A joint statement by Socialist
Action (U.S.) and Socialist Action/Ligue pour l’action
socialiste in the Canadian state.
The recent imposition of a 25%
tariff on steel imports to the United States and a 10% tariff on
aluminum from Canada, Mexico, and the European Union follow the
earlier imposition of these tariffs on the rest of the world, and
even earlier tariffs on solar panels and washing machines aimed at
China and South Korea—all by the U.S. Donald Trump administration.
Trump has also threatened to place
heavy tariffs on automobiles and parts imported from abroad, and on
numerous industrial and technological products from China. He has
also re-imposed economic sanctions on Iran, and put new sanctions on
Russia.
Understanding Trump’s intentions
is no easy matter. He seems motivated more by sheer
bravado than rational thought. Trump’s rhetoric often appears to be
aimed at playing to his base rather than reflecting any meaningful
thoughts about the future. “Make America Great Again” and
“America First” are the shibboleths that appeal to his populist
supporters.
At the same time, these notions do
speak to the interests of a section of the U.S. capitalist class that
is falling behind in global capitalist competition. They are
supported by a layer of trade-union leaders who hanker for a return
of smokestack America with its millions of well-paid manufacturing
jobs. These bureaucrats seek to tie the future of U.S. workers to the
“success” of their “own” capitalist corporations and their
twin parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, as opposed to
furthering the independent organization of workers to challenge the
root cause of the problem—the fundamental, for-profit-only
operations of the capitalist system.
The United States no longer has the
only powerful economy in the world. As global competition
relentlessly heats up, and the rate of profit tends to fall, the
methods of past times don’t work. For many years after World War
II—years of American economic hegemony—free trade was the
battering ram to force open foreign markets to cheaper U.S. goods.
This was likewise the policy of the U.K. during the height of the
British Empire, before World War I. In general, capitalist nations
operating with the highest, or most advanced levels of
technology tend to be “free-traders” while their weaker
competitors are “protectionists.”
Trump’s repeated reference to
“many jobs, good jobs” appears to mean the re-creation of jobs
that have largely disappeared in the United States, such as coal
mining, steel making, and auto manufacturing jobs. Most of these have
been lost to automation in auto and steel plants. The U.S. makes
about as much steel now as in 1960, but with 20% of the previous
labor force. Car manufacturing automation is similar.
Underground coal mining is foul,
lung-destroying work that hopefully will never return. But the jobs
have disappeared only because they are less profitable in the U.S.
and worldwide, and not out of any concern on the part of the coal
magnates for the health of the miners. Unfortunately, the labor
bureaucracy, tied to capitalism hand and foot, prefers to
advocate for capitalism’s most polluting jobs rather than challenge
the entire deadly energy system in a fight for a just transition that
would guarantee all fossil-fuel workers new jobs at union wages in a
100 percent sustainable and nationalized energy system.
Working people have no interest in
trade wars. We simply end up bearing the cost.
The United States produces just
below 60% of the steel it uses, while importing the rest from 85
other countries. Canada provides 17% of the imports. Other sources of
steel to the U.S. include Brazil 14%, South Korea 10%, Mexico 9%,
Russia 8%, Germany 4%, and China 2%. If foreign steel and aluminum
become much more expensive as a result of the tariffs, U.S.
manufacturers who use such materials will no doubt respond in order
to protect their profits. Their options include striving even harder
to keep wages low, passing on the price rises to consumers, or even
closing down U.S.-based manufacturing plants.
Of course, Canadian, Mexican, and
European capitalists have all responded with tariffs on American
goods. In this way, too, U.S. workers lose jobs. But workers in
Canada, Mexico, and Europe will likely face similar problems—higher
prices and the loss of more jobs than tariffs can possibly create.
Global capitalist competition is a
completely unavoidable aspect of the system of private profit. As
competition results in new innovation, and automation increases the
rate of profit for the innovator temporarily, these gains are offset
again by the rapid adoption of the new technology by competitors and
the resulting fall of profit rates.
In their desperate struggle to
fight the falling rate of profit, capitalists try to reduce costs by
attacking trade unions and workers’ rights, by attacking pay and
benefit levels, by attacking general social benefits such as
education, medical, and pension benefits, by refusing to accept any
responsibility for the massive environmental damage caused by
cutthroat capitalist competition, and by transferring production to
low-wage, unregulated areas both within and outside their own
countries.
In decades past, the volatile world
capitalist system sought to mitigate its inherent contradictions
through organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO). In
this context, the leading representatives of the world’s most
important corporations hammered out comprehensive agreements that
sought to meet the needs of all the ever-competing capitalists.
Needless to say, the stronger capitalists, like the ruling rich in
the United States, always had the upper hand because the U.S. market
was the largest in the world.
Nevertheless, each sector of
capital understood that one or another competitor had an edge in
specific commodities that were traded on the world market. Their
objective was to balance their various needs with deals. A
modicum of French wine was allowed into the United States, for
example, while a certain amount of U.S. products were allowed into
France under reciprocal conditions.
NAFTA (North American Free Trade
Agreement) was in truth, despite its name, a mass of literally
thousands of separate negotiated agreements between the ruling elite
of Mexico, the U.S., and Canada. These included all kinds of
protectionist measures for weaker U.S. corporations, and the same for
those in Mexico and Canada.
In the face of intensified
cutthroat competition between capitalist powers, the old rules of the
game are incapable of resolving the growing contradictions of the
system. Trump sounded the alarm for the wing of the U.S. capitalist
class whose interests he sees himself as representing. Ignoring the
delicate or fragile balance that has been hitherto established by his
predecessors, he proposes to upset the world capitalist system’s
apple cart to advance the interests of his favored elites.
When Trump gifted $1.5 trillion in
tax cuts to the entire ruling class, there were no complaints.
But when Trump departed from measures that benefit the broad
sectors of the ruling rich, he faced serious opposition
internally, not to mention from the potentially wounded lesser
capitalist nations. Hence Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, as well as
France’s Macron and Germany’s Merkel, cried foul and collectively
threatened to retaliate.
The world’s working people have
no interest in this potential world conflagration. In the end, when
capitalists win, workers lose—a fundamental law of the capitalist
system that has been verified many times over the past decades. The
common interest of workers lies in defending working people
everywhere against all the onslaughts of capital. This means
international solidarity on every front, from united worldwide
efforts to organize workers into powerful unions to united opposition
to capitalist wars and capitalist destruction of the environment.
There is no such thing as peaceful
and/or regulated competition among capitalist nations. No
self-respecting capitalist is in business to be the world’s “nice
guy.” There are only winners and losers in this deadly game of
production for private profit. Donald Trump simply tore the mask off
the brute face of a predatory system in decline. Justin Trudeau plays
the same game as Trump on the world scene and makes sure that
everyone knows that Canadian capitalism can bare its own claws in the
profit game.
Reliance on any of these
representatives of the world’s elite to advance the interests of
working people is sheer folly. Breaking with their corporate parties
in the political arena is the beginning of a serious challenge to
capitalist prerogatives. But only the abolition of the capitalist
system itself at the hands of the vast majority of working people can
ensure a permanent end to capitalism’s endless trade wars and its
real wars that plague all humanity.
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