ON Thursday night, the giant TV screen that looks down on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange spelt out the message ‘Trump tariffs Tank Stocks’.
The shock waves from US president Donald Trump’s trade war against every country in the world spread like wildfire throughout the stock markets of the world as international investors sold off shares in companies across the board.
As the world financial investors fled shares in corporations and companies, the price of gold continued to shoot up to over $3,000 an ounce as the speculators desperately sought a safe risk-free place to park their wealth, shunning the risks of seeing that wealth disappear overnight as shares collapse.
The scale of the crash in share prices was at its sharpest amongst the hi-tech industries whose multi-billionaire owners suffered huge losses.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which charts the fortunes of the obscenely wealthy capitalists, the world’s 500 richest people saw their combined wealth plunge by $208 billion on Thursday with bosses of some of the largest US tech companies having fortunes wiped off their wealth.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of social media company Meta, lost $17.9 billion according to Bloomberg, while Jeff Bezos, boss of Amazon, lost $15.9 billion in personal wealth as shares in his company plunged by 9%.
Elon Musk, currently Trump’s agent for slashing federal jobs and services, lost $11 billion, taking his losses so far this year to $110 billion.
Along with shares in tech companies crashing, there were huge drops in banking, industrial and energy sectors as the fears of global recession spread throughout the capitalist stock markets.
Workers and the impoverished masses throughout the world who face being driven into absolute poverty by the world trade war will shed no tears for these losses, but it provides a sharp illustration of the crisis that is rampaging through world capitalism.
Along with the collapse of the stock markets, the once ‘almighty US dollar’ has plunged in relation to other currencies as investors ditch it under the growing realisation that America is in the middle of economic recession spiralling out of control and that Trump’s trade war will accelerate.
The Japanese Yen is now seen as a safer bet than the dollar.
This is crucial for US capitalism as it has built its position as the world’s dominant capitalist economy on the strength of the dollar which in turn relied on the supposed strength of the American economy.
This ‘strength’ has been steadily eroded over the years with the US leading the way in global indebtedness of the world’s capitalist economies, while at the same time facing the meteoric rise in the Chinese economy.
US capitalism, drowning in over $36 trillion of national debt, is fighting for survival.
Trump’s trade war, designed to bankrupt his rivals and former allies, is being driven not by the demented actions of one man, but by the requirements of a bankrupt world capitalist system that in its final imperialist death agony has torn up the old world order – the pretence of a peaceful world order – in favour of economic war to force submission on America’s opponents and one that paves the way for a shooting war against what is held to be the main threat to US dominance, China.
Trump’s rambling speech on Wednesday when not damning the world for ‘ripping off America’ constantly insisted that tariffs were essential for US security.
Trump proposed a vision of fortress America, where industries were forced to relocate production in the US to provide the means to wage war on the rest of the world without the hindrance of international supply lines that are currently essential.
The working class internationally has the power and strength to put world capitalism out of its death agony by taking power and going forward to a world socialist planned economy.
This requires removing the trade union leaders who remain bound to their national ruling capitalist class and replacing them by building sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International worldwide to lead the working class to take revolutionary action to smash capitalism and go forward to the victory of the World Socialist Revolution.
This is the way forward!
