The capitalist rulers tell U.S. workers that their tariffs against rivals abroad are the only way to protect “our economy,” that “we’re all in this together.” But this is a lie aimed at conning us into forgoing our own class interests and tying our future to the very class responsible for the worsening conditions we face.
We’re told tariffs imposed by Washington on its rivals will lead to more and higher-paying jobs for us. But when do the employers and their government ever care about improving our pay and working conditions? The profits they reap are entirely based on what they can squeeze from our labor. They drive to speed up production, chisel away at benefits and hold down wages. To do so, they try to set workers here against one another based on sex, race and immigration status.
Today’s tariff conflicts and trade wars are a reflection of the deepening crisis of capitalism, including a long-term fall in the rate of profit. They have nothing to do with easing “unfair competition,” but pit the will of the stronger imperialist powers over the weaker, and over millions in the semicolonial world. Behind the winners are not just the most robust capitalist economies, but those with the deadliest military might.
The sharpest conflicts are between Washington — the victor in the second imperialist world war, whose position as top dog in the imperialist world order is fraying — and Beijing.
Trade wars do lead to shooting wars, that is the lesson of the imperialist epoch. But, barring a bad mistake in judgment, not directly. As these conflicts escalate, Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes explained in “Imperialism’s march toward fascism and war” in New International no. 10, “First there are growing tensions and conflicts between rival powers; the intensification of economic and social crises and antagonisms within these countries; and the strengthening of rightist, ultranationalist groups that agitate to defeat the ‘foreign powers’ that are pressuring ‘our country,’ ‘stealing our jobs,’ and ‘trampling on our national honor.’”
The only force capable of preventing the threat of a nuclear holocaust is the working class. We have the power to overturn the dog-eat-dog capitalist system, with its exploitation, oppression and wars.
All political questions are class questions. Out of our union and social battles, we must chart our own road forward, breaking with the bosses and their political parties. We need a class-struggle program and our own working-class foreign policy.
Not one penny, not one person, not one ounce of support for the U.S. imperialist government, its budget, its tariffs or war machine!
To bring a different world into being, the working class needs to build its own party to take political power, end capitalist exploitation and join the struggle to extend the world socialist revolution.
This is what the Socialist Workers Party aims to do. With continuity from the Bolshevik Revolution led by V.I. Lenin through Leon Trotsky’s battle to keep Lenin’s program alive against the counterrevolution led by Joseph Stalin to the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro, the SWP is building a party and leadership capable of organizing workers in their millions to take power. There’s no better reason to join the SWP!