A HUGE political crisis hit US president Donald Trump yesterday when a US federal trade court in New York ruled that most of his trade war tariffs are illegal.
The ruling blocks the universal 10 per cent tariffs applying to all imports to the US, but spared his 25 per cent levies on steel, aluminium, and cars. The ruling found that national security is not a legal basis for imposing indiscriminate taxes on imports to the US.
The president himself has not commented as yet, but his administration has already filed to appeal against the ruling, while White House officials have attacked the court’s authority.
‘It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency,’ Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, hit out at the ruling in a social media post claiming ‘the judicial coup is out of control’.
However, welcoming the decision, stock markets have surged worldwide.
Trump’s desperate global trade plan to cut a bankrupt America’s $US 36.2 trillion government deficit with ready just printed cash, bankrupting foreign trade rivals is in tatters, while the deficit continues to soar on a daily basis.
His recent tax cutting bill to further enrich the US billionaires and corporations just passed through Congress by one vote and was to be funded by tariff income along with vicious cuts to welfare spending for the working class.
Even so, the tax bill is estimated to increase the US deficit by $2.3 trillion, prompting the billionaire Elon Musk to quit his government Doge department to savagely cut government spending after Trump’s Tariffs lost his Tesla electric car company billions of dollars.
What is clear is that the focus of the raging world economic financial crisis is splitting the US ruling class, confronted with state bankruptcy. The days of the Trump presidency and US capitalism appear to be numbered.
Investors and bond vigilantes will have to force Trump to balance the books. ‘Someone has to get the US deficit under control, which means the president will have to change direction’, commented Matthew Lynn in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph.
‘If there is one thing we know for certain about Donald Trump, it is this: when it comes to the crunch, he will give in to pressure from Wall Street. The bond vigilantes smell blood and the markets are about to force Trump to accept a very different role than the one he imagined for himself.’
Another certainty is that the US bourgeoisie will launch even more draconian onslaughts on the working class at home to save US capitalism by driving the working class back to the hungry 1930s, with about $1tn in cuts to benefits. It will be a case of the very poor propping up the rich, while cash strapped families are supporting struggling households, including a health insurance scheme for low-income families, Medicaid, and food stamps.
US and world imperialism is in its greatest ever crisis, with their economies only surviving on life support by borrowing from the international banks and with hedge funds, struggling to pay even the interest on their state debts.
The once mighty US imperialism has feet of clay, and is driven to wage all out war on its own working class, plus fighting foreign wars abroad against its capitalist rivals and especially against the deformed workers’ states of Russia and China, and any former colonies who dare to oppose it like Palestine, Iran, Yemen, and even Canada
Meanwhile, the world crisis is rampaging through all the imperialist countries of Europe, including France, Germany, Italy and the UK, pauperising millions.
The essence of the situation is that capitalism is in its death agony and must be terminated with socialist revolutions. There is not a moment to lose in the mobilisation of the workers of the world.
The only way forward is to build a revolutionary leadership, that is sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International, to lead the world revolution to overthrow capitalism and establish world socialism. There is not a moment to lose in building the WRP, the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International!
