President Donald Trump’s tariffs, levied against capitalist competitors abroad, will “level the playing field for American industries and workers,” proclaimed White House spokesperson Kush Desai April 1. In the face of dog-eat-dog competition for natural resources and markets, the administration says it’s in the interests of workers to back their own capitalist class, which is deepening its assaults on workers’ jobs, wages and working conditions to boost profits.
Trump announced April 2 a 10% tariff on all goods imported into the U.S. and “reciprocal” tariffs, including duties of 20% on goods from countries in the European Union, 34% additional tariffs to those already imposed on China and 46% on goods from Vietnam.
Days later, Beijing announced a 34% tariff on all goods imported from the U.S. Washington responded by boosting tariffs against the Chinese rulers again to 104% April 9.
Following a plunge in stock prices over several days, Trump announced April 9 he was pausing some of the tariffs for 90 days, saying that 75 governments had asked Washington for talks. But the highest duties, targeting China, remain in place, making clear the key aim of Trump’s measures is to rally opposition to Beijing. After he announced the “pause,” the stock market soared.
European Union officials are seeking a deal with Washington, at the same time that they’re preparing a list of goods made in the U.S. that they’ll hit with retaliatory tariffs. EU officials promptly removed bourbon from that list after Trump threatened a 200% tariff on all European alcohol. EU Trade Minister Maros Sefcovic offered to drop the bloc’s tariffs on U.S.-made cars, currently 10%, as a way to try to open talks.
The Vietnamese government offered to eliminate all tariffs on U.S. goods.
Throughout its rise to the top of the imperialist world order and often since, the U.S. capitalist class has periodically used tariffs to grow its own industries at the expense of competitors, and to cajole or beat back those that stand in its way. For different reasons, Washington imposes economic sanctions against Iran, Russia and Venezuela and continues to inflict a decadeslong devastating trade and economic war on Cuba to try to overturn the socialist revolution made by workers and farmers.
Rulers fight to redivide the world
Alongside this, both Democratic and Republican administrations alike sustain a vast military to protect and advance Washington’s interests. National ruling classes worldwide are driven to compete or die, seeking to redivide the world to grab markets and resources, ensuring that trade conflicts occur again and again, with increasing ferocity.
The logic of these clashes becomes increasingly dangerous as trade wars tend to grow into shooting wars. Preparations by capitalist powers worldwide for more wars has accelerated since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, murderous pogrom targeting Jews in Israel.
The U.S. administration’s efforts to paint their protectionist measures as good for workers are echoed by top union officials. “The strategic use of tariffs can be an effective tool to support our industries and protect jobs at home,” AFL-CIO President Elizabeth Shuler said April 2.
What Shuler calls “our industries” are the profit-driven businesses of the capitalist class. She’s appealing to workers to aid our own national ruling class against fellow workers abroad, an approach that deepens divisions among workers and strengthens our common class enemy. Working people have no stake in making the industries where we work more “competitive” for the bosses, whether that’s through job cuts, lower wages or protectionist tariffs.
Workers in the U.S. need to join with workers in other countries to defend our common class interests. Working-class solidarity needs to be the watchword of the unions, not the national chauvinism advanced by the bosses’ government. With or without protectionist measures, the U.S. rulers will continue to drive to offload the capitalist crisis onto workers’ backs.
End of ‘globalization’
The initial announcement of Washington’s tariffs had concerned the big capitalist bondholders at the same time as it was met with an uproar across the big-business media, driven by anti-Trump hysteria.
Trump is “upending a global economic order that America benefited from and helped to create,” the editors of the Financial Times complained April 3.
Much of this commentary covers up the irreconcilable and violent national antagonisms that underpin the U.S.-led imperialist world order.
“The global economic system,” Patricia Cohen claims in the New York Times, is “based on cooperation and consent rather than coercion.” Trump doesn’t appeal to “a larger purpose, mutual agreements or shared values.” But this masks the fact that all capitalist powers are driven by their own conflicting national interests. In the drive to maximize profits, neither the U.S. nor any other capitalist class relies on “cooperation” or “consent” — but coercion and military might.
Washington’s victory at the end of World War II didn’t lead to a softening of conflicts between rival national ruling classes, let alone bring world peace. Since the end of that slaughter, the U.S. rulers have carried out a series of shattering wars, from Korea and Vietnam, to the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. The opening guns of a third world war sounded after the first Iraq War in 1991, and are growing louder today as inter-imperialist clashes intensify.
Far from heralding prosperity, the capitalist world order ensures more workers today face declining real wages, longer hours, attacks on job safety and the lack of steady employment. They’re turning to their unions to defend themselves.
The more open use of trade barriers by the U.S. rulers and their rivals increases the prospect of more wars. It underscores the centrality of building solidarity among working people in all industries, and of all countries and nationalities, as we chart a road to wrest political power from the capitalist rulers and establish governments of our own.