DONALD TRUMP’S tariff U-turn highlights, rather than conceals, the essence of his policy — the aggressive reassertion of the power of US imperialism over ally and adversary alike.
The 90-day pause on tariffs over 10 per cent on all countries, allied to a further monumental hike on taxes on Chinese goods, indicates his priority — confrontation with China.
It also sets off an unseemly three-month scramble among other powers to cut deals advantageous to Washington in order to be allowed unfettered access to the US market.
However Trump’s acolytes present this reversal, it was driven by the bond market which, as with Liz Truss here, punishes perceived governmental recklessness by making its debt more expensive.
The tariffs also split the US ruling class, as such a policy usually does, from British debates over imperial preference 120 years ago onwards.
Some of Trump’s billionaire support base protested the hit to their financial interests, with Elon Musk taking a break from his war on US public servants to call the president’s trade guru Peter Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks.”
They are only falling out over the distribution of the loot. All are united in a brazen “America First” power grab at the expense of foreign monopolies. That is the core of Trumpism abroad, matching its assault on democracy and civil rights in the US itself.
Consider his programme:
- Plunder the resources of Ukraine and the Congo, offering their regimes security cover if they hand over their national wealth. Trump’s pose as a “peace-maker” over Ukraine is only to help create the conditions for the expropriation of the country’s resources, and also possibly do a spheres-of-influence deal with the Russian ruling oligarchy.
- Reclaim the Panama Canal, taking over its own revenues and using it to extort other users.
- Annex Greenland and seize its resources while denying access to the region to any rivals
- Turn Gaza into a US-controlled property development opportunity, cleansed of its inconvenient Palestinian residents.
His administration will now leverage the impending self-inflicted trade warfare to bully other states into conceding advantage.
What this means was spelt out very clearly in the original tariff order of last week. The new charges could be decreased, it said, if any “trading partner takes significant steps to … align sufficiently with the US on economic and national security matters.”
In other words, adjust economic, defence and diplomatic policies in line with Washington’s orders and you may be cut a break.
The aim? Pouring more profits into the pockets of US monopolies, securing for the US elite a greater share of value produced by labour worldwide, while strengthening the strategic positions of US imperialism, against China above all.
If China is now the target, as the rising economic power and the central pillar of the Brics grouping threatening unipolar US hegemony, there can be no room for a “plague on both houses” attitude on the left.
Whatever concerns there may be about the impact of Chinese exports on industries elsewhere, they are best addressed in bilateral negotiations within a framework of respecting international agreements.
China today is defending the equitable conduct of economic relations. It is right to resist dictation imposed as if it were still the days of the Opium Wars.
Free trade is not a principle for the working-class movement, but standing up against the brute pressure of an insatiable imperialism is.
Keir Starmer’s government will clearly do anything to appease Trump. Now is the time for the labour movement to advance its own policy amidst the global chaos, of social justice at home and peace and co-operation internationally.
