With his proposals to annex Canada and Greenland, to take control of the Gaza Strip and empty it of Palestinians to make it into a new Riviera, Trump has accumulated provocations towards peoples. And with each passing day, he promises the whole world a merciless trade war.
This is causing fear and a lot of concern in the working class. Because, while the trade war is nothing new to them, workers perfectly know how the bosses are making them pay for it, by imposing ever more competitiveness on them.
At the same time, some people, including workers, don't hide their admiration for Trump. They credit him with defending Americans and would like our leaders to do the same.
Both reactions lead to the same result: pushing us to close ranks behind our capitalists, that is to say our exploiters. And this is the only perspective that the political parties defend, from Le Pen to the Communist Party (PCF), Ruffin, Mélenchon and Macron. They all keep telling us that we must fight for French industrial sovereignty. And this is also the policy advocated by the trade unions, starting with the CGT (Confédération générale du travail), which boasts of having plans to reindustrialize France and ensure its sovereignty.
Protectionism, which is sometimes defended in the name of local production under cover of environment or employment purposes, always comes down to the same thing: waging economic war with increased customs duties.
This is a policy that is as stupid as it is harmful to workers. No country in the world lives in autarchy and is capable of being self-sufficient, not even the United States!
In a spectacular show, Trump signed executive orders imposing 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico. These orders lasted only 24 hours, the time it took for the Wall Street Stock Exchange to collapse. And, away from the cameras this time, Trump has suspended them for now. Like every demagogue, he is all mouth!
These tariffs, which are supposed to solve problems for American capitalists, create a whole series of new ones! They penalize American companies, such as General Motors, that are based in Mexico, and the thousands of others which work with retailers based in Mexico or Canada and whose components sometimes make several trips back and forth across the border.
The same interdependence exists between the United States, China and the European Union. Musk, who owns a Tesla factory in Shanghai and sells a third of his cars in China, has no desire to fall out with Beijing. And while Airbus’ rival, Boeing, may have an interest in promoting economic patriotism, it buys Safran engines and radio systems produced in France by Thales.
In the tangle of global economy, pretending that each country can be economically sovereign is pure lie and demagogy.
Here, some workers are dreaming of a French version of ‘‘Make America great again’’. But when Trump talks about ‘‘the interests of the United States’’, he's talking about his own business and that of Musk and company. He doesn't care in the least about American workers, who are forced to take two jobs to get by and go into debt for life to get medical care.
And how could we believe, here in France, that the profits gained in the trade war by Michelin, Stellantis, Renault, Sanofi or Thales would benefit workers? Those corporations are thriving but that does not stop them from cutting jobs and imposing ever harsher working conditions.
This increasingly warlike nationalist propaganda has a political goal: to make us believe that the world is divided into blocs of competing countries and not into opposing classes. It wants us to believe that our interests are those of our bosses and shareholders. And this aims at forcing us to accept the capitalists’ tyranny: the race for profit whatever the cost, their refusal to pay taxes and their rejection of social and environmental regulations which are, in their eyes, merely obstacles to the competitiveness of the country.
This economic war is certainly not ours and we must refuse to be its cannon fodder! Another choice exists: we must fight against employer domination to put an end to the competition between workers and to this trade war that is destroying people and the planet.
Nathalie Arthaud