Chinese premier warns of grave risks and challenges ahead

Peter Symonds

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang opened this year’s annual National People’s Congress (NPC) that began in Beijing this week with a work report that highlighted the risks and dangers facing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime from a slowing economy, trade war with the US and rising “public dissatisfaction.”

The lengthy report, couched in the bland official language of the CCP bureaucracy, unusually warned that, internally and externally, “we will face a graver and more complicated environment as well as risks and challenges, foreseeable and otherwise, that are greater in number and size.”

On the economic front, Li pointed to the global slowdown in economic growth, the rise of protectionism and the “drastic fluctuations” in the international prices of commodities that China imports to fuel its giant manufacturing industries. “Instability and uncertainty are visibly increasing, and externally-generated risks are on the rise,” he declared.

Li’s target for growth of the Chinese economy was lowered to between 6 and 6.5 percent—the lowest rate of expansion since 1990—and lower significantly lower than the range set for last year of 6.5 to 7 percent. Last year’s growth came in at 6.6 percent, well below the benchmark of 8 percent, which was long regarded by the CCP as essential to prevent rising unemployment and social unrest.

Li pledged that the government would create 11 million new jobs over the year and keep the rate of urban unemployment as measured by official survey to around 5.5 percent. No targets were provided for rural unemployment and underemployment which is likely to be higher. Moreover, jobless and growth rates vary widely from region to region, with the north-eastern provinces in particular heavily hit by the closure and restructuring of state-owned industry.

Already there are reports of large-scale job losses in key industries due to falling domestic demand and the restructuring or closure of export companies. The New York Times reported last months that thousands of workers were being retrenched by Ford from its massive Chongqing production facilities which employs 20,000 workers.

Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, told Australian-based SBSNews that “a lot of traditional companies and new internet companies closed” because of the US-China trade war.

“In the southeast and coastal areas there have been a lot of layoffs. Many companies closed after the Lunar New Year holiday. Those business owners have lost confidence in the country’s economic development and policies,” Hu said. He also suggested that the actual unemployment rate was much higher than the official figure.

While defending the government’s management of tensions with Washington, Li warned that US trade war measures were having an impact on the Chinese economy. Chinese officials are in the midst of trying to reach a deal with the Trump administration to prevent another round of heavy tariffs on Chinese goods.

The NPC is due to consider legislation designed to guard against foreign companies being forced to hand over technological knowledge as part of investment deals with Chinese partners. The new law is unlikely to satisfy the Trump administration which has repeatedly accused China of the “theft” of intellectual property.

In his work report, Li omitted any mention of the “Made in China 2025” strategy designed to boost the competitiveness of Chinese hi-tech corporations, which is also under fire from Washington. Again, this is also unlikely to appease the US which is determined to prevent China undermining the competitiveness and profitability of American companies.

While concerned about the prospect of conflict with the US, Li also warned the assembled delegates of the dangers of social unrest. “There is still public dissatisfaction in many areas, such as education, healthcare, elderly care, housing, food and drug safety, and income distribution,” he declared.

The Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin recorded a sharp increase in the number of strikes and protests by workers last year from 1,250 in 2017 to more than 1,700 in 2018, mostly over unpaid wages, factory closures and working conditions. The figures are based on strikes reported in the media or by local contacts and represent only a small fraction of the actual overall figure.

Also last year, groups of students from elite universities supported workers involved in labour disputes, provoking severe repression by Chinese authorities. A number of students are still being detained. The CCP is terrified that the activities of students might act as a catalyst for a politicization of workers and the eruption of a broad movement that challenges the regime. Thirty years ago, student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square led to wide-scale protests and strikes by workers in Beijing and other cities that were savagely suppressed by the military.

The processes of capitalist restoration in China since 1978 and the transformation of the country into a giant cheap labour hub have led to extraordinary rates of economic growth. However, while China is now the world’s second largest economy, the social chasm between rich and poor has also dramatically widened.

The CCP absurdly claims to be presiding over “a socialist society with Chinese characteristics.” In reality, the CCP represents the interests of the small layer of super wealthy oligarchs who have enriched themselves through the plunder of state-owned enterprises and the exploitation of the working class.

The class interests served by the CCP are on display at the NPC and the associated Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Among the 2,948 assembled delegates were 153 individuals with a net wealth of $650 billion, up by nearly a third from a year ago, according to the recently published Hurun Rich List. China’s wealthiest lawmaker is also its richest person, Pony Ma, founder of Tencent and with a net worth is $47 billion.

Last year’s National People’s Congress declared President Xi Jinping to be the “core” of the CCP apparatus and enshrined his “thought” as a central component of official ideology. It also voted to abolish the two-term limit on the country’s presidency and vice-presidency ensuring that Xi can hold office indefinitely. In his speech last week, Li dutifully called on delegates to “follow the guidance of Xi Jinping thought” and referred to him repeatedly as the “core.”

The World Socialist Web Site wrote at the time that the regime’s elevation of Xi as political strongman was not a sign of strength but of weakness that signaled intensifying social and political tensions in China. Li’s speech this week reflects the fears in the CCP regime that these tensions are reaching boiling point and are about to explode.

Hundreds of thousands march in Algeria to demand fall of Bouteflika regime

Will Morrow

Hundreds of thousands of people joined demonstrations across Algeria on Friday to demand an end to the regime of Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the military-backed president who has ruled the country since 1999.

Videos on social media show waves of demonstrators, predominantly youth, filling the streets of the capital, Algiers, the port city of Bejaia, and other towns, chanting “Killer regime,” “The people want the downfall of the regime,” and “Thieves, you have eaten the country!” In the north-eastern port city of Annaba, workers protested for their family members who drowned in the Mediterranean attempting to reach Europe.

Yesterday was the third successive Friday protest since the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) announced on February 10 that it would run Bouteflika in elections this April. The protests have grown larger each week and escalated after Bouteflika’s aides submitted his election nomination forms on Sunday, promising at the same time that he would step down within a year if elected.

The protests are part of a growing radicalization in the working class and escalation of working-class struggles throughout the Maghreb and internationally against social inequality since the beginning of 2019, eight years after the revolutionary upheavals which overthrew the Egyptian and Tunisian regimes.

The 82-year-old president is a political corpse who has been incapable of speaking publicly since 2013, when he suffered a severe stroke. He has been in a hospital in Geneva, Switzerland for nearly two weeks receiving what spokespeople have called “routine” check-ups. The inner circles of his regime are seeking to gain time to select a suitable successor.

An unbridgeable class gulf separates the official “opposition” parties involved in the protests, who see Bouteflika’s removal solely as a means to improve their positions within the existing regime, from the opposition to poverty, unemployment and social inequality that is driving masses of workers and youth into struggle.

Somewhere between a quarter and a third of Algerian youth are unemployed, under conditions where approximately two-thirds of the population is aged under 30. A report by the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights last year stated that 400,000 Algerian children drop out of school every year, especially in the countryside, where “classrooms are not equipped with electricity, water or heating, or lack toilets and school medical healthcare.” Meanwhile, over the past 20 years, a tiny layer of billionaires and multi-millionaires has flourished.

This year has seen escalating strikes throughout the country, including by port workers, a two-day nationwide teachers strike at the end of February, and strikes by transport workers in the Kabilya region.

Workers at the massive Tayal textile factory in Sidi Khettab, Relizane, which exports to Europe, launched an indefinite strike on February 27 against grueling conditions and pay that is below the legal minimum. “We are paid 600 dinars (US$5) a day, or 18,000 a month, and if we are absent, they take 1,000 dinars from us,” one striker told the French-language Reflexion last week. Autoworkers at Hyundai’s joint assembly plant in Tiaret launched a strike on Monday against their conditions.

The Algerian trade unions are doing everything in their power to contain the movement in the working class. The French-language daily El Watan published a report Thursday, “And what if there was a general strike?” It quoted Lyes Merabet, the president of the SNPSP national health union, declaring that while the union supported protests demanding Bouteflika’s removal, it would be “premature” to respond to what she nervously referred to as “anonymous calls on social media” for a general strike.

The national teachers’ federation, which covers university lectures, has called a nationwide strike on March 13, under conditions where teachers have already been calling meetings to join their students in protests. Algeria’s largest trade union federation, the General Union of Algerian Labor (UGTA), is a creation of the FLN and openly supports Bouteflika.

The political parties and organizations now calling for Bouteflika’s removal are no less hostile than those in the regime’s leading circles to any measures to address the social concerns of the workers and youth. A massive political operation is underway to ensure that, if and when Bouteflika is removed, an orderly “transition” is carried through that will involve no fundamental change to the regime besides a reshuffling in personnel.

Al Jazeera provided an account of the sordid maneuvering of these figures yesterday. It reported that thirty opposition parties gathered together on March 7 in Algiers, at the headquarters of the Talaie El Hourriyet party founded by Ali Benflis. Al Jazeera diplomatically refers to Benflis, a former prime minister under Bouteflika, only as Bouteflika’s “top challenger in 2015.”

Those present at the meeting included Louisa Hanoune, the head of the Workers Party (PT), Mohcine Belabbas, the president of the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), and Abderrakaz Makri, the head of the Islamist Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), as well as other public figures. The RCD’s Belabbas told the newspaper that “we need to question the nature of the regime we would like to establish after the implosion of this long-lasting system.”

Al Jazeera noted that only Mouwatana and Jil Jadid, organizations which have been actively involved in the protests, did not attend the meeting, declaring that other parties should first withdraw from the parliament. Mouwatana and Jil Jadid are also dissident factions of the regime; Mouwatana was created by another former prime minister under Bouteflika.

The article referred to proposals for a “constituent assembly” or a “temporary government” to “handle the transition process.” Workers and youth should beware that any such political formation would be nothing more than a pseudo-democratic façade to maintain the existing regime resting on the generals, who are the real decision-makers in power.

This was made clear by Benflis, who implicitly called for a military intervention in an interview with the Financial Times yesterday, declaring: “The people have gone out in their millions, and I don’t expect and don’t imagine that the National Popular Army would fail to listen to them.”

All the imperialist powers are actively monitoring and intervening in the political situation in Algeria, a major gas producer and geo-strategic center in northern Africa, to protect their interests.

The Economist published a statement yesterday, “Out with the old: How to revive Algeria,” which called for Bouteflika to step down. It warned nervously that “Far from preventing another civil war, the regime risks stoking one.” Similar calls for a fraudulent “transition,” preserving the regime minus its figurehead, have been made by the New York Times and Le Monde .

The Financial Times headlined its article: “Algeria army pressed to defuse growing anti-Bouteflika protests: Speculation mounts that military will intervene as ailing president seeks fifth term.”

In another article the previous day, the Times stated that “Algeria protests revive memories of final days of Hosni Mubarak.” It declared: “Few believe the elections can now proceed. Much could depend on another liberation veteran—General Ahmed Gaid Salah, the army chief of staff. As in Egypt, the military is a key power behind the politicians. The unknown is whether the armed forces have a contingency plan.”

The Times reference to the Egyptian military, which, under General al-Sisi, carried out a coup and murdered thousands of political opponents to drown the revolution in blood, is a stark warning.

It also points to the political lessons that must be drawn by workers and young people from the experience of the 2011 workers uprising in Egypt. Because they did not have a revolutionary, socialist and internationalist perspective and leadership, powerful struggles of the working class were channeled behind bourgeois parties, enabling the Egyptian military to carry out its coup and re-impose a brutal dictatorship.

The turn must now be toward the international working class, the fight for workers’ governments across the Maghreb and Europe and the socialist reorganization of the economy according to social need, rather than private profit. The critical task is to build sections of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International, to arm the developing struggles of the working class internationally with a socialist and internationalist perspective.

Chelsea Manning jailed for refusal to testify against WikiLeaks

Patrick Martin

A federal judge ordered Chelsea Manning to prison Friday morning for an indefinite period of time, after the former Army private, jailed for seven years for providing information to WikiLeaks exposing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, refused on principle to answer any questions before a secret grand jury investigating the media organization and its founder Julian Assange.

“The Socialist Equality Party unequivocally condemns the US government’s vindictive and criminal persecution of Chelsea Manning,” said Joseph Kishore, the national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in the US.

“Chelsea suffered solitary confinement, abuse and torture, and over six years of imprisonment for letting the American and world population know the truth. Yesterday, she once again stood firm to fundamental democratic principle and refused to assist the Trump administration in its vendetta to falsely incriminate WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. She is a heroic figure and she must be defended.

“Working people all over the world will never forget Chelsea’s courageous exposure, at vast personal cost, of the crimes of American imperialism. Amid a growing global strike wave, the Socialist Equality Party will do everything in its power to mobilize the working class to defend Chelsea, and free Julian Assange and all other class war prisoners.”

The Socialist Equality Parties in the UK and Australia are participating in rallies on Sunday, March 10 outside Ecuador’s London embassy and at the State Library in Melbourne, called last month to oppose the continued confinement of Julian Assange at the London embassy, and demanding that the Australian government intervene on his behalf and obtain his release from Britain with the right to return home to Australia. The demonstrations will demand the immediate release of Manning as inseparable from the struggle to free Assange.

James Cogan, national secretary of the SEP in Australia, issued the following statement Friday:

“The Trump administration's imprisonment of Chelsea Manning for refusing to give false testimony against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange is an outrage. She has suffered more than enough for her courage and service to the truth. American democracy rolls in the gutter and is rapidly descending into the sewer of dictatorship.

“The working class everywhere must come to Chelsea’s defence and take up the demand for the immediate release of Assange and all persecuted class war prisoners. The SEP in Australia will be redoubling our effort to secure Julian’s immediate return to this country with full protection. And we will be joining all international action to fight for the immediate restoration of Chelsea Manning’s freedom.”

The brief hearing before Judge Claude M. Hilton was the only part of the court proceedings involving Manning that was open to the public. Hilton rejected the argument by Manning’s lawyers that confining her to house arrest would better serve her medical needs. She has received gender reassignment surgery and requires complex medical attention. Hilton said the US Marshals Service would provide adequate care.

“I’ve found you in contempt,” Hilton declared, ordering Manning to jail immediately. The imprisonment in a federal facility in Alexandria, Virginia would continue indefinitely, he said, “either until you purge yourself [agree to testify] or the end of the life of the grand jury.”

The grand jury has been empaneled to bring espionage and conspiracy charges against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Manning revealed that the questions she had refused to answer on Thursday all concerned her interaction with the organization, which receives documents delivered to it anonymously and avoids learning the identity of contributors in order not to undermine their security.

Manning provided WikiLeaks more than 500,000 documents which she copied from military and government archives while serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq during the US military occupation, in 2009. The material showed extensive war crimes in both Iraq and Afghanistan, including the notorious gun-camera video of a US helicopter gunship mowing down unarmed Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters reporters, later published by WikiLeaks under the title “Collateral Murder.”

Manning was arrested in 2010, convicted in a 2013 trial and sentenced to 35 years in prison, serving a total of seven years before her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama three days before he left office.

Federal prosecutors subpoenaed Manning to testify before the grand jury and gave her immunity for her testimony, in the hopes of using it against Assange and WikiLeaks. But Manning has refused on principle to collaborate with the secret grand jury. She answered each question posed to her by invoking her rights under the First, Fourth and Sixth amendments to the US Constitution.

“All of the substantive questions pertained to my disclosures of information to the public in 2010—answers I provided in extensive testimony, during my court-martial in 2013,” she said.

A statement issued by Manning after being sent to prison reads:

“I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury. Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system.

“The grand jury's questions pertained to disclosures from nine years ago, and took place six years after an in-depth computer forensics case, in which I testified for almost a full day about these events. I stand by my previous public testimony.”

The statement concludes with Manning’s courageous declaration that she “will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.”

Manning's lawyer, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, told the World Socialist Web Site after the decision, “Chelsea's actions speak for themselves. She is a person of tremendous honor and courage, and this latest struggle is just the most recent in a long serious of principled stands she has taken.”

Asked if she is concerned about the conditions Chelsea will face in jail, Meltzer-Cohen said that the government has made assurances that her health needs will be taken care of, but that “we all need to be vigilant that those assurances are made good on.”

Manning’s lawyers said they expected to file an appeal of Hilton’s order jailing Chelsea, citing in particular the fact that jailing for refusal to testify can only be coercive, not punitive. In other words, if they can demonstrate that Manning will never agree to testify, no matter how long she is jailed, the court cannot simply keep her in prison to punish her for her silence.

The jailing of Chelsea Manning is a particularly outrageous attack on democratic rights, carried out by a federal judge who is a byword for reactionary pro-government, pro-police and pro-employer bias, and a longtime collaborator with the national security state.

Hilton was one of a relative handful of federal judges selected by Chief Justice William Rehnquist to serve on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, the special judicial panel set up to secretly rubber-stamp requests for spying authorizations for the FBI, CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies. The court is notorious for approving 99.9 percent of such requests. Hilton was on the panel from 2000 to 2007, during the period when the Bush administration set up secret CIA torture camps and enormously escalated the NSA spying on telecommunications and the internet.

Appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan in 1985, Hilton proved his value to the military-intelligence apparatus early in his career, with a 1989 decision that cleared CIA operative Joseph Fernandez, charged with four criminal counts in the Iran-Contra affair, after the CIA refused to release documents required for the prosecution of the case. In effect, the intelligence apparatus ensured impunity for its own criminal operations by refusing to cooperate with the investigation by Special Counsel Lawrence Walsh, a legal dodge approved by Judge Hilton.

According to the website “The Robing Room,” which allows lawyers and litigants appearing before federal judges to rate their demeanor, legal knowledge, and bias, Hilton routinely incorporates prosecution and government briefs into his legal “opinions,” almost never rules in favor of individuals suing their employers, the police or the government, and frequently sleeps through oral arguments by defense attorneys.

One attorney, posting on the site, called Hilton, “The most prejudiced judge with regard to average and below average income United States citizens that I have ever observed. This judge has no sense whatsoever of the search for Truth and Justice and he clearly avoids any reasonable search for Truth and Justice, especially if a large corporation or the federal government is the defendant!”

The SEP in the United States and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), will announce a series of meetings and demonstrations to demand the immediate release of Chelsea Manning. The World Socialist Web Site urges all of its readers and supporters to join our mailing list to get meeting announcements and updates on the campaign to free Chelsea.

More ministers quit as factional war wracks Australia’s ruling coalition

Mike Head

Last weekend, less than three months before a general election must be held, two more cabinet ministers announced their departures from Australia’s Liberal-National Coalition government. That took to six the number of top-level ministers or ex-ministers who have made similar declarations in the past month that they will not contest the looming election.

The corporate media depicted the resignations as simply “more rats deserting a sinking ship,” pointing to media polls predicting the government’s defeat. More fundamentally, however, the desertions point to an intensifying breakup of the Liberal and National parties and a deep crisis of the entire Australian political establishment.

All the ministers who decided to quit are either members of the Liberal Party’s supposed “moderate” wing, associated with Malcolm Turnbull, who was ousted as prime minister last August, or were sidelined by the “conservative” faction following the installation of Scott Morrison to replace Turnbull.

The pre-election departures came in response to the ongoing offensive by the most right-wing elements to transform the Coalition into a Trump-style populist and fascistic movement, even if means the breakup of the Coalition in its current form, one of the two key linchpins of capitalist rule since World War II. Presently led by Morrison, these layers are whipping up nationalist, anti-immigrant and anti-Chinese sentiment as a means of diverting working-class discontent over declining living conditions and ever-greater social inequality.

The most revealing departure was that of Defence Minister Christopher Pyne, who has been a leading powerbroker in the “moderate” faction for 25 years. In addition to heading the multi-billion dollar-a-year military and arms spending portfolio, Pyne is the government’s chief of business in the House of Representatives, orchestrating its legislative agenda and parliamentary tactics.

Desperate to hold the government together, at least for now, Morrison said he would keep Pyne in both posts until the election, adding to a growing list of lame duck ministers.

Pyne has remained an unabashed Turnbull supporter, despite being promoted to the senior defence ministry after throwing his faction’s numbers behind Morrison when Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton initially challenged Turnbull’s leadership last August. Following the party leadership coup, Pyne told the Sydney Morning Herald that Turnbull was “the kind of person that should have been prime minister of Australia: urbane, highly intellectual, successful, broad, visionary, clever, articulate, funny, charming, everything that a modern leader and a modern prime minister should be.”

Pyne, who was previously defence industry minister, sought to turn his economically blighted home state of South Australia, formerly heavily-dependent on the auto industry, into a naval shipbuilding and war industry hub. Nevertheless, he and Turnbull also advocated trying to convince Washington to avert all-out war, if possible, against China, which takes one-third of Australian capitalism’s exports.

The other resignation last weekend was that of Defence Industry Minister Steven Ciobo. Once a Turnbull supporter, he backed last August’s leadership coup but lost his own bid to become party deputy leader and was then demoted by Morrison from the high-profile trade ministry. The “conservative” faction had long mistrusted Ciobo, who was regarded as Turnbull’s “lieutenant” when Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott, the primary figure in the far-right group, as prime minister in 2015.

Morrison immediately replaced Ciobo with Senator Linda Reynolds, an ex-army reserve brigadier with close military ties, and declared she would be further promoted to the top job of defence minister if the government won the election. That would be a meteoric rise for Reynolds, who only became a junior assistant minister after Turnbull was removed.

These departures came hard on the heels of a similar announcement by former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who had quit the cabinet last August essentially in protest against Turnbull’s axing, that she would be leaving parliament. Bishop, who had been deputy Liberal Party leader since 2007, stood for election as party leader after Turnbull was ousted, but received only 11 votes. It was a rebuff not just for her personally but for the “moderate” faction. In particular, it was a blow to her Western Australian support base, which rests on sectors of the mining industry most reliant on exports to China.

This week, Bishop sent a barbed message to Morrison and his backers, giving a media interview in which she insisted that, as prime minister, she could have won the imminent election.

The latest “retirements” followed those of Industrial Affairs Minister Kelly O’Dwyer, Human Services Minister Michael Keenan and Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion. O’Dwyer had earlier told a Liberal Party room meeting that “crusades” by “ideological warriors” had hijacked the party.

The factional warfare also has engulfed the rural-based National Party, particularly since Turnbull effectively forced its leader, Barnaby Joyce, to quit his post in February 2018. This week, six National parliamentarians stepped up the right-wing aggression by demanding that the government spend billions of dollars to subsidise new coal-fired power stations. This is another move to try to head off support for far-right parties, such as Senator Pauline Hanson’s anti-immigrant One Nation, that have depicted coal-based projects as solutions to high levels of unemployment and under-employment.

The Coalition, a pillar of corporate rule, is being torn asunder. Primarily as a result of the infighting, of the 42 ministers sworn-in when the Coalition took office in 2013 led by Tony Abbott, 26—or more than 60 percent—have either left politics, been dumped from the frontbench or are planning to leave parliament in May.

The unravelling has accelerated. Nearly 40 percent of Turnbull’s post-2016 election ministry has since retired, resigned or are going to quit. Former small business minister Craig Laundy, another “moderate,” is also believed to be preparing to announce his departure.

The growing signs of economic reversal, and corporate fears of rising working class unrest, have exacerbated the tensions wracking the Coalition. An Australian Financial Review editorial this week warned of “the evident loss in popular trust in institutions, particularly in business in the wake of the banking royal commission.” That inquiry, while extremely limited, highlighted the predatory practices of the financial institutions that successive governments have propped up since the 2008 global breakdown.

China’s economic slowdown, the simmering US-China trade and technology war, the uncertainty of Brexit, declining real wages and the collapse of Australia’s six-year housing market bubble have led already to a “per-capita” recession. Statistics released this week showed that gross domestic product per person dropped 0.2 percent in the December quarter of 2018, the second consecutive quarterly fall.

Under these conditions, sections of the ruling class are once again looking to a pro-business Labor government, backed to the hilt by the trade unions, to stifle and suppress the opposition of workers and young people to the glaring inequality and deteriorating social conditions.

Invited to give a keynote speech to an Australian Financial Review business summit this week, Labor leader Bill Shorten pledged to reverse the economic stagnation and “toxic distrust” among workers by slightly lifting minimum wages. “[W]e know employers are not the class enemy,” he assured the audience.

Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyi leading in Ukrainian presidential polls

Jason Melanovski & Clara Weiss

Some three weeks ahead of the first round of the Ukrainian presidential elections on March 31, the most recent polling of voters in Ukraine reveals that actor-comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy is now leading a crowded field of 44 presidential candidates.

According to the Rating polling agency, 25.1 percent of potential voters support Zelenskiy. The second place is almost evenly split between current President Petro Poroshenko and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko who both received support from just over 16 percent of those polled.

As none of the candidates are expected to garner an outright majority to win the first round, a second runoff round between the top two candidates will almost certainly be held in May.

Reflecting widespread disillusionment with the country’s official politics, 31.9 percent of respondents said they did not plan to participate in the elections at all.

Prior to his entrance into politics, leading candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy had worked his way through a series of Ukrainian popular television shows to become one of the country’s most famous media figures, hosting his own programs and producing shows and movies for viewing in both Ukraine and Russia. Foreshadowing his current political campaign, in 2015 Zelenskiy appeared in a TV series called “Servant of the People” in which he portrayed a high school history teacher who unexpectedly becomes president of Ukraine after a viral video spreads showing him criticizing corruption in the country.

That a popular entertainment figure such as Zelenskiy has become the frontrunner, is indicative of the advanced political and social crisis in the country. The political establishment, which is associated with both Poroshenko and the former prime minister Tymoshenko, is widely hated and discredited.

Several polls have shown that there are more people who dislike and would refuse to vote for the next two closest candidates, Poroshenko and Tymoshenko, than people who actually support them and would be willing to vote for them.

Zelenskiy has been able to garner support for his criticism of Poroshenko’s promotion of far-right nationalism and an overt war drive against Russia, as well as by tapping into widespread social discontent by exposing corruption.

Zelenskiy is a native Russian speaker and generally speaks and performs in Russian. His comedy regularly lampoons the obvious corruption of the country’s ruling class and criticizes the exclusionist, violent and reactionary nature of Ukrainian nationalism. He has previously spoken out against the country’s banning of Russian language media and has called for language rights to be protected in traditionally Russian-speaking areas of the country, such as in eastern Ukraine.

Zelenskiy has also ridiculed Poroshenko’s campaign slogan of “Army, Language, Faith” as really meaning “To steal from the army, to selectively split people by language, so that there will be no faith in you.” He has gone further in acknowledging the truth about the imperialist-backed 2014 far-right coup that removed President Viktor Yanukovych when stating that Poroshenko “came to power through blood.”

In stark contrast to Poroshenko’s full backing of the bloody five-year-long war in the Donbass, Zelenskiy’s campaign has called for a cease-fire and negotiations while maintaining that both the Donbass and Crimea should be returned to Ukraine. He also announced that he was willing to engage in direct negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin over East Ukraine.

However, despite his social and political demagogy, Zelenskiy is running as a candidate of a section of the Ukrainian oligarchy.

While Zelenskiy is now demagogically criticizing Poroshenko from the left, he previously supported both the Western-backed Maidan and the war in the Donbass. He has said little about his plans for the country’s devastated economy that would differentiate him from other candidates and speaks in purposefully vague terms regarding his actual political agenda. Ukraine is currently the poorest country in Europe and the working class is being subjected to various IMF-enforced austerity measures.

Exposing his real political orientation toward sharp attacks on the working class, according to Bloomberg, Zelenskiy has cited French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian far-right president Jair Bolsonaro as role models for his politics.

Zelenskiy enjoys what he calls a close “working” relationship with billionaire Ukrainian oligarch and former head of Ukraine’s PrivatBank Ihor Kolomoyskyi. Zelenskiy’s shows appear on Kolomoyskyi’s 1+1 television and he made his campaign announcement on the same channel.

Kolomoyskyi also enjoys close ties with another presidential candidate and former prime minister, Tymoshenko, and many Ukrainians speculated that Zelenskiy’s entrance in the race was just a ploy to tear away support from Poroshenko and ensure a Tymoshenko win.

While both Zelenskiy and Kolomoyskyi have denied that they have any quid pro quo agreement in the elections, a member of Petro Poroshenko’s political party revealed on Monday that Kolomoyskyi’s PrivatBank previously transferred $41 million to bank accounts of a film production studio belonging to Zelenskiy.

Kolomoyskyi was later accused of stealing $5 billion from PrivatBank and fled the country. He is now living in Israel after coming into conflict with the Poroshenko regime. It is widely speculated that Kolomoyskyi is backing both Tymoshenko and Zelenskiy to be able to return to Ukraine and regain control over his vast business empire.

Especially because of Zelenskiy’s declared stance on the war in East Ukraine and on Russia, the possibility of his winning the election is viewed with a great deal of nervousness and suspicion by the imperialist powers and has already triggered discussions about a renewed intensification of direct imperialist intervention in the country to prevent any reorientation of Ukrainian foreign policy that would run counter to the immediate interests of imperialism.

The Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council , which has earlier made a case for a Tymoshenko presidency, warned that a Zelenskiy presidency would be a “disaster for Ukraine.” It noted menacingly that, in the case of a deadlocked and fragmented legislature coming out of the parliamentary elections in the fall, “another Euromaidan Revolution” would become “perfectly possible, perhaps even within a few months of Zelenskiy’s election. This time, however, it would likely be violent from the start, as Ukraine’s population has an unusually large supply of privately owned guns and Ukraine’s army would almost certainly side with protesters against the comedian-in-chief.”

Cuts to hours for Whole Foods workers exposes fraud of Amazon pay increase

Tom Hall

A report in the British Guardian newspaper on Wednesday revealed that workers at Whole Foods have seen their hours slashed after the Amazon-owned grocery chain raised its starting wages to $15 per hour last year.

Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos announced the pay raise across all of Amazon and Amazon-owned businesses last October as a cynical public relations ploy in response to mounting public outrage following revelations of brutal exploitation at the world’s largest online retailer.

According to the Guardian, an Illinois-based Whole Foods worker told them that “once the $15 minimum wage was enacted, part-time employee hours at their store were cut from an average of 30 to 21 hours a week, and full-time employees saw average hours reduced from 37.5 hours to 34.5 hours. The worker provided schedules from 1 November to the end of January 2019, showing hours for workers in their department significantly decreased as the department’s percentage of the entire store labor budget stayed relatively the same.” The reduction in working hours per-employee has not been made up for with new hires, forcing workers to accomplish the same tasks in less time.

The worker said that he or she had received an email explaining that the cut to hours was “the direct result of guidance from our regional team,” i.e., from upper levels of management. That this is a company-wide policy was confirmed by accounts from workers from across the country. “This hours cut makes that raise pointless as people are losing more than they gained and we rely on working full shifts,” one Maryland worker told the Guardian. Some workers have had to resort to taking paid time off in order to compensate temporarily for the loss in hours.

“Things that have made [the cut to hours] more noticeable are the long lines, the need to call for cashier and bagging assistance, and customers not being able to find help in certain departments because not enough are scheduled, and we are a big store,” a California worker told the paper.

The cut in hours to Whole Foods workers lines up with the experience of workers at Amazon itself, who discovered that their modest pay increase was tied to the elimination of stock bonuses and other benefits. Shannon Allen, the well-known Amazon whistleblower whose story was first broken by the World Socialist Web Site, walked the WSWS through the figures and showed how the elimination of the stock vesting and variable compensation programs meant she would lose thousands of dollars in total compensation under the new plan.

“It makes me so mad,” Shannon said at the time. “I want to know who Bezos asked about doing this. Bezos said that he supposedly heard from his workers. Who did he ask? It wasn’t me. We didn’t get to vote. They didn’t pass out a ballot. Nobody asked me. Now I have an option to buy my own stock. It just pisses me off.”

Amazon’s announcement of the $15 per hour pay raise was hailed at the time by Bernie Sanders as a “shot heard round the world.” The Democratic Party-aligned media followed suit, writing that this was “how democracy and capitalism are supposed to work,” (The New York Times ) and “inspiring” (the Bezos-owned Washington Post ).

This has now been exposed as a sham. All of those praising Amazon knew from the start that the company would find ways get their pound of flesh back, as had been widely acknowledged by industry analysts.

Predictably, Senator Sanders, who last week announced his candidacy for the 2020 presidential elections, has said nothing about the Guardian report. Sanders had spent months last year campaigning against Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos as one of his “Faces of Greed” and proposed a bill in the Senate called the STOP BEZOS Act, which had no chance of passing, to tax low wage employers such as Amazon.

After Amazon announced its cosmetic pay increase, Sanders made a sudden about face, exchanging mutual praise with Jeff Bezos as though the two were longtime friends and admirers.

Sanders said nothing about the cuts to benefits and actively worked to shield Amazon from criticism as the details of the pay increase became clear. “Our understanding is that the vast majority of Amazon workers are going to see wage increases, including some very significant increases as the minimum wage goes up to $15 an hour,” Sanders told the Fox Business Channel last October in response to mounting criticism of Amazon.

Sanders still cites the bogus pay raise as one of his major accomplishments, and was introduced in a recent appearance in Chicago as “the man who stood up to Amazon and said you will pay $15/hour.”

European Central Bank announces major policy reversal

Nick Beams

The European Central Bank has reversed its policy of slight monetary tightening and announced a new stimulus package in the face of data which show a sharp downturn in growth in the euro zone. The unanimous decision was taken at the meeting of the ECB’s governing council held in Frankfurt yesterday.

The decision came just three months after the central bank announced it was phasing out its asset purchasing program. The bank indicated it would keep interest rates at historic lows at least until next year and potentially indefinitely and set out a new program to offer cheap loans to euro zone banks.

It also indicated it would continue to reinvest the proceeds of bonds which mature under its €2.6 trillion quantitative easing program for an “extended period of time” with reinvestments amounting to about €20 billion a month.

The decision is the first by a major central bank to reverse monetary tightening in the face of growing signs of a slowing global economy. The US Fed has indicated that it has put interest rate rises on hold but has not yet taken steps to ease monetary policy.

The decision by the ECB came as a result of what president Mario Draghi characterised as a “substantial” downward revision of growth estimates for the region. He said the new outlook for annual growth in gross domestic product was 1.1 percent for 2019, 1.6 percent for 2020 and 1.5 percent in 2021.

This compares with estimates just last December of 1.7 percent for 2019 and 1.7 percent and 1.5 percent for the following two years. This means that so sharp has been the fall-off in economic activity that the ECB has slashed its growth estimate for this year by more than one third.

A similar projection has been made by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. On Wednesday it cut its growth forecast for the euro zone to 1 percent from the prediction of 1.8 percent which it made just last November.

The revised figures come after the euro zone experienced its biggest increase in growth in 2017 for a decade. This was accompanied by claims that the world economy was experiencing synchronised growth and that it was finally starting to turn the corner following the economic devastation resulting from the global financial crisis of 2008–2009.

But from the beginning of 2018 the growth momentum began to slow and the deceleration increased throughout the year, with Germany, the region’s largest and most significant economy, barely escaping a recession in the final two quarters.

Growth in China has also been slowing and last year hit its lowest level in three decades, with a further lowering expected for 2019. The US managed to buck the trend, largely as a result of the stimulus provided by the Trump administration’s tax cuts. But there are signs that this is starting to wear off with the US recording lower than expected growth in the fourth quarter of last year.

Reviewing the factors which had led to the decision to reverse course, Draghi pointed to weaknesses particularly in the manufacturing sector, “reflecting the slowdown in external demand” compounded by some country and industry specific factors.

“The risks surrounding the euro area outlook are still tilted to the downside, on account of the persistence of uncertainties related to geopolitical factors, the threat of protectionism and vulnerabilities in emerging markets,” he said.

The ECB also significantly reduced its forecast for inflation in an indication that its target of around 2 percent for the area—regarded as sign of a steadily growing economy—is further away than ever. It reduced the forecast of inflation for 2019 to 1.2 percent, down from the projection of 1.6 percent in December with similar reductions for the following two years.

Other economic data also indicate deep-seated problems. According to Eurostat, productivity shrank in the second half of 2018 for the first time since the financial crisis. Output per hour fell by 0.4 percent on a year-on-year basis in the last quarter of 2018, the sharpest rate of contraction since 2009. This followed a contraction of 0.1 percent in this third quarter.

The contraction was driven by Germany which recorded an annual 0.9 percent decline in output per hour worked. In the third quarter of last year, the German economy contracted for this first time since 2015, with growth remaining flat in the last quarter.

In Italy output per hour fell 0.3 percent in the last quarter, its third consecutive fall.

According to Andrew Harker, associate director at IHS Markit, which publishes purchasing managers indexes that track business sentiment, its data suggested that “the manufacturing sector was the main source of the latest reduction, with industrial productivity decreasing to the greatest extent in almost a decade.”

The ECB decision sent European markets down—a trend which extended to the US—indicating market concerns over global growth. The Dow fell 200 points, the S&P 500 dropped by 0.8 percent and the Nasdaq lost 1 percent, with traders indicating that the decision pointed to a softening of the euro zone economy and added to “uncertainty.”

In a comment published on Bloomberg, the chief economic adviser to the global insurance and financial giant Allianz, Mohamed El-Erian, said the ECB move was as dramatic as the Fed’s “flip-flopping” in January. It showed that ten years after stocks hit their low following the global financial crisis, investors could still rely on “exceptional liquidity support from systemically important central banks.”

He wrote that the “great hope” had been that after “prolonged period of unconventional monetary policies (which almost by definition, don’t offer sustainable solutions but merely buy time at the risk of collateral damage and unintended adverse consequences)” the central banks would be able to hand over to governments. Instead, he continued, as demonstrated by the ECB decision “central banks remain stuck in a morass.”

US deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide at all-time high

Kate Randall 

More than 150,000 Americans died from alcohol and drug-induced fatalities and suicide in 2017. This is more than twice as many as in 1999 and the highest number since recordkeeping began in that year. This skyrocketing rate of so-called deaths of despair was confirmed in a new analysis released this week by Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and Well Being Trust (WBT).

TFAH and WBT analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) between 2016 and 2017 and found that the national rate for deaths due to alcohol, drugs and suicide increased 6 percent over that year, from 43.9 deaths per 100,000 to 46.6 deaths per 100,000. While the rate of increase is lower than in the previous two years, it is still higher than the 4 percent average annual increase since 1999.

The new analysis provides insight into the CDC’s findings last years that showed a drop in life expectancy from 78.7 years to 78.6 years, the third consecutive year-on-year decline. In the years since the 2008 financial crisis many workers and their families have confronted an unprecedented crisis of social misery, which is literally cutting life out from under them.

Certain groups of Americans have been hardest hit by the “deaths of despair” examined in the new analysis:

• Ages 35–54: The rate of death from alcohol, drugs and suicide was 72.4 per 100,000. This was a 35 percent increase over 2007 figures.

• Males of all ages: A death rate of 68.2 deaths per 100,000 was found among men.

• Regional disparities: West Virginia, with 81 deaths per 100,000, and New Mexico, with 77, had the highest rates of “deaths of despair” among the 50 US states.

Death by suicide

The suicide rate in 2017 was 4 percent higher than in 2016, rising from 13.9 deaths per 100,000 to 14.5 deaths per 100,000. In 2017, 47,200 Americans died as a result of suicide. Deaths by suicide were particularly high among males (22.9 per 100,000), whites (16.6 per 100,000) and people living in rural areas (19.4 per 100,000)

Over the past decade suicide rates increased by 22 percent. Suffocation and hanging suicides have risen by 42 percent since 2008, while firearm suicides saw a 22 percent increase. These methods are often chosen by suicide victims over less violent means because they are more likely to result in death.

One of the most disturbing trends over the last decade has been the rise in deaths by children ages 1–17. Although suicide deaths in 2017 were still lower than for other age groups, at 2.4 per 100,000, they have risen by 16 percent since 2016. Over the last decade, 12,660 youth under the age of 17 took their own lives, according to the CDC.

Suicide rates over the past decade have also increased proportionally more among blacks (30 percent rise) and Latinos (36 percent) than among other racial and ethnic groups.

Research published by the CDC last year showed that the overall suicide rate increased by 25 percent across the US over the two decades ending in 2016. These figures paint a picture of a social crisis driving increasing numbers of people, both young and old, to take their own lives in the face of personal crises, mental health issues, substance abuse and economic despair.

In 2017, 35,800 Americans died of alcohol-induced causes. The TFAH/WBT report included deaths from alcohol induced causes, including alcohol poisoning, liver and other diseases. It did not include alcohol-related vehicle accidents, violence or accidental fatalities.

Alcohol-induced deaths rose 2 percent in 2017 over 2016, the smallest increase since 2008–2009. The alcohol death rate has increase by 38 percent since 2008. Alcohol-related deaths were highest among males (16.2 per 100,000), whites (12.2 per 100,000), adults ages 55–74 (26.4 per 100,000) and in rural areas (13 per 100,000).

People 55–74, who should be enjoying their retirement, instead are abusing alcohol in record numbers. Those 18–34—who should be gainfully employed, studying or embarking on new careers—have seen a 69 percent rise in alcohol-related deaths over the past decade, as they suffer through unemployment and layoffs and drown in college debt.

Drug deaths

The synthetic opioids fentanyl and carfentanil are 50 to 100 times and 10,000 times more potent than morphine, respectively. Natural/semisynthetic opioids include hydrocodone, oxycodone, morphine and heroin.

Two decades ago, synthetic opioids were responsible for less than 10 percent of all drug deaths in the US. In 2017, they accounted for 38 percent of all drug deaths, with an average of 547 Americans succumbing to opioid overdose deaths every week.

The synthetic opioid crisis has taken its toll on every segment of American society, but has especially hit males (with 12.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2017), blacks (8.6 deaths per 100,000), whites (9.5 deaths per 100,000), adults ages 18–54 (15.2 deaths per 100,000) and those living in metropolitan areas.

A recent study showed that opioid overdose death rates among US teens and children have tripled over the past 17 years. The study, published online in JAMA Network Open, found that young children died from either accidentally ingesting narcotics or from intentional poisoning. Teens more often died from unintentional overdoses, using prescription painkillers found in their homes or drugs bought on the streets.

The Northeast region had the highest opioid mortality rate in 2017 (15.7 deaths per 100,000), followed by the Midwest (12.1 deaths per 100,000). Drug deaths in the Midwest, which includes the Rust Belt ravaged by industrial decline, saw a 122 percent increase from 2007 to 2017.

The surge in synthetic drug deaths must be laid at the feet of the multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical companies, who have flooded neighborhoods with these potent opioids. Drug companies have pushed prescription narcotics through bribing doctors to prescribe the addictive substances, and by secretly and deliberately increasing their addictive properties.

While politicians of both big business parties have feigned outrage at such practices, they are on the payroll of Big Pharma, receiving millions of dollars from drug company lobbyists. In 2018 alone, the pharmaceutical and health products industry spent a record $280 million on their lobbying efforts.

The war against the health and lives of American workers has been a bipartisan conspiracy conducted over decades as part of a conscious strategy to claw back the gains of the working class begun over a century ago.

For the 150,000 Americans who died from alcohol and drug-induced fatalities and suicides in 2017, millions more have been affected—family, friends, co-workers. But for politicians in Congress and pharmaceutical CEOs this devastating toll is seen as the “cost of doing business.”

The US health care crisis—exemplified by these “deaths of despair” and falling life-expectancy—is a true national emergency, in contrast to the “national emergency” on the Southern US border fabricated by Donald Trump and his fascistic advisers.

The epidemic of alcohol-, drug- and suicide-related deaths is a social crisis that requires a socialist response. Such social misery cannot be battled under conditions where the health and welfare of the vast majority is subjugated to the private wealth of the pharmaceutical and insurance companies and giant healthcare chains. These capitalist enterprises must be expropriated, transformed into public utilities and run on the basis of social need, not profit.

Record US deficit in traded goods

Nick Beams

US President Donald Trump has made a reduction of the trade deficit a cornerstone of his economic policies, insisting it drains wealth from the American economy and results from concessions made to rivals by previous administrations.

But data released by the Commerce Department yesterday show that the deficit in traded goods hit an all-time high of $891.3 billion last year, an increase of 10 percent. After tourism, education and banking were taken into account, it was still $621 billion, the highest level in ten years.

The deficit with China, the major target of Trump’s trade war measures, reached a new record, as did the deficit with Mexico. The goods deficit with China widened by $44 billion last year to reach $419 billion, almost half the total.

Overall, US imports rose by 7.5 percent last year, driven by increased spending on consumer goods, industrial supplies and capital goods. Exports rose as well, but only by 6.3 percent, leading to a wider trade gap.

It appears that the expansion of the trade gap is accelerating. It increased by 18.8 percent in December to almost $60 billion, larger than economists’ predictions, as exports fell by 1.9 percent and imports increased by 2.1 percent.

One of the main impacts on the US of the Trump trade war measures against China is in the area of agriculture. As a result of retaliatory measures imposed by Beijing, China’s purchases of American soybeans, wheat and sorghum fell by almost $10 billion last year.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that, as a result of a fall in prices, due to China shifting its source of supplies, US producers had held on to their product in the hope of a better price. But they had now been forced to sell at a loss. The WSJ cited one farmer who said there were “a lot of farms that are going bankrupt now.”

Overall, the increased deficit is an expression of the inherent contradictions of Trump’s “America First” trade agenda, within the framework of a globalised economy.

Trump has sought to boost the American economy, pledging to lift its growth rate to more than 3 percent, compared to the 2 percent achieved during the Obama administration. But increased US growth means that the American economy sucks in more imports from the rest of the world, leading to an ever-wider trade deficit.

One of the key factors in this process over the past year has been the administration’s tax cut policy. To the extent that it provided a boost to the economy, it led to increased demand for consumer goods—many of them imported—and increased demand from businesses.

This took place at the same time as growth in the rest of the world in 2018 slowed markedly, which led to an increase in the US trade gap.

As Barclay’s economist Pooja Sriram Sriram told the WSJ: “Higher take-home incomes for households have definitely proven to be very conducive to imports. The outcome has been in almost the opposite direction of what the administration has wanted.”

Another factor was the decision by the US Federal Reserve to increase interest rates four times in 2018. This tended to push up the value of the American dollar in the second half of the year, cheapening imports and pushing up the price of American exports.

Caught up in the contradictions of his own policies, Trump lashed out at the Federal Reserve in a speech directed to his electoral base at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend, saying the American economy was doing well, despite the Fed.

“I want a strong dollar but I want a dollar that does great for our country, not a dollar that’s so strong that it makes it prohibitive for us to do business with other nations and take their business,” he said.

Without directly naming Fed chairman Jerome Powell, he said there was a “gentleman at the Fed” that liked a “very strong dollar.”

Trump views trade as a zero-sum game, in which the US benefits if other countries lose. But this creates further contradictions, which found expression in his remarks to the CPAC.

The US, he said, was “booming like never before,” while other countries were “doing very poorly and that makes it even harder for us to be successful.”

However, the obvious economic irrationalities of the administration’s nationalist trade agenda are not going to reverse the situation. Rather, they are more likely to result in a doubling down, with increased pressure being brought to bear on US rivals.

China is not the only target; the administration has also placed the European Union firmly in its sights.

Last July, Trump secured an agreement from European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for negotiations on a trade deal. It was obtained under the threat that the US would impose tariffs on autos and auto parts that would significantly hit Germany.

From the outset, the European side made clear that, so far as they were concerned, agriculture and increased access to EU markets for US products were not on the agenda.

The US has insisted, however, that agriculture be included, even if it were not part of the Trump-Juncker agreement.

Last week, the director of Trump’s National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow, said: “We were aware of that issue from Day 1.” But he insisted that the US had always assumed agriculture would be included in any deal, saying: “You’re not going to have a far-reaching EU trade deal without agriculture.”

Last month, Trump again raised the threat of auto tariffs. “We’re trying to make a deal,” he said. “They’re very tough to make a deal with, the EU. If we don’t make a deal, we’ll do the tariffs.”

In a worsening situation for US farmers—partly as a result of Trump’s own policies—pressure on the EU to have agricultural products included is likely be intensified, with the threat that if they are not, auto tariffs will be invoked.

On the China front, reports continue to be published that Trump is pushing for a deal, in order to be able to announce victory and boost his 2020 campaign for the US presidency. Bloomberg has reported that Trump is fixated on the performance of the stock market.

While the announcement of an agreement, the agency declared, would not provide a major boost, largely because a favourable outcome had been “priced into” the markets already, resulting from administration comments about the progress of the negotiations, that “failure risks roiling stocks.”

But any deal that fails to meet the demands of the anti-China hawks, key sections of which are in the Democratic Party, will create significant opposition, including from media outlets that have backed Trump.

On Tuesday, Senate Democrat leader Charles Schumer warned Trump not to settle for a weak deal.

“But now, when you’re getting close to victory, to relent at the eleventh hour, without achieving meaningful, enforceable and verifiable structural reform to China’s trade policies, would be an abject failure of the president’s China policies and people will shrug their shoulders and say what the heck did he begin this for if he won’t complete it.”

The essential content of what is meant by the “completion” of “verifiable structural reform” was revealed by one of the leading anti-China hawks on the Republican side, Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

In a report issued last month, entitled “Made in China 2025 and the Future of American Industry,” he wrote:

“A common defence of expanded trade with China is that the US would maintain or increase its position on the high end of the value chain, while China would supply the US with lower-value inputs. This has not happened for the US economy as whole. In important areas, China has moved up the value chain, relative to the US.”

In other words, what is necessary is nothing less than a policy aimed at preventing China’s economic and technological advance, and imposing semi-colonial status upon it.