US PRESIDENT Donald Trump is stepping up his trade war onslaught on China as his November presidential election date approaches, and the US continues to be wracked by a jobs, coronavirus, and homeless crisis, with workers mobilising to force a massive change.
To bring back millions of jobs to the USA he is now threatening to penalise the US big business giants that continue to operate plants in China. In an election speech on Monday, Trump vowed to ‘create 10 million jobs in 10 months’ saying ‘we will end our reliance on China.’ The election however is in November!
Spelling out that he intends to step up the trade war, Trump stated: ‘We will create tax credits for companies that bring jobs back from China to America.’ He conceded that China had overtaken the US: ‘We built the greatest economy in the history of the world and now I have to do it again.’
In Monday’s speech, Trump ranted: ‘We will make our critical drugs and supplies right here in the United States.’
Trump is now threatening US giants like Apple which uses a Taiwanese firm called Foxconn to make the majority of its best-selling iPhones. Foxconn has factories in both China and Taiwan. Other American giants, such as Nike, also have large manufacturing plants in China.
Trump’s boast that he will create 10 million jobs in ten months can only be achieved by shutting down all US-owned plants in China and transferring production back to the USA.
The administration has also threatened to include more Chinese technology firms on its blacklist of companies which face bans in the US, alongside TikTok and WeChat.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has outlined the steps he wants US companies to take to deal with ‘untrusted Chinese apps’. These measures go far beyond Trump’s current push to force the sale of TikTok to an American firm.
Pompeo, who is America’s most senior diplomat, claims apps like TikTok and WeChat pose ‘significant threats to the personal data of American citizens’.
He has set out a five-pronged approach to ‘safeguard America’s assets’ that include: Ensuring the ‘untrusted People’s Republic of China (PRC) carriers’ are not connected with the US telecommunications networks; Removing ‘untrusted’ applications from US app stores; Stopping ‘untrusted’ Chinese smartphone manufacturers from pre-installing, or making available for download, the most popular US apps; preventing US citizens’ sensitive personal information and companies’ intellectual property from being stored and accessed on Chinese cloud-based services; Ensuring undersea cables connecting the US to the global internet are not compromised for intelligence gathering by China.
Pompeo said more than 30 countries now had ‘clean networks’ designed to secure their critical telecommunications. Trump has pledged to ban TikTok in America by 15 September unless its US business is sold to an American company. Microsoft is currently in talks to buy it.
US capitalism is now in its greatest ever crisis. It is gripped by the coronavirus pandemic with 5,403,213 confirmed cases, 170,052 deaths, and 3.1% of the population infected.
On the unemployment front, new US jobless claims for the week that ended last Saturday totalled 963,000, the Labour Department said on Thursday. This week’s report brought total filings over a 21-week period to more than 56 million.
The aggregate total of people receiving unemployment benefits, totalled 15.5 million for the week ending August 1st. With unemployment benefits now slashed by Congress, millions of US workers have lost their homes and are now sleeping on the streets.
The more than 56 million unemployment claims filed during the coronavirus pandemic have far surpassed the 37 million during the 18-month Great Recession from 2007-2009.
Last Saturday, Trump passed four executive orders, including one that established a $400 weekly unemployment benefit, with states responsible for 25% of the amount. But yesterday, the Trump administration said it would cut the amount to $300 weekly after some states said they couldn’t afford to pay their $100 share.
More and more US workers are becoming convinced that what is wrong with the USA is that it is run for the benefit of a handful of bankers and billionaire capitalists.
The only way out for US workers, regardless of who is elected President, is for the working class to overthrow US capitalism with a socialist revolution that will bring in a planned socialist economy. US workers need a Labour Party based on the trade unions and need to build a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International in the USA to lead the coming American socialist revolution.
