elon Musk, had announced a desire to seize that vast Arctic landmass from Denmark through strong will or even, potentially, by force. There’s been plenty of speculation as to why Trump wants to make Greenland, the largest island on this planet, a new territory of the United States. And yes, his inflated ego is undoubtedly part of the reason, but an urge for geopolitical dominance also drives Trump’s ambitions.

His fascination with Greenland can be traced back to his first administration when, in late 2019, he signed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act establishing the U.S. Space Force. “There are grave threats to our national security,” he said shortly after signing the bill. “American superiority in space is absolutely vital. The Space Force will help us deter aggression and control the ultimate high ground.”

Continue reading Why Donald Trump’s obsession with Greenland is all about China

AI for the people? How China’s AI development challenges US big tech

In the following article for Struggle La Lucha, based on a talk given at our recent webinar DeepSeek and the challenge to US technological hegemony, Gary Wilson makes a number of important points about the US’s tech war on China.

He notes, firstly, that this tech war – part of a broader New Cold War that also involves a significant military component – has been going on for more than a decade. “It really began in 2011 with Barack Obama’s Pivot to Asia, a Cold War-style containment policy. The Pivot to Asia was primarily a military operation but also introduced export controls on advanced technologies… The tech war escalated significantly during Donald Trump’s first presidency with trade restrictions and sanctions on Chinese firms, including Huawei and ZTE. Then, with Joe Biden, even more severe restrictions were imposed.”

Gary goes on to explain that “semiconductors are the foundation of modern technology — enabling the functionality of virtually every device and system we use every day”, and this is the reason the US is so keen to prevent China from becoming a major player in this field. Nevertheless, “despite the restrictions, China has been making significant strides in semiconductor technology. Huawei is developing advanced high-powered chips, and the performance of its new Ascend 910C compares to Nvidia’s H20, the GPU used to build DeepSeek R1. While DeepSeek was trained on the Nvidia H20, it used the Ascend 910C for inference, the process where a trained AI model draws conclusions.”

In general, the West’s attempts to suppress China’s technological rise have been singularly unsuccessful. The author points out that, when the Pivot to Asia began in 2011, the US led in 60 of 64 key technologies globally. By 2022, China had surpassed the US in 52 of those technologies. “China has built entire high-tech industries that now dominate globally: Huawei is the world’s leading 5G telecommunications company. BYD is the world’s top electric vehicle maker. CATL leads in advanced battery technology. Tongwei is tops in solar power. DJI is the world’s largest commercial drone maker.”

The article observes that China’s economic model and political system allow it to dedicate enormous resources to key projects, and to focus on prioritise on meeting human needs. “Unlike the US, which focuses on AI for corporate profits, China sees AI as a driver of economic transformation — a way to modernize its economy.” Furthermore, the Chinese government is dedicated to ensuring that the benefits of AI are shared by the people, rather than being monopolised by a few big corporations. “The potential benefits of treating AI as a public utility are immense. Rather than displacing workers or driving inequality, open-access AI can be used for equitable planning of production and distribution.”

Gary concludes:

Despite US restrictions, China continues to advance in AI, semiconductors, and other high-tech industries. China is shaping the future of global technology, and AI could play a key role in the economic planning of production and services to meet people’s needs.

Let’s start with the U.S. tech war against China. Some call it a New Cold War. A problem with that term is there’s no guarantee it will stay “cold.” There is a major U.S. military buildup around China, with a U.S. Army drone warfare Green Beret unit now stationed in Taiwan, and aircraft carriers from the U.S., France and Japan conducting “war games” in the South China Sea.

Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in 2022, the first high-level U.S. official visit since the 1990s, was a provocation challenging China’s sovereignty, that was backed with an unprecedented escalation in U.S. military activity in the region that came dangerously close to sparking a “hot war.” 

Anyway, whatever we call it, a New Cold War, an economic war, trade war or tech war — the U.S. has made China’s science and technology a target. The U.S. has imposed strict limits on technology transfers, restricted access to semiconductors, sanctioned Chinese tech companies, blocked academic and research collaboration, and halted many scientific exchanges.

This tech war didn’t just start. It really began in 2011 with Barack Obama’s Pivot to Asia, a Cold War-style containment policy. The Pivot to Asia was primarily a military operation but also introduced export controls on advanced technologies. 

As a military operation, it involved moving 60% of U.S. naval forces into the Asia-Pacific region, militarily surrounding China, and expanding military exercises like RIMPAC, the world’s largest naval war games.

The tech war escalated significantly during Donald Trump’s first presidency with trade restrictions and sanctions on Chinese firms, including Huawei and ZTE. 

Then, with Joe Biden, even more severe restrictions were imposed. The U.S. also expanded military and technology alliances against China, like AUKUS – some call it the Asian NATO — and the U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral pact.

Continue reading AI for the people? How China’s AI development challenges US big tech

A new multipolar world or a new cold war? Latin America, China and the rising global South

In the following article, Ben Chacko, Editor of the Morning Star, analyses the position of Latin America as a frontline in the struggle for multipolarity, a struggle which is heavily impacted by the rise of China.

Ben notes that: “Many of the Latin American revolutionary projects that inspire us… are independence struggles as well as class struggles. The two are bound together… Decolonisation remained partial if it was not accompanied by social revolution because formal independence did not necessarily give a country control of its own resources if private property relations, maintaining ultimate Western ownership in many cases, stayed in place… This explains the close association between communist and decolonisation movements through the 20th century.”

The confrontation between the Global North and the Global South runs through the class struggle in country after country in Latin America, reflected not least through the prism of race – the struggle in Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia and other countries of the Afro-descendant and Indigenous oppressed against white supremacism – as well as being key to the continent’s relationship with the United States.

Therefore, Ben argues, “Building a multipolar world is a decolonisation process: one in which countries prevented till now from exercising full sovereignty because their resources are controlled by others are able to ‘stand up,’ as Chairman Mao put it in 1949. They are able to do so because China’s peaceful rise has created an economic counterweight to the West and the network of financial institutions and treaties that maintain Western hegemony.”

The article was originally published in the Morning Star and is based on a talk given by Ben at London’s Latin America Conference held on February 8.  The panel, on ‘A new multipolar world or a new Cold War? Latin America, China and the rising Global South’ was also addressed by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez and Isaac Saney, Associate Professor and Coordinator of Black and African Diaspora Studies at Canada’s Dalhousie University, and author of  ‘Cuba, Africa, and Apartheid’s End: Africa’s Children Return!’

During the student-led protests that shook Chile a few years ago, a prominent rallying cry was “neoliberalism was born in Chile and will die in Chile.”

It points to the front-line place Latin America has had when it comes to clashes between economic systems and between imperialism and decolonisation. Many of the Latin American revolutionary projects that inspire us, that lots of us come to Adelante! to hear more about, are independence struggles as well as class struggles.

The two are bound together. The poverty and underdevelopment of much of the Third World is down to the domination of economies by Western corporations controlling their natural resources.

Continue reading A new multipolar world or a new cold war? Latin America, China and the rising global South

A multipolar world or a New Cold War?

The following text is based on a presentation given by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez at the Latin America Conference held in London on 8 February 2025. The panel also included Morning Star editor Ben Chacko and Canadian author and academic Isaac Saney; it was chaired by Carole Regan of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign.

The text attempts to clarify what multipolarity is, as well as addressing the role of China and the rising threat of military confrontation between the US and China.

What is multipolarity?

‘Multipolarity’ is a word that is heard increasingly often, but its meaning is not well or widely understood, including on the left.

There are many people who think that multipolarity simply means a return to the era of intense inter-imperialist rivalry that characterised the period leading up to World War 1. In the early 20th century, the situation was ‘multipolar’ in the sense that there was more than one imperialist country; Britain, the US, Germany, France, Russia and Japan all represented poles of power and were competing fiercely among themselves for control of the world’s land, resources, labour and markets. Needless to say, there was nothing progressive or peaceful about this conjuncture.

However, multipolarity as defined in the modern era does not refer simply to a geopolitical situation with more than one major power; it is more than a shift away from the US-dominated unipolarity of the 1990s. Multipolarity includes the rise of the Global South; it insists on the principle of equality between nations; and it envisions an end to the system of hegemony and domination, whereby one country (or group of countries) can impose its will on others.

In this sense, we could say that the situation in 1914 was actually unipolar: it was a world system where power was concentrated among a small handful of imperialist countries, albeit with significant contradictions and rivalry between them.

Multipolarity sees Latin America as a centre of power. It sees Africa, West Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific as centres of power. Its multilateral organisations include not just the G7, NATO and EU, but also BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the African Union (AU), the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the G77, and so on.

This geopolitical shift reflects a rapidly-changing global economic landscape. For example, BRICS countries now have a larger share of the world’s GDP than the G7 countries when measured by purchasing power parity (PPP). This is a dramatic transformation compared to the beginning of the 21st century, when G7 countries made up 43 percent of global GDP by PPP, compared to the BRICS countries’ 21 percent.

So when we talk about multipolarity, we’re not talking simply about a change of cast in the imperialist world system, such as Spanish/Portuguese colonialism giving way to Dutch colonialism, or Dutch colonialism giving way to British colonialism, or British colonialism giving way to US imperialism. Rather, multipolarity represents an end to the whole system of domination and hegemony; an end to the 500-year-old division of the world into oppressor and oppressed nations. It means undermining imperialism and depriving the imperialist countries of their power to determine the fate of the rest of the world.

Continue reading A multipolar world or a New Cold War?

Trump’s war on China in Latin America

In the following article, Steve Ellner provides a detailed analysis of Donald Trump’s Latin America policy as he embarks on his second presidential term, arguing that its bellicosity is closely related to US imperialism’s increased hostility to China.

According to Ellner: “US President Donald Trump’s threats to take over the Panama Canal, convert Canada into the 51st state and purchase Greenland may not be as ludicrous as they seemed. The proposals, albeit unachievable, lay the groundwork for a more ‘rational’ strategy of targeting China (not so much Russia) and singling out real adversaries (as opposed to Canada and Panama), which include Cuba and Venezuela, with Bolivia not far behind.”

Arguing that much of Trump’s analysis is drawn from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, he draws attention to the think tank’s James Carafano’s advocacy of a “rejuvenation of the Monroe Doctrine”.

Trump’s choice of anti-Cuba zealot Marco Rubio as secretary of state reinforces the perception that the Trump administration’s foreign policy will pay special attention to Latin America and that Latin American policy will prioritise two enemies: China and the continent’s leftist governments. Carafano calls the strategy ‘a pivot to Latin America.’

He notes that the threat to Panama is a reminder that currents on the right and within the Republican Party still denounce the “canal giveaway.” Ronald Reagan warned against it in his attempt to secure the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 and again raised the issue in his successful bid for the presidency four years later.

Drawing attention to what he considers a certain difference in approach from that taken by the US Democratic Party, he observes that, “the McCarthyite new right targets the more leftist Pink Tide leaders such as those of Venezuela and Cuba, but it is not letting moderate ones such as Lula off the hook. Rubio calls Brazil’s Lula a ‘far-left leader,’ while Musk has expressed certainty that he will not be reelected in 2026. Some analysts have raised the possibility that Trump will slap the Lula government with tariffs and sanctions to support the return to power of Jair Bolsonaro and the Brazilian far right.”

Trump’s real target in all three threats [against Panama, Canada and Greenland] was China… Trump made his case for the annexation of the Panama Canal, Canada and Greenland (a gateway to the Arctic) by arguing for the need to block China’s growing presence in the hemisphere…

In the 21st century, China’s investment in and trade with Latin America have increased exponentially. China has now surpassed the US as South America’s top trading partner. Some economists predict that the net value of trade, which in 2022 was valued at $450 billion, will exceed $700 billion by 2035.

When it comes to Washington’s anti-China rhetoric, competition with the US on the economic front receives less attention than it merits. If ever the ‘it’s the economy stupid’ [a phrase made famous by Bill Clinton] statement was apropos, it is in the case of China’s challenge to US hegemony.

The Heritage Foundation’s 38,000-word ‘Plan for Countering China,’ enumerates an endless number of non-economic threats [supposedly] posed by China. Many of the threats put the spotlight on Latin America due to its proximity. For example: ‘China’s role in global drug trafficking, exploiting instability in the US and Latin America caused by illegal migration… The US government should close loopholes in immigration law and policy that China is exploiting.’

Surveying the role played by the Latin American right in this situation, he notes that former Brazilian President Bolsonaro and current Argentine President Milei employed extreme anti-China rhetoric in opposition, only to adopt a more pragmatic approach in office.

“All this indicates that the Trump administration will probably face resistance to its anti-China campaign in Latin America from an unexpected source, namely local business interests.”

This article contains some formulations and opinions with which the editors of this website are not fully in agreement. However, we reproduce it for its detailed factual presentation, interesting analysis and clear anti-imperialist standpoint. It was originally published by Links, an Australian publication which describes itself as an international journal of socialist renewal.  A slightly abridged version was first published in Jacobin.

Steve Ellner is an Associate Managing Editor of Latin American Perspectives and a retired professor at the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela, where he lived for over 40 years.

US President Donald Trump’s threats to take over the Panama Canal, convert Canada into the 51st state and purchase Greenland may not be as ludicrous as they seemed. The proposals, albeit unachievable, lay the groundwork for a more “rational” strategy of targeting China (not so much Russia) and singling out real adversaries (as opposed to Canada and Panama), which include Cuba and Venezuela, with Bolivia not far behind. The strategy is what James Carafano of the Heritage Foundation calls the “Rejuvenation of the Monroe Doctrine,” which, after all, in its day encompassed Canada and Greenland in addition to Latin America.

Trump’s choice of anti-Cuba zealot Marco Rubio as secretary of state reinforces the perception that the Trump administration’s foreign policy will pay special attention to Latin America and that Latin American policy will prioritise two enemies: China and the continent’s leftist governments. Carafano calls the strategy “a pivot to Latin America.”

Political analyst Juan Gabriel Tokatlian writing in Americas Quarterly was more specific. After citing Trump’s plans for military action against Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela in his first administration, Tokatlian reasons “a second Trump White House may well lack some of the more rational voices that averted more rash actions the first time around.”

Continue reading Trump’s war on China in Latin America

Chinese solidarity in Panama’s long struggle for sovereignty against US imperialism

Following threats by the Trump administration to illegally seize the Panama Canal, Panama’s right wing government, following a visit by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has partially acceded to US pressure by deciding to withdraw from its participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

In a prompt reaction, on February 7, Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Zhao Zhiyuan summoned Miguel Humberto Lecaro Barcenas, Panama’s ambassador to China, to lodge solemn representations over Panama’s decision, to which the Chinese side expressed deep regret.

More than 150 countries actively participate in the BRI, with achievements benefiting the people of various nations, including Panama, Zhao said. “Any attempts to reverse course on the BRI and go against the expectations of the Chinese and Panamanian peoples do not align with the vital interests of Panama.”

China respects Panama’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and advocates for equality among countries of all sizes, mutual respect, and credibility in commitments, Zhao stressed. China firmly opposes the United States wantonly undermining China-Panama relations and discrediting and undermining cooperation under the BRI through pressure and threats.

Lecaro said that Panama values its relationship with China and will promptly report to its government.

That same day, at a regular Foreign Ministry press conference, spokesperson Lin Jian said that China firmly opposes the United States’ actions to smear and sabotage Belt and Road cooperation through pressure and coercion and deeply regrets that Panama will not renew the Memorandum of Understanding on BRI cooperation with China.

China supports Panama’s sovereignty over the Panama Canal and is committed to upholding the Canal’s status as a permanently neutral international waterway, he added. China has never participated in managing or operating the Canal, and never ever has China interfered. The accusation that China has control over the Canal is totally groundless. “The world is not blind to the truth as to who is keeping the Canal neutral and thriving and who keeps threatening to ‘take back’ the Canal.”

It is highly unlikely that this concession by Panama will have the effect of appeasing the Trump administration. If anything, it is likely to further turn the screws on the small Central American country.

In an article published by People’s Dispatch, and also republished by the Morning Star, Tings Chak noted that: “Trump’s rhetoric fits neatly into his vocal expansionist and imperialist ambitions, from annexing Greenland and Canada to ‘taking back’ the Panama Canal, which itself was a product of US interventionism and imperialist interest in the region.”

Tings adds: “Panamanian sovereignty over the Canal Zone became the centre of decades of struggle, coming to a head in January 1964, when students attempted to raise a Panamanian flag there in protest of US imperialism. They were met with brutal repression, and several students were wounded and killed. It wasn’t until the leadership of Omar Torrijo that Panama was finally able to gain its control over the Canal Zone, solidified in the Torrijos-Carter treaties in 1977. As an important victory for Panama’s national sovereignty, the treaties stated that the US would relinquish control of the area in 1979, with the transference of control completed by 1999 – now once again being threatened again by the provocations of Trump’s administration.”

Responding to the events of January 1964, a wave of solidarity swept socialist China, with up to 20 million people taking part in militant anti-imperialist protests. In his statement of support, issued on January 12, 1964, Chairman Mao Zedong declared:

The heroic struggle now being waged by the people of Panama against US aggression and in defence of their national sovereignty is a great patriotic struggle. The Chinese people stand firmly on the side of the Panamanian people and fully support their just action in opposing the US aggressors and seeking to regain sovereignty over the Panama Canal Zone.

US imperialism is the most ferocious enemy of the people of the entire world.

It has not only committed the grave crime of aggression against the Panamanian people, and painstakingly and stubbornly plotted against socialist Cuba, but has continuously been plundering and oppressing the people of the Latin American countries and suppressing the national-democratic revolutionary struggles there.

Significantly, and fully in keeping with his consistent analytical framework when assessing international questions, Mao’s brief survey of the global struggle against US imperialism at the time, also stressed:

Even toward its allies in Western Europe, North America and Oceania, US imperialism is pursuing a policy of the law of the jungle, trying hard to trample them underfoot.

Mao’s statement also formed the centrepiece of a pamphlet published by China’s Foreign Languages Press, whose contents also included the texts of messages from Chinese leaders Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and Zhu De to their Panamanian counterparts. It should be noted that such messages were sent in the spirit of internationalism and without regard to the fact that Panama had yet to establish diplomatic relations with China. China consistently maintained its principled stand in support of Panama’s anti-imperialist struggle for sovereignty, through all its twists and turns, although bilateral diplomatic relations were not established until 2017.

The following articles are republished from the Xinhua News Agency, People’s Dispatch and the Marxist Internet Archive (MIA).

China lodges solemn representations to Panama over withdrawal from BRI cooperation with China

BEIJING, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) — Assistant Foreign Minister Zhao Zhiyuan on Friday summoned Miguel Humberto Lecaro Barcenas, Panama’s ambassador to China, to lodge solemn representations over Panama’s decision to not renew the Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation with China on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Panama recently announced the termination of the Memorandum of Understanding on the BRI, to which the Chinese side expressed deep regret, Zhao said.

Under the framework of the BRI, pragmatic cooperation between China and Panama has rapidly developed across various sectors and achieved a series of fruitful results, bringing tangible benefits to Panama and its people, Zhao noted.

More than 150 countries actively participate in the BRI, with achievements benefiting the people of various nations, including Panama, Zhao said. “Any attempts to reverse course on the BRI and go against the expectations of the Chinese and Panamanian peoples do not align with the vital interests of Panama.”

China respects Panama’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and advocates for equality among countries of all sizes, mutual respect, and credibility in commitments, Zhao stressed.

Continue reading Chinese solidarity in Panama’s long struggle for sovereignty against US imperialism

Trump, tariffs and the working class

The two articles below address the tariffs recently announced by the US against China, Canada and Mexico.

The first article, written by Friends of Socialist China advisory group member and International Manifesto Group convenor Radhika Desai, republished from CGTN, points to the cynical economic motives for these tariffs: to rob from the poor to pay the rich. Since the cost of tariffs is passed on to consumers, they constitute a stealth tax on ordinary Americans, and will help make up for the loss of revenue resulting from the Trump regime’s tax cuts for the super-rich.

The cost of the tariffs will be paid by ordinary US consumers. And they will pay in order that the richest US taxpayers can enjoy greater tax cuts, which is the key reason why Trump needs the tariff revenues.

Tariffs will also drive up inflation, further impacting living conditions of the working class.

The putative aim of the tariffs is to bolster US manufacturing. However, “for US capital, given its decades-long reluctance to invest productively at home, it’s going to take a lot more than tariffs. US capital needs to be turned away from the unproductive, predatory and speculative financial ventures in which it is engaged and towards serious productive investment.”

The second article, republished from Workers World, details the likely negative impact of the tariffs on the US economy, and denounces the Trump administration’s threats against the BRICS countries.

Attacks against BRICS are detrimental to workers in G7 countries… BRICS countries are displaying self-sufficiency and independence from Western imperialism and settler colonialism. Relations between China and Russia have also strengthened because of BRICS. Many countries in the Global South have less of a need to trade with the U.S. than they did in previous decades, and therefore they have more leverage to maintain sovereignty.

The article concludes:

Trump’s promotion of tariffs is harmful to workers all over the globe. Imperialist protectionism and isolationism are an obstacle to working-class unity, and they should be opposed. International solidarity is necessary in resisting anti-worker tariffs and defeating the racist, xenophobic “America First” agenda. Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!

Trump’s empty tariff brinkmanship

After days of keeping the world guessing whether he would commit to such a disastrous course, U.S. President Donald Trump has started his trade wars against his country’s three most important trade partners, Canada, Mexico and China.

In announcing the tariffs on exports from these countries, Trump was self-contradictory, claiming they were a negotiating tool designed to deal with U.S. trade deficits, and then that they were not. Their true extent remains unclear: From the apparently blanket tariffs of 25 percent on Canada and Mexico and 10 percent on China, he has already reduced tariffs on oil, natural gas and electricity from Canada to 10 percent, and uncertainty prevails over exactly which goods they will hit, how, and by how much.

The Financial Times called it “a trade war on steroids” while the Washington Post declared it “the dumbest trade war in history.” Many others said these sky-high tariffs could not be expected to last forever.

So, as the world tightens its seatbelt for a bumpy ride through the Trump quadrennial, let’s parse the real wheat from the rhetorical chaff so we can better anticipate the course of the trade wars Trump has started. The key is that Trump’s tariffs are incoherent in conception and applied for the wrong reasons.

Trump is certainly using them as negotiating tools. He claims they are superior to sanctions, which scare other countries from the dollar system he wishes to save. Exactly how adding the weaponization of trade to the weaponization of the dollar is going to help the U.S. is anyone’s guess.

Continue reading Trump, tariffs and the working class

Is DeepSeek China’s Sputnik moment?

In the article below, reprinted from People’s World, CJ Atkins examines the geopolitical significance of the success of China’s DeepSeek R1 model, which has been taking the world by storm in recent weeks, and which was responsible for chip manufacturer Nvidia suffering the biggest ever fall in share price in a single day.

Atkins notes that the Biden administration’s export ban on the most sophisticated microchips has clearly backfired. “The export bans simply spurred Chinese developers to get creative, pushing them to come up with cheaper and more efficient ways of using the older chips they already had access to. They discovered means to train and operate AI models using less memory and less computing power. This resulted in a model that was cheaper to build and less damaging for the planet to operate than those developed by the U.S. tech monopolies.”

Importantly, DeepSeek’s developers made their model open source, allowing anyone to use it for free. “That means they showed their work for the world to see and adapt for further development. Other scientists and coders can build on DeepSeek-R1 to create their own AI models.” The article cites Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek, as saying that “our starting point is not the opportunity to make a quick profit, but rather to reach the technical frontier and drive the development of the entire ecosystem”.

The stunning success of DeepSeek’s model highlights the fact that China is now a major player in the global tech industry, and is increasingly setting the pace in terms of innovation. This is testament to the effectiveness of China’s economic model, and calls to mind Deng Xiaoping’s 1984 comment that “the superiority of the socialist system is demonstrated, in the final analysis, by faster and greater development of those forces than under the capitalist system”.

Atkins warns that the DeepSeek phenomenon will likely trigger a deepening of the US’s trade war against China, along with an expansion of its campaign of containment and encirclement. “We can expect a ramping up of military tensions over the long term. The weapons dealers and neocon warhawks will seize the moment to beat the drums of a real war against China. There will be a tightening of U.S. imperialism’s military encirclement of China, and a propaganda onslaught warning of the ‘China threat’ will wash over the American people. Anti-Asian racism will figure prominently, just as it did during the pandemic.”

The article concludes by noting that China’s consistent call is for peaceful coexistence and international cooperation between countries with different social systems. The US and China could and should be working together to push science and technology forward in the service of humanity, but the US ruling class cannot be expected to pursue such a path in the absence of mass pressure. “The tech monopolists will do anything to protect their own profits and power, even if it means keeping the world divided and holding back shared progress.”

In 1978, just months before China initiated the reform and opening up of its economy, Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping told a meeting of researchers:

“Our science and technology have made enormous progress since the founding of New China…. But we must be clear-sighted and recognize that there is still an enormous gap between our level and that of the most advanced countries and that our scientific and technical forces are still too meager.”

If he were alive to witness the events of the last few days, would Deng be shocked?

The release of the DeepSeek-R1 chatbot, a Chinese-developed large language model (LLM), threw the global artificial intelligence industry into chaos and wiped a trillion dollars off the values of some of the biggest tech corporations on the New York Stock Exchange—overnight.

Is this China’s “Sputnik moment,” comparable in historic significance to the Soviet Union’s inauguration of the space age with the launch of the first artificial satellite in 1957?

Back then, U.S. capitalism made the mistake of assuming that blockading the socialist half of the world via trade walls and embargoes would keep it technologically backward forever. The same error is being made again with China.

No chips for China

Export bans on the most sophisticated microchips that power advanced AI applications, along with chip-making equipment and software, were imposed by the Biden administration in 2022, using “national security” as a justification.

With Trump campaigning last year to go even further, Biden toughened his restrictions in December. The graphics processing units (GPUs) that are the go-to for training AIs like ChatGPT and DeepSeek were put on an export blacklist, forbidden from being shipped to China or companies in third countries that do business with the People’s Republic.

But the U.S.’ economic aggression now appears to have backfired. The export bans simply spurred Chinese developers to get creative, pushing them to come up with cheaper and more efficient ways of using the older chips they already had access to.

They discovered means to train and operate AI models using less memory and less computing power. This resulted in a model that was cheaper to build and less damaging for the planet to operate than those developed by the U.S. tech monopolies.

Continue reading Is DeepSeek China’s Sputnik moment?

China’s DeepSeek AI scores important victory against US tech hegemony

We republish below three articles about the recent release of DeepSeek R1, an artificial intelligence (AI) model that performs as well as – or better than – its major US-based competitors, but at a fraction of the cost and using relatively low-grade semiconductors.

The first article, by Marxist economist Michael Roberts, notes that DeepSeek R1 is fully open source, meaning that the code behind it is fully visible to programmers around the world and can be freely used and adapted. “This is a real blow to the ‘proprietary’ secrets that OpenAI or Google’s Gemini lock away in a ‘black box’ in order to maximise profits. The analogy here is with branded and generic pharmaceuticals.” Indeed, the whole orientation of DeepSeek is towards scientific research and the production of social goods, rather than the relentless pursuit of profit at all costs.

Michael observes that DeepSeek has caused unprecedented losses to US technology stocks – “chipmaker Nvidia and so-called ‘hyperscalers’ Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta Platforms collectively shed almost $750bn of their stock market value in one day” – as it became apparent that the tech giants’ spending of billions of dollars on scaling their computing power is essentially unnecessary. These companies have put all their eggs in the hardware basket, but a small team of researchers in China have shown that the mathematical/algorithmic component is at least as important.

Meanwhile, the DeepSeek phenomenon is a powerful demonstration that the US “chip wars” are not having the desired effect:

What must enrage the tech oligarchs sucking up to Trump is that US sanctions on Chinese companies and bans on chip exports have not stopped China making yet more advances in the tech and chip war with the US. China is managing to make technological leaps in AI despite export controls introduced by the Biden administration intended to deprive it of both the most powerful chips and the advanced tools needed to make them.

Michael further points to the political economy of the situation, noting that “state-led planned investment into technology and tech skills by China works so much better than relying on huge private tech giants led by moguls.” He quotes billionaire tech investor Ray Dalio: “In our system, by and large, we are moving to a more industrial-complex- type of policy in which there is going to be government-mandated and government-influenced activity, because it is so important… Capitalism alone — the profit motive alone — cannot win this battle.”

The second article, by Gary Wilson in Struggle La Lucha, provides a broad overview of the geopolitics of the “chip wars” and the significance of DeepSeek’s success.

DeepSeek’s model outperformed OpenAI’s best, using less data, less computing power, and a fraction of the cost. Even more remarkable, DeepSeek’s model is open-source, meaning anyone can use, modify, and build on it. This stands in stark contrast to OpenAI’s closed, profit-driven approach.

Gary’s article continues to contrast DeepSeek’s business model – and China’s overall approach to AI – with that of the US tech giants:

Corporate rulers want AI to monitor workers, lower wages, bust unions, or shift work to machines altogether, leading to cutbacks and layoffs. The World Economic Forum famously predicted that AI would replace millions of “useless” human workers by 2030. Unlike US tech companies seeking monopoly control, DeepSeek treats AI like electricity or the Internet — a basic tool that should be accessible to everyone… AI, as a public utility, can be used to complement human labor, improve safety, reduce drudgery, and create better-paying jobs rather than eliminate them.

This touches on the broader question of the role of technology in society. Under capitalism, AI is used to maximise profits, which often means replacing human labour with algorithms, thereby deepening unemployment and, ultimately, impacting the long-term viability of the entire system by reducing the rate of profit. Under working class leadership on the other hand, technology can be used to improve the quality of life for all.

An editorial in the Morning Star on 28 January reiterates the blowback effect of US’s tech sanctions on China. “In placing sanctions on microchip exports to China, it forced developers in that country to use their chips more efficiently.”

Furthermore, DeepSeek is indicative of China’s emergence as a technology superpower. “The days are gone when Chinese economic advance largely relied on technical innovations developed elsewhere.” As such, “this week’s events are a landmark in the decline of US hegemony, and in the development of global multipolarity. With all its contradictions and contestations, that can only be welcome.”

AI going DeepSeek

Most readers will know the news by now. DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, released an AI model called R1 that is comparable in ability to the best models from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta, but was trained at a radically lower cost and using less than state-of-the art GPU chips. DeepSeek also made public enough of the details of the model that others can run it on their own computers without charge.

DeepSeek is a torpedo that has hit the Magnificent Seven US hi-tech companies below the water line. DeepSeek did not use the latest and best Nvidia’s chips and software; it did not require huge spending on training its AI model unlike its American rivals; and it offers just as many useful applications.

Continue reading China’s DeepSeek AI scores important victory against US tech hegemony

The US seeks to reverse China’s progress and bring it to heel

The International Manifesto Group (IMG) organised a webinar on ‘Trump’s Presidency and the Prospects for Peace in 2025’ on Sunday 19 January, the day before the US presidential inauguration.

The speakers were:

  • Ramzy Baroud (Palestine Chronicle)
  • Jacquie Luqman (Black Alliance for Peace)
  • Andrew Murray (Stop the War Coalition)
  • Gabriel Rockhill (Critical Theory Workshop)
  • Keith Bennett (Friends of Socialist China); and
  • Sara Flounders (International Action Center)

The event was moderated and introduced by Radhika Desai on behalf of the IMG and was also sponsored and supported by Friends of Socialist China, Palestine Chronicle, Critical Theory Workshop and the International Action Center.

Building for the event, the IMG wrote: “Given that the US is usually the prime instigator of our world’s conflicts and given that Trump sometimes spoke on the campaign trail about ending at least some of them, we ask what prospects the incoming Trump administration offers for peace. Will Trump’s second term be more or less aggressive than his first? Will he honour his campaign promise to end the war in Ukraine? Will he double down on his enthusiastic support for Israeli genocide? Will he escalate the New Cold War on China or attempt another ‘deal’? Will opportunities for peace in Korea and Iran be seized or squandered? What to make of Trump’s bellicose rhetoric in relation to Central America? How will the new administration affect humanity’s trajectory towards peace and multipolarity?”

Keith’s contribution focused on China and Korea and we reproduce his remarks below. Videos of all the contributions can be viewed on the IMG’s YouTube channel.

Meeting on the theme of Trump’s Presidency and the Prospects for Peace in 2025, it is natural we look especially at the war raging in Ukraine for nearly three years and at the situation in West Asia, as a tentative ceasefire emerges after more than 15 months of unrelenting genocide in Gaza. With so many thousands of lives being lost is it self-indulgence or overreach to also turn our attention to the Asia Pacific region?

But today, no bilateral relationship is more important, more strategic and more fraught with dangers of global conflict than that between the United States and China.

Faced with the peaceful rise of China, a rise unparalleled in human history, it has essentially become a consensus among the otherwise contending wings of the US ruling class that the preservation of US global hegemony necessitates taking China as Washington’s principal adversary. From Greenland to the South Pacific. And from semiconductors to social media.

As with Cold War One and the Soviet Union, the US seeks to reverse China’s progress and, at best, bring it to heel, through a combination of a debilitating arms race, ideological subversion and economic and technological strangulation. A key difference is that not only has China drawn lessons from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Whereas the USA and the USSR were essentially economically insulated from one another, China has spent the best part of half a century integrating itself into the global economy, creating such facts on the ground in the process as ever more complex global supply chains, and with China accounting for some 11% of US foreign trade.

So, what does Trump’s return mean for China/US relations?

First, Trump revels in his role as Disruptor-in-Chief, so the first thing we should expect is the unexpected. Certainly, if he carries through on even a fraction of his recent threats regarding tariffs, not only will China face an economic challenge. The entire global economy, in a parlous enough state as it is, and not least the US economy itself, will be plunged into crisis.

But overall, there seems little reason to anticipate a fundamental change of direction. When Biden assumed the presidency, many had hopes for a return to a more rational and constructive China policy in Washington. This did not materialise. Far from reversing Trump’s anti-China measures, the Biden administration ratcheted them up substantially, especially in terms of trying to restrict China’s access to computer chips and other advanced technology.

To the extent there was change under Biden, it came essentially in two areas:

•       His administration largely eschewed the openly racist rhetoric of Trump (kung flu, Chinese virus, etc.), which undoubtedly made life somewhat more tolerable for many Chinese and other Asian and Pacific Islander Americans.

•       Whereas Trump was an ‘equal opportunities bully’ when it came to insulting and threatening allies and adversaries alike, Biden’s team worked hard, and with a considerable degree of success, to reinforce cohesion in NATO, get the EU onside, and reinvigorate and reinforce old alliances, such as those with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, all with a view to confronting China, along with Russia, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and other states in Washington’s crosshairs.

So, even if Trump ups the ante with China, it will not break the essential continuum established by Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton with their 2011 ‘pivot to Asia’.

Continue reading The US seeks to reverse China’s progress and bring it to heel

Prospects for US-China relations in Trump’s second presidency

The London Region of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) held its 2025 Annual Conference online on Sunday 12 January.

Friends of Socialist China co-editor Keith Bennett was among the speakers in a session entitled, NATO, war, nukes: Outlook for 2025, where he was joined by CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt; Jess Barnard, a member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC); Carol Turner, Chair of London CND and a Vice Chair of national CND; and Vijay Prashad, Director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. The session was chaired by Christine Shawcroft, a Vice Chair of London CND and editor of Labour Briefing.

A keynote opening speech on Prospects for Peace and Justice was given by Jeremy Corbyn, former Leader of the Labour Party and now the Independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Islington North, introduced by Murad Qureshi, a Vice President of London CND and a former Chair of the Stop the War Coalition.

Further discussions focused on Ukraine and the Middle East as testing grounds for new tech weapons, with expert input from Peter Burt, a researcher for Drone Wars UK; and Dave Webb, Convenor of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space; chaired by former MP Emma Dent-Coad; and a final session on Peace Movement Priorities, with Baroness Jenny Jones from the Green Party; Tony Staunton, a Vice Chair of CND; and Angie Zelter, a founder of Lakenheath Action for Peace; chaired by Hannah Kemp-Welch, a Vice Chair of London CND.

Keith’s speech focused on the prospects for relations between China and the United States during Donald Trump’s second presidency. We reprint it below.

An edited version was also carried by Labour Outlook. The full conference proceedings can be viewed on the YouTube channel of London CND.

Thank you to London Region CND for the invitation to take part in this distinguished panel.

With war raging in Ukraine for nearly three years and with the unrelenting genocide in Gaza, now well into its second year, both naturally forming the main day-to-day focus of most peace campaigners, is it self-indulgence or overreach to also turn our attention to the Asia Pacific region?

I would argue that it is not. No analogy is ever exact, but a clear parallel can be drawn with events in the 1930s. Local conflicts, in Spain, Ethiopia and, indeed China, were the proverbial canaries in the mine, which presaged the global conflagration of World War II.

Today, no bilateral relationship is more important, more strategic and more fraught than that between the United States and China. On the potentially positive side, the world needs these two powers to work together constructively if humanity is to meet an existential threat like climate change. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of China, and of a couple of US politicians, there is little sign of this happening. Something that will most likely be exacerbated when Trump quits the Paris Climate Change Accord. Again.

Continue reading Prospects for US-China relations in Trump’s second presidency

Goals behind Trump’s tariffs: cut taxes on rich and escalate New Cold War on China

US president-elect Donald Trump has been touting tariffs as a means to reduce both income taxes and the national debt, which currently exceeds 120 percent of GDP. In the article below, Ben Norton describes these claims as “utterly false, and mathematically absurd”.

Ben notes that, during Trump’s first term, significant tax cuts were enacted, primarily benefiting the wealthiest Americans. These cuts resulted in the richest billionaire families paying a lower effective tax rate than the bottom half of US households. Consequently, federal deficits increased from 3.4 percent of GDP in 2017 to 4.6 percent in 2019, prior to the pandemic-induced surge to 14.7 percent in 2020.

The article observes that “every advanced economy got its start through protectionism”, but that the US from the 1940s has been preaching (and sometimes violently imposing) free trade as a means of opening up markets for its exports. “However, something happened in the 21st century that changed everything: the People’s Republic of China carried out the most remarkable campaign of economic development in history.”

China’s extraordinary rise has taken place in parallel with a sharp decline in US manufacturing and an increasing financialisation of the US economy. “The US capitalist class decided it would much rather be the banker of the world rather than the factory of the world, because creating parasitic financial and tech oligopolies that use monopolistic market control and intellectual property to extract rents is much more profitable than actually making things.”

Trump’s proposed tariffs will not help the US to re-industrialise – such a project would require massive long-term investment in infrastructure, education, and research and development. In reality, tariffs will be used “to justify cutting taxes even further on the rich” and, further, “to escalate the new cold war on China, which is a bipartisan gift to the Military-Industrial Complex that will only distract from the domestic problems caused by the US ruling class and externalise the blame”.

This article originally appeared on Geopolitical Economy.

Donald Trump cited billionaire egghead venture capitalist Marc Andreessen to advocate for high tariffs. Trump argued that tariffs will magically replace the income tax and pay off US public debt (which is more than 120% of GDP). This is utterly false, and mathematically absurd.

For Trump, tariffs are just another convenient excuse to cut taxes on the rich — which will in fact increase the US deficit, and therefore public debt.

Thanks to Trump’s tax cuts during his first term, the richest billionaire families in the US paid a lower effective tax rate than the bottom half of households in the country. Meanwhile, US federal deficits increased from 3.4% of GDP in 2017 to 4.6% of GDP in 2019 (before the deficit blew out to 14.7% of GDP in 2020, due to the necessary stimulus measures during the pandemic).

As Trump continues to reduce taxes on fellow oligarchs, tariffs will decidedly not make up for the lost revenue. A study by the Wharton School, the elite business school of the University of Pennsylvania, estimated that Trump’s economic policies will increase the US deficit by $5.8 trillion over the next decade.

Nevertheless, the sudden interest in tariffs shown by US billionaires is about much more than just taxes; what it is really about is industrial hegemony and economic dominance.

Here is the actual history, which oligarchs like Trump and Andreessen don’t know:

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States used tariffs as a form of infant industry protection, to build up its domestic manufacturing capabilities, following the dirigiste ideas of Alexander Hamilton.

Every advanced economy got its start through protectionism (including Great Britain, France, Japan, South Korea, etc.). The state needed to protect infant industries during the initial industrial “catch-up” period, because it is very difficult for a developing economy to compete with a dominant economic power that already has an established industrial base that benefits from economies of scale.

By the 1940s, the US became the dominant industrial power on Earth, especially after World War Two destroyed its competitors in Europe. In 1946, US net exports were 3.2% of GDP; then, in 1947, they were 4.3% of GDP. This was a peak the US would never see again. (US net exports have been negative without exception since 1976, as the US has run the largest consistent current account deficits ever seen in history, which have only been possible to balance due to the fact that the US prints the global reserve currency, and can thus sell more and more Treasury securities and other financial assets to foreign holders of dollars.)

In the 1940s, US industry no longer had significant competition, so Washington lifted tariffs and began to preach “free trade”. This benefited the US, because at that time it had a large surplus, and insufficient domestic demand, so by imposing “free trade” (often forcibly), it could open new markets for its exports.

The US wasn’t concerned about losing local market share to a foreign manufacturer, because there weren’t any left at the top of the value chain. So US companies could dominate both foreign and domestic markets.

What the United States did was not unique; the British empire did the exact same thing in the mid 19th century. After the UK established industrial dominance, it repealed the Corn Laws in 1846, moved away from strict protectionism, and began to impose “free trade” on its colonies. (This history was detailed by economist Ha-Joon Chang in his groundbreaking book Kicking Away the Ladder.)

However, something happened in the 21st century that changed everything: the People’s Republic of China carried out the most remarkable campaign of economic development in history.

By 2016, China overtook the United States as the largest economy on Earth (when GDP is measured at purchasing power parity, according to IMF data).

Even more importantly, China rapidly industrialized and established itself as 
the “world’s sole manufacturing superpower”, responsible for 35% of global gross production.

Meanwhile, the US lost its industrial hegemony, due to the deindustrialization and financialization of its economy in the neoliberal era. The US capitalist class decided it would much rather be the banker of the world rather than the factory of the world, because creating parasitic financial and tech oligopolies that use monopolistic market control and intellectual property to extract rents is much more profitable than actually making things.

Just 10% of US GDP consists of manufacturing. More than double, 21%, is made up by the FIRE sector: finance, insurance, and real estate.

Today, US companies can no longer compete with Chinese firms. So what is the response of the US government, which is the representative of US monopoly capital? It has abandoned the “free trade” ideology it had spent decades imposing on the world, and has instead returned to its old strident protectionism.

During his first administration, Trump launched a trade war on China. But this is totally bipartisan (as is the case with almost all US wars). Joe Biden has continued Trump’s trade and tech war on China, imposing even more tariffs.

Demagogues such as Trump like to scapegoat China for the problems that were caused by US oligarchs like him and Andreessen, who got much, much, much richer thanks to the deindustrialization and correspondent financialization of the US economy.

Now they think tariffs are the panacea that will fix everything. But they won’t, because the US industrial base has seriously eroded, and that can’t be rebuilt quickly; it takes many years.

Even more importantly, billionaire oligarchs on Wall Street — who are close friends and allies of Trump, Andreessen, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Elon Musk — will fight tooth and nail against a significant devaluation of the dollar, which would be needed to re-industrialize, reduce production costs, and disincentive imports. Financial speculators want a strong dollar, to keep inflating the biggest bubble in the history of US capital markets.

So the logical result of this is that Trump will use tariffs not truly to re-industrialize, but rather for two main reasons: one, to justify cutting taxes even further on the rich (thereby increasing US public debt, which will be pointed to to demand neoliberal austerity and slashes to social spending); and two, to escalate the new cold war on China, which is a bipartisan gift to the Military-Industrial Complex that will only distract from the domestic problems caused by the US ruling class and externalize the blame.

Podcast: Celebrating the achievements of Chinese socialism and opposing the New Cold War

We embed below the latest episode of CommieCast, the podcast of the Communist Party of Britain, in which Roger McKenzie (International Editor of the Morning Star), Georgina Andrews (General Secretary of the Young Communist League of Britain) and Carlos Martinez (co-editor of Friends of Socialist China) discuss a range of topics related to China, including their recent visits to the People’s Republic, the achievements of Chinese socialism, the nature of the US-led New Cold War, and the crucial importance of building solidarity with China in the face of imperialist aggression.

The next episode, to be recorded in the coming weeks, will take a deeper dive into the escalating campaign of containment and encirclement of China.

“Nothing like before” — China is out-competing the West on EVs

The following article, written by Paweł Wargan for Progressive International, examines the neverending accusations by Western media and politicians regarding China’s putative ‘overcapacity’ in electric vehicles (EVs). Paweł explores the reasons for these accusations, and comprehensively refutes them.

The article observes that China’s industrial utilisation rates and inventory levels are similar to those of the US, and furthermore Chinese profit margins are soaring. These factors indicate that there is no significant overcapacity in China’s EV sector.

As for the notion that China’s rise has caused the decline of Western industry, Paweł points out that the decline of Western manufacturing predates China’s rise. “In the US, the trade balance has seen a sustained deficit since the late 1970s. As the productive structure of its economy shifted, industrial capital made way for financial capital. The number of manufacturing jobs decreased from around 20 million at their peak in 1979 to under 13 million today — a period in which the US saw its population rise by 100 million.”

Describing some of the extraordinary innovations taking place in China’s EV sector – in particular a ‘road-cloud-vehicle’ integration that improves safety and reduces energy use – Paweł comments that “this degree of integration is only possible through control over the entire EV value chain”. Particularly in the light of US-led sanctions and tariffs, “China began to move quickly towards technological sovereignty in all areas, from chips and artificial intelligence to cars and batteries”. As a result, “it competes not only with the automobile industry — historically the domain of the West. It also now competes with the tech giants of Silicon Valley”. Obviously, this speaks to the superiority of a socialist economy where decision-making lies ultimately with the people, rather than a few billionaires.

Paweł writes that the accusations of overcapacity provide a convenient pretext for the West to embark upon its own program of protectionism – exactly what it accuses China of doing – as well as “allowing the Western leadership to blame China for the structural long-term decline of the global capitalist economy”. Alarmingly, the situation also shows that the West would rather sabotage China’s economy and the global green transition than cooperate sensibly with China on the basis of mutual benefit.

Paweł Wargan is an activist, researcher and organiser. He serves as Political Coordinator at the Progressive International, an international coalition of over 100 popular movements, political parties, and unions. He contributed to our conference marking the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

The past year has seen a concerted effort by Western politicians, regime intellectuals, and media stenographers to accuse China of “overcapacity”. The coordinated narrative has accompanied a choreographed escalation in the West’s economic war on China. What is motivating these accusations?

In May 2024, the White House announced a series of new tariffs on Chinese products, including a 100% tax on imports of Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), set to take effect later this year. The European Union followed closely behind. In July, the Commission announced duties ranging from 17.4% to 37.6% on Chinese EV manufacturers. And in August, Canada announced 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs along with 25% tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminium.

The White House insisted that the measures would “protect American manufacturers from China’s unfair trade practices” and ensure that “the future of the auto industry will be made in America by American workers.” The European Commission cited China’s “unfair subsidisation” and Canada warned of the threat of China’s “intentional, state-directed policy of overcapacity”. In this narrative, now choreographed and ritualized across the West, China’s “overcapacity” is to blame for the West’s rising trade deficits and persistent inability to reindustrialize.

China has responded firmly to these accusations. In a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and the European Commission’s Ursula von der Leyen in May, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that there is no such thing as “China’s overcapacity problem”, and emphasised China’s contribution to the green transition. China’s Foreign Ministry said that the “overcapacity” thesis was a “pretext” to create new restrictions on China’s energy products.

China’s “overcapacity” and the West’s industrial decline

Overcapacity can be measured in three ways. First, we can look at the “capacity utilization rate”, or the degree to which available industrial capacity is being used. Second, we can look at inventory levels; a high number of unsold goods gathering dust in warehouses might suggest that production exceeds demand. Third, we can look at profit margins, which would have to fall to help empty the brimming warehouses and make way for new goods.

As French economics commentator Arnaud Bertrand found, China does not show signs of “overcapacity” across any of these measures. On the contrary, its industrial utilization rates and inventory levels are similar to those of the United States, and Chinese profit margins are soaring.

Continue reading “Nothing like before” — China is out-competing the West on EVs

Interview: Socialism holds its ground and grows stronger with China’s contribution

In a recent interview with the Global Times, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez discusses China’s development over the past 75 years and the role it plays in the world today.

The interview discusses the forthcoming Chinese translation of Carlos’s book The East is Still Red – Chinese Socialism in the 21st Century, and its significance for Chinese readers:

I hope Chinese readers will feel encouraged to know that there are people in the UK, Europe and the US that oppose the new cold war; that oppose the campaign of containment and encirclement against China; that stand for peace and multipolarity; and that want to see close cooperation in pursuit of peace, prosperity, ecological conservation and a sustainable future for our shared planet. The concepts of “common prosperity” and “building a community with a shared future for mankind” have relevance and resonance among progressive circles in the West.

In response to the question of what the Western left can learn from China, Carlos notes that “China is taking extraordinary, unprecedented steps forward on poverty alleviation, renewable energy, biodiversity protection and more”. These are successes of the global socialist movement, and the Western left can learn and take inspiration from them.

Addressing the “China threat” theory, Carlos points out that China’s record is remarkably peaceful:

China has not been at war for many decades. It does not maintain a global infrastructure of hegemony, unlike the US, which has over 800 overseas military bases, in addition to troop and weapons deployments around the world… On the global stage, China stands consistently and firmly for peace. It has put forward detailed and viable proposals for peace in Ukraine and Gaza. So where is the threat?

Editor’s Note: Recently, an English-language collection of essays, People’s China at 75 – The Flag Stays Red, was launched to examine China’s trajectory since 1949. British author and independent political commentator Carlos Martinez (Martinez) was one of its co-editors. Martinez has been trying to help Western people better understand China’s development in its different phases and aspects. In a recent interview with Global Times (GT) reporters Xia Wenxin and Xu Jiatong, Martinez shared his view on China’s marvellous successes over the past 75 years, as well as its contributions to the world, including to the socialist movement.

GT: When we interviewed you last year, your book The East is Still Red – Chinese Socialism in the 21st Century (hereafter, The East is Still Red) had just come out and gained international attention. Now, the Chinese version of the book is about to come out. How do you feel about this? What do you hope Chinese readers can grasp from this book?

Martinez: I’m very excited and honored that The East is Still Red will be published in Chinese. Although the book was written primarily for the Western audience so that they could come to understand modern China better, I hope it will be useful for some Chinese people to see how Marxists in the West view China and how Chinese socialism becomes an inspiration to the global socialist movement.

I think the analysis of the West’s vicious anti-China propaganda will be interesting for Chinese readers, who may struggle to understand the reasons for the West’s hostility and its slander campaign in relation to Xinjiang, Tibet (Xizang), Hong Kong and other affairs.

And I hope Chinese readers will feel encouraged to know that there are people in the UK, Europe and the US that oppose the new cold war; that oppose the campaign of containment and encirclement against China; that stand for peace and multipolarity; and that want to see close cooperation in pursuit of peace, prosperity, ecological conservation and a sustainable future for our shared planet. The concepts of “common prosperity” and “building a community with a shared future for mankind” have relevance and resonance among progressive circles in the West.

GT: This year marks the 75th founding anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Which aspect of China’s development during this period has impressed you the most? How do you view China’s contribution to the world in the past 75 years?

Martinez: The founding of the PRC constituted a profound turning point for the Chinese people after thousands of years of feudalism and then a century of invasion, domination, unequal treaties, chaos, warlord rule and intense poverty. Living standards have risen continuously since 1949. Life expectancy has risen from around 35 to 78 – several years above the global average.

China has advanced from being a very poor and technologically backward country to being a global leader in science and technology. It has eliminated extreme poverty. It is making by far the greatest contribution to the struggle against climate breakdown. It has leaped from a “low” Human Development Index (HDI) 30 years ago to a “high” HDI today and is on the cusp of moving into the “very high” group. It is building its own path to modernization.

Looking at the global scale, China has provided crucial support to national liberation movements and countries in the Global South. The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence continue to provide a framework for relations between countries, particularly developing countries. Via the Belt and Road Initiative and other initiatives, China is sharing its infrastructure development expertise and providing a means for the countries of Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, the Caribbean and the Pacific to break out of underdevelopment.

And, of course, China is a force for peace. Its foreign policy is based on negotiated solutions to problems, the pursuit of peace, mutual benefit and global friendship. This is a very important contribution to the world.

GT: In a recent article, you urged the Western left to “learn a great deal from China” and “take a great deal of inspiration from it.” Could you please elaborate on this?

Martinez: China, along with the other socialist countries, is building socialism. So, people around the world who support the process of building socialism should seek to learn from China. The people of China are “taking part in the practice of changing reality,” and they are the trailblazers of the left globally, so we should learn from them.

Furthermore, China is taking extraordinary, unprecedented steps forward on poverty alleviation, renewable energy, biodiversity protection and more. In my view, the successes in those areas are successes of the global socialist movement, and the Western left could take inspiration from them. 

In 1989, Deng Xiaoping said that “so long as socialism does not collapse in China, it will always hold its ground in the world.” Thirty-five years later, socialism is still holding its ground in the world, and growing in strength, thanks in no small part to China.

GT: What are the common misunderstandings about China and its development in the West? Why could China’s development lead some in the West to the sense of being “threatened”?

Martinez: The notion of China as a threat to some people in the West is patently absurd. Unlike the NATO countries, China’s record is remarkably peaceful. China has not been at war for many decades. It does not maintain a global infrastructure of hegemony, unlike the US, which has over 800 overseas military bases, in addition to troop and weapons deployments around the world. Of the nuclear powers, China is the only one to maintain a consistent policy of no first use and to pledge never to use – or threaten to use – nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state.

China is accused of aggression in the South China Sea, and yet there is not a single instance of China preventing normal, non-military navigation. Regarding the Taiwan question, China’s position of working toward peaceful reunification has not meaningfully changed in many decades, and the one-China principle is recognized by the majority of the world’s countries. 

On the global stage, China stands consistently and firmly for peace. It has put forward detailed and viable proposals for peace in Ukraine and Gaza. So where is the threat? This “threat” seems to be unacceptable to those working toward a Project for a New American Century, and therefore, they slander China and wage a propaganda war against it.

GT: You have been introducing the real China to your audience in the West. What do you think is an effective narrative for China to tell its story to the world?

Martinez: On the basis that “actions speak louder than words,” I think China should continue what it’s doing.

Its progress on environmental issues – becoming the world’s first renewable energy superpower and blazing a trail on biodiversity protection and water management – is very inspiring to people around the world who are concerned with preventing climate breakdown.

China’s successes in poverty alleviation and improving the living standards of its people are also drawing admiration. And China’s orientation toward peace and its principled positions in international relations are opening people’s eyes. 

Increasingly, people are coming to reject the relentless anti-China propaganda they’re fed.

Richard Wolff: US shifts blame onto China because it cannot address capitalism’s flaws

In the following video interview with Global Times, prominent Marxist economist Richard Wolff explains the central contradiction in the US ruling class with respect to its relationship with China.

On the one hand, the US business community is eager to maintain good economic relations with China, which represents an important market, trading partner, avenue for investment, and source of investment. US companies “want to be able to produce in China, and even more, they want to sell into the Chinese market, which is one of the fastest-growing and largest markets in the world.”

On the other hand, the US political establishment is increasingly hostile to China. This hostility is driven to a significant degree by the fact that China is challenging the US’s global hegemony. “The last century has been the century of the American Empire, and it now sees its role in the world economy – financially, in export and import, and in other areas – being challenged above all by the People’s Republic of China.”

Meanwhile the US is facing a deepening crisis of capitalism, with growing inequality, economic instability, and a shrinking middle class. Politicians have identified two convenient scapegoats for these problems: 1) immigrants from Latin America; 2) China. Wolff points out: “Capitalism has always moved in this way. But because our politics are controlled by big business, politicians can never blame capitalism. They cannot blame the big businesses that fund them. So, who do they blame? China.”

Wolff conjectures that it may be possible to use this division in the US ruling class to pursue an agenda of peace and cooperation; that the peace movement may be able to work together with the business community to prevent a war with China.

Donald Trump and the drive to war against China

In the following article, which first appeared in slightly shorter form in Labour Outlook, Carlos Martinez assesses the prospects for the US-led New Cold War against China under a second Trump presidency, and the possibility of military conflict between the world’s two largest economies.

The article begins by noting that US policy towards China has been relatively consistent for over a decade, starting with the Obama-Clinton ‘Pivot to Asia’ in 2011, followed by the Trump administration’s trade war, and then the Biden administration’s sanctions, tariffs, semiconductor war, military provocations and the creation of AUKUS.

What will change under Trump? Carlos notes that “a deepening of economic confrontation seems more than likely”, given Trump’s repeated promises to impose unprecedented tariffs on Chinese goods. And while Trump made noises during his election campaign about wanting to end the US’s “forever wars”, “the appointment of inveterate China hawks Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz as secretary of state and national security adviser sends a clear signal that Trump is planning to escalate hostilities”.

Marco Rubio is an anti-China fanatic, who stands for more tariffs, more sanctions, more slander, more support for Taiwanese separatism, more provocations in the South China Sea, and more destabilisation in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Mike Waltz has long pushed for closer military cooperation with India, Japan, Australia and other countries in the region in preparation for war against China.

The article notes that China’s consistent offer to the West is based on working together “to tackle the urgent issues facing humanity, including climate change, pandemics, peace, nuclear proliferation, food security and development”. However, it is clear that only mass movements will force Western governments to take up such an offer.

Although the Pivot to Asia was initiated by the Obama administration – when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was tasked with developing a strategy for “America’s Pacific Century” – it was the Trump presidency from 2017-21 that really turned up the dial in terms of US anti-China hostility.

Donald Trump campaigned in 2016 on a promise to protect jobs by addressing the US’s trade deficit with China: “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country and that’s what they’re doing. It’s the greatest theft in the history of the world.”

In power, the Trump administration launched a full-scale trade war, imposing enormous tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese imports. This was combined with a systematic attack on Chinese technology companies, removing Huawei from US telecoms infrastructure and attempting to prevent TikTok and WeChat from operating in the US.

Militarily, Trump ramped up the US’s presence in the South China Sea and sought to revitalise the Quad group (US, Japan, India and Australia), working towards a broad regional alliance against China.

The State Department oversaw a crackdown on Chinese students and researchers, and, with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump resorted to flagrant racism, talking repeatedly about the “kung flu” and the “China virus” – all of which fed in to a horrifying rise in hate crimes against people of East Asian descent.

As such, many breathed a sigh of relief when Joe Biden was elected four years ago. Unfortunately, however, Biden has essentially maintained the anti-China strategic orientation of his predecessor, albeit without the crassly confrontational rhetoric and overt racism. Biden in many ways has been more systematic in pursuit of military and economic containment of China, particularly when it comes to building an international coalition around US strategic interests.

In September 2021, the US, Britain and Australia announced the launch of AUKUS – a nuclear pact, manifestly contravening the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and evidently designed to counter China.

Biden has hosted numerous Quad summit meetings, at which the member states have reiterated their “steadfast commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific” – that is, to preserving a status quo in which the US maintains over 300 military bases in the region, along with tens of thousands of troops, nuclear-enabled warplanes, aircraft carriers, and missile defence systems aimed at establishing nuclear first-strike capability.

The combination of the Quad and AUKUS looks suspiciously like an attempt to create an Asian NATO. Meanwhile Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 trip to Taiwan Province was the highest-level US visit to the island in quarter of a century. In 2023, Biden signed off on direct US military aid to Taiwan for the first time; a BBC headline from November 2023 noted that “the US is quietly arming Taiwan to the teeth”. This undermines the Three Joint Communiqués – which form the bedrock for US-China diplomatic relations – and is clearly aimed at inflaming tensions across the Taiwan Strait and setting up a potential hot war with China over Taiwan. A recently-leaked memo from four-star general Mike Minihan predicted war over Taiwan in 2025: “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025”.

The Biden administration has expanded Trump-era restrictions against China’s technology industry, in particular by launching a ‘chip war’ to slow down China’s progress in semiconductor production, artificial intelligence, mobile phones and more. And while the US government under Biden has set several ambitious climate goals, it has also introduced sweeping sanctions on Chinese solar materials and imposed huge tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.

The unfortunate truth is that there is a consensus among Democrats and Republicans. In Biden’s words, “we’re in a competition with China to win the 21st century” – and the US must win this competition at all costs.

To what extent can we expect the situation to change under a second Trump presidency?

Continue reading Donald Trump and the drive to war against China

Trump presidency threatens us all

What follows is a blog post by Sophie Bolt, the new General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), on the threat posed by the Trump presidency to global peace.

Sophie notes that Trump has promised to “stop wars, not start them”, and yet he has already nominated several notorious warmongers to his cabinet, including Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, Michael Waltz as National Security Adviser, and John Ratcliffe as CIA director. Marco Rubio is an anti-China fanatic, who stands for more tariffs, more sanctions, more slander, more support for Taiwanese separatism, more weapons to Taipei, more provocations in the South China Sea, and more destabilisation in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Waltz has long pushed for closer military cooperation with India, Japan, Australia and other countries in the region in preparation for war against China. Ratcliffe refers to China as “the top threat to US interests and the rest of the free world”.

The article points out that the incoming administration is likely to escalate the US-led New Cold War against China, as well as continuing the drive towards hot war:

As well as intensifying Trump’s protectionist ‘America First’ policy, by increasing tariffs on Chinese goods, a key focus will be racheting up a military confrontation with China. A military build up across the Asia Pacific has been underway for more than a decade, supported by 400 US military bases encircling China and the AUKUS nuclear alliance with Britain and Australia.

Meanwhile Trump’s climate denialism will be another major setback to global cooperation around the climate crisis.

This article was first posted on the CND website.

In Trump’s victory speech, he said he was going to stop wars, not start them. Excuse me if I’m not reassured. Based on his track record and the ultra-hawks he’s putting in the State Department, the threat of war and nuclear confrontation looks higher than ever.

Last time he was President, the US bombed Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, carried out extra-judicial killings and developed ‘useable’ nuclear weapons. Under his leadership, the US withdrew from landmark nuclear arms control treaties including the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Open Skies Treaty, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA). And it withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Trump’s new team for the State Department includes ultra China and Iran hawks, Marco Rubio, expected to be nominated for Secretary of State, and Mike Waltz, appointed National Security Advisor.  Certainly Trump’s victory and open support for annexing the West Bank has already emboldened Netanyahu’s genocidal expansionism. This increases the risk of an all-out war on Iran.

As well as intensifying Trump’s protectionist ‘America First’ policy, by increasing tariffs on Chinese goods, a key focus will be racheting up a military confrontation with China. A military build up across the Asia Pacific has been underway for more than a decade, supported by 400 US military bases encircling China and the AUKUS nuclear alliance with Britain and Australia. Richard O’Brien, former security advisor to Trump, laid out in Foreign Affairs what to expect next. ‘As China seeks to undermine American economic and military strength,’ O’Brien argues, ‘Washington should return the favor—just as it did during the Cold War, when it worked to weaken the Soviet economy.’  This prospect of a new cold war is truly horrifying , when we remember how the nuclear arms race in the 1980s, lead to a permanent state of nuclear danger.  

With speculation about what Trump will do in Ukraine, the new British government doesn’t want to take any chances of de-escalation. Starmer has again pressed Biden to agree to Ukraine’s use of its long-range Storm Shadow missiles, which could strike deep into Russian territory. He knows full well that Russia has changed its nuclear use policy in response to such an attack. This only reinforces the need for an urgent negotiated settlement.

NATO membership of Ukraine remains a key factor in the conflict and Ukrainian neutrality will be critical for de-escalating the crisis. But there is absolutely no evidence to back up concerns amongst NATO hawks that Trump will abandon the world’s most powerful nuclear alliance. On the contrary, Trump has called on NATO states to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP. So, continuing to push the burden of funding onto the populations of NATO states. This means the toxic combination of increased militarism, nuclear dangers and austerity policies will continue across Europe.

Trump’s election will strengthen the far right and fascists globally. In Britain, Farage and Tommy Robinson will be emboldened further to whip up hatred, justifying greater military spending for another world war.  

And, as the US is one of the world’s largest polluters, Trump’s decision to pull out of Paris Climate Accord again, is another major set-back for climate action and investment in green technologies.

This shows more starkly than ever how war, racism, austerity, climate breakdown and nuclear annihilation are increasingly interlinked. We can’t allow this recklessly dangerous leader to drag the world towards annihilation. This is why CND is working with all those who oppose Trump to help build the broadest alliance possible for peace, justice and a sustainable, nuclear-free future.

Trump’s return – the critical issue for Britain remains disengaging from the US war chariot

In this insightful article for Stop the War Coalition, Andrew Murray discusses the implications of Trump’s return to the presidency for the anti-war movement in Britain.

Andrew notes that the collapse in the Democrat vote “is surely in part attributable to the Biden-Harris administration’s sustained and unqualified support for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people”. While there is little prospect of a Trump administration being any better on this issue, the Democrats’ utter failure to stand up against the Gaza genocide has clearly lost them support among progressive voters.

In relation to China, while many had high hopes that Biden would adopt a less confrontational approach than Trump, in reality “Biden’s rhetoric and actions have been the most aggressive of any president since the 1960s”. Under the incoming Trump administration, “continuity in escalating confrontation is most likely”.

Andrew writes that, for the anti-war movement, “our fight is against imperialism” and, in Britain specifically, “the critical issue remains disengaging from the US war chariot”, regardless of whether it is driven by a Democrat or a Republican; regardless of whether its character is “centrist liberal war-mongering” or “populist chauvinist war-mongering”.

Andrew Murray is the political correspondent of the Morning Star. He has served as the Chair of the Stop the War Coalition, Chief of Staff at Unite the union, and as an adviser to Jeremy Corbyn MP when he was Leader of the Labour Party. The author of several books, he has contributed a chapter to the recently-released volume People’s China at 75 – The Flag Stays Red.

Donald Trump’s unexpectedly emphatic election victory clearly poses new challenges for the anti-war movement in Britain and globally, and calls for sober analysis.

Trump appears to have won the support of most working-class people who bothered to vote, including millions of Muslim Americans and larger minorities of African-Americans and Hispanic Americans than a Republican can usually expect.

Many issues obviously contributed to this, including the state of the US economy and cultural questions, broadly defined. However, war and peace impacted in two ways.

First, the huge collapse in the Democrat vote from 2020 (Trump’s poll also declined, but by much less) is surely in part attributable to the Biden-Harris administration’s sustained and unqualified support for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.

This made the idea of supporting Kamala Harris quite impossible for millions, who may instead have voted for Green candidate Jill Stein, other progressive candidates where they made the ballot, or simply have sat the election out. There is an analogy here to the masses who refused to back Keir Starmer’s Labour in July because of its support for Israel.

Second, part of Trump’s base lies in sections of the working class sick of the “forever wars” in which a liberal-neoconservative elite send ordinary Americans to die for US hegemony. The Biden administration has sat squarely in that imperialist tradition.

To those voters can be added a larger number who are receptive to the position advanced by Trump, and more stridently by his vice-president J D Vance, that the vast sums being sent in military and economic aid to Ukraine to prolong the war with Russia would be better spent on other things, or not at all.

Trump’s own record and rhetoric on world issues is reactionary without doubt. However, he has made much of not starting any fresh wars when last in office, and of trying to extricate the US from direct engagement in those that he inherits, or at least diminishing its involvement.

Continue reading Trump’s return – the critical issue for Britain remains disengaging from the US war chariot

Imperialism fails to quash China’s EV revolution

The following article by Chris Fry, a retired autoworker who worked as an assembler at Chrysler’s Lynch Road Assembly in Detroit until the company closed the plant in 1980, addresses the crisis facing the car manufacturing industry in the US and Europe, noting that many of the largest car manufacturers are shedding thousands of jobs and closing plants.

Chris notes that car manufacturers in the West have failed to invest seriously in electric vehicles, and industrial policy has been shaped to a significant degree by the interests of the fossil fuel industry. Meanwhile, “China, due in large part to its socialist economic and social system and its social ownership of much of its production and its scientific planning, has developed the infrastructure of EV production in a vast scale capable of producing emission-free vehicles of high quality at an affordable price for working class consumers”.

Rather than develop a coherent industrial policy, successive administrations in the US have turned to protectionism, imposing tariffs on Chinese EVs “designed to deny workers in the U.S. affordable emissions-free vehicles, notwithstanding all the supposed ‘concern’ from Washington over global warming”.

Chris concludes: “The accomplishments by the Chinese workers and their workers’ government represent a pathway to victory for ourselves and our families for an empowered and prosperous future.”

This article was originally published in Fighting Words.

On October 18 tens of thousands of Italian auto workers held a nationwide strike and marched through the streets of Rome. Organized by three unions, this action was led by workers from the Italian-based conglomerate Stellantis, composed also by the French company Peugeot as well as the U.S. Chrysler Corporation.

Stellantis is the world’s fourth largest automaker. It is projected to end the year with a loss of $11.2 billion.

The worker’s militant action not only targeted the company, but also was against the right-wing Italian government. The unions are demanding incentives to allow workers to be able to afford electric cars.

This was the first such militant worker action in Rome in 20 years.

UAW lines up to confront Stellantis

On October 3, the UAW, led by President Shawn Fain, held a rally and march to the Michigan Sterling Heights Stellantis Stamping plant:

Outside the UAW Local 1264, about 400 UAW members listened to speeches from UAW leadership, including UAW President Shawn Fain, and chanted, “Keep the promise” and “Fire Tavares” (Carlos Tavares is the CEO of Stellantis, the automaker that owns the Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, Dodge and Fiat brands). They then marched about a half mile to Stellantis’ Sterling Stamping Plant.

“Are you ready to do whatever we have to do to save American jobs,” Fain asked the crowd. “This is our generation’s defining moment. Over this last year, we moved a lot of mountains, but we’ve got more mountains to move.”

The union is demanding that the company live up to the 2023 contract and reopen the Belvidere Assembly Plant, converted to an EV battery plant in Illinois and keep Dodge Durango production in Detroit.

The week before the company had announced plans for indefinite layoffs “across its footprint” and the firing of its “supplemental workers” but refused to give specifics.

It has already laid off 1,100 workers at its Warren Assembly plant.

The UAW action comes after an announcement by the union that it would hold a company-wide strike vote by Stellantis workers demanding that the company abide by the contract won last year after a six-week strike.

Of course, the auto company executives and their government minions blame Socialist China and its so-called “over capacity” for these massive job losses and broken promises.

EV crisis at capitalist auto companies.

It’s not just Stellantis that is facing this deepening crisis.

In September, the German company Volkswagen announced plans to lay off 30,000 of its 300,000 workers. VW’s software subsidiary is laying off 2,000 workers over the next two years.

Mercedes Benz is laying off workers in Seattle, Washington and London. ZF Friedrichshafen, a major parts supplier to 55 auto brands, announced it would lay off 12,000 of its workers, while another supplier, Bosch, announced that it was cutting 1,200 jobs.

Continue reading Imperialism fails to quash China’s EV revolution