THREATS, demands and bullying aimed at the whole world from US President Donald Trump, dominated the Davos Economic Forum in a video call on Thursday.
Driven by the raging US economic crisis, Trump blasted global executives declaring that they could either produce their commodities in the US or face widespread tariffs to relieve them of hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars.
The president belligerently launched his rant on the OPEC oil producing cartel to drop oil prices to try to force Russia to negotiate an end to the war in the Ukraine or be hit by US trade tariffs.
Fresh from talks last week from extorting a pledge from Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman to invest $600 billion in the US, Trump promptly demanded that he increase this to one trillion US dollars.
Trump has now threatened to impose a 10% tariff on Chinese-made goods arriving in the US from as early as 1 February, adding that he was also considering levies on imports from the EU.
Ordering an investigation into US-China trade on his second day in office, Trump said any penalties on Chinese goods would be ‘based on the fact that they’re sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada’.
‘Other countries are big abusers also, you know it’s not just China,’ Trump said during an event at the White House on Tuesday, adding that he was also looking at trade with the EU.
Turning on the EU, Trump declared: ‘We have a $350bn deficit with the European Union. They treat us very, very badly, so they’re going to be in for tariffs,’ he said.
Coming after the US president told reporters he was thinking about introducing 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, America’s largest trading partners, from February, the EU should be very worried.
As for military spending, Trump demanded that EU countries, despite plunging into recession, must double their NATO funding from around two per cent to five per cent of GDP.
The EU was roasted for not meeting the 2 per cent of GDP spending target until he challenged them during his first term, Trump said.
‘I insisted that they pay, and they did, because the United States was really paying the difference at that time,’ he added.
The Chinese delegation at Davos responded that ‘there are no winners in a trade war.’
Meanwhile, the UK bosses are pleading that they should be excluded from any tariffs Trump is threatening to impose on UK exports to the US, Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the BBC yesterday.
He said that ‘The US has no goods trade deficit with the UK, which occurs when a country imports more than it exports.’
There is no doubt that capitalism is in its death agony, its greatest ever crisis, and the only way out is for the working class is to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country to lead the worldwide socialist revolution to its victory.
This is the only way to resolve the crisis of capitalism – by depositing the entire capitalist system into the dustbin of history.
In this great struggle, there is also no doubt that hundreds of millions of youth worldwide will have the decisive revolutionary role to play as they reject the horrors that bankrupt capitalism has in store for them.
They must and will insist that they have the future in their grasp and that they will fight for worldwide socialism.
They will insist that the colossal productive forces that have been built up are used to satisfy the basic requirements of the working class and the youth of the world.
It is the revolutionary youth that will build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International worldwide to lead the victory of the world socialist revolution!
Now is the time to build sections of the International Committee in every country in order to establish a worldwide socialist planned economy that will be able to satisfy all of the requirements of the working class of the world.
