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.

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