Thoughts on Trump’s not-so-splendid little trade war, Europe’s growing pains, the costs of Merz’s broken firewall, is France about to get a budget at last, and all hail the Jevons Paradox
Intensified imperialist competition between competing capitalist blocs drives two closely related developments.
Trade wars, executed by states acting as the executive arm of ‘their’ capitalist ruling class, and on the other hand an accelerated arms race.
Trump’s demand for allies to hike military spending up to 5% of GDP is unprecedented in peacetime, and could be delivered only by means of an all out attack on the living standards of of the affected working classes, and on what little remains of the public service infrastructure in health, transport, and education.
Finally, these developments are chillingly familiar. They can be mapped onto the history of the belligerent states in the years and months culminating in the beginning of WW1 in August 1914.
Do Trump's tariffs amount to an American Brexit? Where, the hubris of American exceptionalism leads it to conduct trade wars with its nearest neighbours and biggest trade allies all because it believes it deserves a 'better deal'?
Because, we all know how that worked out for Britain.
I think we can discount the fentanyl pretext. Trump is cross about nearshoring of American production, encouraging production in the US, and about trade imbalances which he seems to view as zero sum games with the bigger importer as the loser.
But tariffs will cause a lot of pain for everyone. It will take time to rebalance trade or make decisions to shift production. And in meantime surely US exports will fall off a cliff. Stronger dollar, retaliatory tariffs plus consumers actively shunning US products. And meanwhile prices rise in US.
There will be a lot of people in Trump’s ear urging him to change course, especially as stock market tanks. Will be interesting to see how independent (and crazy) he really is.
Intensified imperialist competition between competing capitalist blocs drives two closely related developments.
Trade wars, executed by states acting as the executive arm of ‘their’ capitalist ruling class, and on the other hand an accelerated arms race.
Trump’s demand for allies to hike military spending up to 5% of GDP is unprecedented in peacetime, and could be delivered only by means of an all out attack on the living standards of of the affected working classes, and on what little remains of the public service infrastructure in health, transport, and education.
Finally, these developments are chillingly familiar. They can be mapped onto the history of the belligerent states in the years and months culminating in the beginning of WW1 in August 1914.
Do Trump's tariffs amount to an American Brexit? Where, the hubris of American exceptionalism leads it to conduct trade wars with its nearest neighbours and biggest trade allies all because it believes it deserves a 'better deal'?
Because, we all know how that worked out for Britain.
I think we can discount the fentanyl pretext. Trump is cross about nearshoring of American production, encouraging production in the US, and about trade imbalances which he seems to view as zero sum games with the bigger importer as the loser.
But tariffs will cause a lot of pain for everyone. It will take time to rebalance trade or make decisions to shift production. And in meantime surely US exports will fall off a cliff. Stronger dollar, retaliatory tariffs plus consumers actively shunning US products. And meanwhile prices rise in US.
There will be a lot of people in Trump’s ear urging him to change course, especially as stock market tanks. Will be interesting to see how independent (and crazy) he really is.