Threats of Trade Tariffs Already Deny the Bourgeois Illusions of War-Free Imperialism

Among the many terrible wars raging on the outskirts of the capitalist bastions, with the bloody succession of ruins, nameless massacres and desperate refugees, it seems that capitalism is giving us a new one, perhaps no less bloody and harbinger of terrible consequences: the slowing down, if not the end, of the timid but promising economic recovery, which until now has gladdened politicians and capitalists.

Capitalism, which has been plunging since 2008 into its longest known recession, was finally recovering, but now a reckless, they say, elected to be in charge of the most powerful empire, by means of its improvident outbursts and political and economic decisions, would threaten that virtuous path. It is the end of commercial freedom, the end of a praiseworthy globalisation, which would have allowed everyone to prosper. It is the trade war, a war fought with the use of duties. In fact the reasons taken to justify this tightening on the free transit of goods have a foundation indeed. If we look at the figures of trade balances between the United States of America and its main world counterparts, it is clear that there is a systematic imbalance between import and export volumes; commercially, the US economy is in a significant deficit with all of them.

Of a very different weight compared to the deficit of the Balance of Trade, at least in the long term, it is the enormous and growing volume of public debt, the financial situation towards the rest of the world, which finances the great empire through the purchase of American Treasury Bonds. However, the US administration does not take care of this endemic dynamic, on the contrary it practices it with absolute continuity.

But that is another matter. Here we are not talking about capital but about goods, tangible things that circulate across the borders of states, and must realize the surplus value crystallized in them.

This “trade war” actually includes several aspects, and is not only limited to the expectation of limiting the dynamic of a growing deficit, taken as an excuse for the opening of commercial hostilities. The USA, the world’s largest global exporter, is also the largest importer. At the end of 2017 (data from the U.S. Census Bureau), China, Canada and Mexico, in this descending order, have an import-export volume with the USA of 630, 582 and 557 billion dollars respectively, and involve a negative balance for the USA of 505.6, 300 and 314 billion dollars.

China, the economy with the largest volume of trade compared to 130 billion imports from the United States, exports 505.6. Japan imports 67.7 and exports 204.2, while Germany, South Korea, the United Kingdom, France, India and Italy limit themselves to positive double-digit trade balances: Germany imports 53.5 billion and exports 136.5, Italy 50.0 against 68.3.

The strongest imperialism appears therefore on the world stage as the leading importer of goods and the leading exporter of capital. And it is no coincidence that the Asian giant, which holds the largest volume of both commercial assets and US government debt, matches it in both positions.

These are the irrefutable numbers that have given formal justification to the American decisions to introduce import-limiting customs tariffs in order to constitute “anti-dumping” barriers.

However it is to be seen to whom, on what products and to what extent, because these aggregated trade balances do not show the situation by type of goods. If, for the moment, the reason for the clash would mainly be related to steel and aluminium, the American “retaliations” could extend to other product categories: from cars to semiconductors, thus constituting a serious problem for some capitalisms of Europe and of the Far East.

In a real trade war, the weakest economies can only lose out. It is enough to consider that Germany, France and the United Kingdom have export-based economies, unlike the USA, which exports a small part of its GDP (12%), to realize that the main problem would be for these States, rather than for those who have announced the restrictions with great pomp. But to believe that the protectionist shift, however agitated and only partially applied, can in some way contribute not to cancel but only to reduce the enormous American trade deficit is an unfounded idea. And not for the possibility of “counter-tariffs” that the interested States could apply towards the USA. Because the trade deficit of the superpower is innate to its productive dimensions, to its financial power, to the strength of its currency which is, at least until today, the reference for every kind of transaction. Therefore, the measures, which have not yet been followed up consequently, will have little real effect. And in particular on saving those jobs that, according to the demagoguery of the rulers on duty, would be put at risk by the imported products.

Obviously, we Communists understand well that the American impositions, which seem to blatantly violate the foundations of the “free market” and the much adored “globalization”, in the name of which the imperialist brigands compete for market dominance, do not have a trade basis such as the reduction of the deficit, but a political and strategic one.

Nevertheless speaking of “war” in general at this stage sounds more like a catch phrase than like a real fact. Although every war begins by looking for allies; and the threat to the productive capabilities of allies and vassals in NATO or SEAT, and of rivals such as Russia and China, is one of the tools in this strategic readjustment.

One objective is that the European Union, and in particular Germany, take restrictive measures against Russia and China. The containment, if not even blocking, of gas sales made by Russia would play a strategic role for the US. For Europe, where Germany, the eighth supplier of steel to the USA, is leading, another American objective is to make the rebellious NATO allies bear the cost of common defence and to disjoin a laborious Union that already tends to crumble on its own. It is necessary to realign the allies on a military level, continuing the imperialist policy as it is developing in this millennium, breaking an alliance that would place them isolated from the overseas dominus.

For their part, Mexico and Canada are involved in the revision of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Treaty, and the threat of tariffs plays its part in a Leonine contract as the United States has in mind.

It is certain that the war will really have to start sooner or later, initially on the trade front, and will certainly be to the detriment of countries whose economy and trade are threatened with duties, including China. Even if today, in fact, after an initial phase of protests, the positions of all the contenders have softened and negotiations have discreetly resumed.

The indications of this “unilteral decision”, which seems to cancel out the very basis of the fake globalisation and is articulated on different but competing levels, are clear.

First of all, they mark another of our theoretical victory: finally, they are clearing the field of any infringement of mediations that would guarantee perpetual peace between the imperialist robbers, whose huge production of goods will never be able to compensate for, even in a global market without constraints and tariffs.

Secondly because they show what the level of friction between the imperial blocs is at the moment and how the effects of the ten-year capitalist crisis are pushing the States towards a future, perhaps not too far away, conflict unfolded. This new and further step towards war does not come unexpectedly to us. We knew that imperial monsters could in no way “co-exist”, not even commercially, from the dawn of our doctrine, even though the dream of “reasonable” capitalism, of “fair and honest” trade, of “virtuous” competition, continues to guide the illusions of the small bourgeoisie, and ultimate shame, of the proletarian drunkenness of democracy and of bourgeois “honesty”. As if the evil of capitalism were “dishonesty”, fraud, and robbery.

Therefore, we welcome these ferocious, contemptuous decisions of the strongest towards the weakest. The class rebound also passes from here.