UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has promised, as part of a long-simmering controversy, that migrants arriving in the country without permission will be sent to Rwanda rather than be allowed to claim asylum in the UK.
According to a BBC report, approximately 52,000 migrants have arrived in the UK since the law regarding asylum was changed in 2023 and are in line for deportation. Rwanda has now signed a five-year deal with the UK, with costs estimated to be an astronomical £300 million at least.
The UK-Rwanda deal, officially known as the “Rwanda Asylum Partnership Agreement,” is a controversial policy agreed upon by the UK and Rwanda in April 2022 under former Home Secretary Priti Patel. Her successor, Suella Braverman, also advocated for the plan until she was fired in 2023.
Under this agreement, the UK plans to deport certain asylum seekers to Rwanda, where their asylum claims would be processed. If granted refugee status, these individuals would remain in Rwanda rather than returning to the UK.
But why is the UK deporting these migrants? Britain is supposed to be one of the world’s most welcoming countries to migrants.
The deal has faced significant criticism and legal challenges from human rights organizations, refugee advocacy groups, and some international bodies. Critics have accused the effort as being “racist, illegal and unworkable.” The government’s tough stance on migrants arriving in small boats has been criticized for being racially motivated by anti-racism groups.
Critics also argue that it undermines international protection norms, risks human rights violations, and may not be a humane or effective way to handle asylum seekers. Concerns are also raised about Rwanda’s human rights record, questioning the safety and fairness of processing asylum claims in Rwanda.
It seems there are several motivations behind the UK’s interest in this deal with Rwanda.
The UK government views this policy as a means to deter migrants from making dangerous and illegal journeys to the UK, particularly via crossing the English Channel. The idea is that the possibility of being relocated to Rwanda might discourage people from attempting this route.
The agreement is part of a broader strategy by the UK government to gain greater control over its immigration system, particularly following Brexit. The government argues that the current system is overwhelmed and ineffective at managing the high number of asylum claims.
By transferring asylum seekers to Rwanda, the UK government aims to reduce the costs associated with the asylum process and the maintenance of detention facilities within the UK.
But critics note that under international law, everyone has the right to seek asylum, and countries are obligated to protect people in their territory seeking asylum under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. In fact, the UK was one of the original signatories to that convention.
The idea that the UK is spending vast amounts of taxpayer money to pay Rwanda for migrants who are not even arriving there demonstrates that there is already something wrong with this new legislation.
The UK must continue to act as a country that is safe for asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants. PM Sunak must act immediately to reverse this decision and return the UK to the family of nations that welcomes migrants with open arms.
The US has fired another shot in the escalating economic war with China by imposing new bans limiting the sale of semiconductors to Huawei. The Financial Times (FT) revealed this week that the Biden administration had revoked export licences that allow Intel and Qualcomm to sell their chips to the hi-tech Chinese corporation.
Biden administration imposes new trade measures on Huawei [AP Photo/Patrick Semansky]
The US commerce department confirmed the new bans to the FT but provided no details nor the specific reasons. A spokesperson declared in the vaguest terms that the US makes such decisions to “protect our national security and foreign policy interests, taking into consideration a constantly changing threat environment and technological landscape.”
Washington’s concerns about “national security” and claims of unfair economic practices obscure the more fundamental reason for efforts to cripple Huawei. The rise of Chinese hi-tech companies such as Huawei highlight the historic decline of US imperialism which is prepared to resort to all methods to maintain its global economic and military dominance.
Huawei is highly competitive in key international markets, including mobile phones, laptops and 5G networking equipment, with American hi-tech giants. It devotes huge sums to research and development.
According to a backgrounder report published by the US Council on Foreign Relations last year, Huawei’s R&D budget for 2021 was more than $21 billion—a figure comparable to the top American hi-tech corporations such as Amazon and Alphabet (Google’s parent company). As a percentage of sales, its R&D budget was double that of the US companies.
The Wall Street Journal noted this week that Huawei was still the world’s top company in 2023 in the number of patent applications filed.
Last August, Huawei released its Mate 60 Pro smartphone powered by an advanced Chinese-made 7-nanometre semi-conductor, demonstrating a technological capacity that the US had been seeking to block with previous bans. Moreover, the release took place as US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was in China to pressure Beijing for more concessions.
In April, Huawei released its first artificial intelligence (AI) enabled laptop, the MateBook X Pro laptop, based on Intel’s Core Ultra 9 chip. Leading US Republican anti-China hawks responded by demanding that the Biden administration step up efforts to hobble Huawei’s technological advance.
Marco Rubio, the vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, and Elise Stefanik, a leading House Republican, wrote to Raimondo demanding she revoke export licences for Huawei. Clearly concerned that previous punitive measures had failed, they declared: “It is clear from these trends that Huawei, a blacklisted company that was on the ropes just a few years ago, is making a comeback.”
Beijing yesterday condemned the latest US move against Huawei, pointing out that the ban obviously gave the lie to Washington’s claims that its measures were narrowly restricted to items that purportedly affected national security. “The US restrictions on exporting purely civilian consumer chip products to China and the implementation of a supply cut-off to a specific Chinese company represent a clear case of economic coercion,” a Chinese commerce ministry spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said the US ban “not only contravenes World Trade Organization rules but also severely harms the interests of US companies.” Yesterday, Intel said its sales would take a hit as a result of the export ban. Its shares fell by 2.9 percent yesterday and have lost nearly 38 percent so far this year.
In comments yesterday, Raimondo branded Huawei as a “threat” without offering a shred of evidence. She disingenuously claimed that the latest ban did not represent a change in policy but was simply an extension to sweeping bans put in place in March to prevent the sale of the most advanced chips used in AI technology, as well as the equipment necessary for their manufacture.
The US economic war against Huawei began under the Trump administration. It implemented a series of bans on the use of Huawei equipment by the Defence Department, then added other federal agencies. In 2019, Trump signed an executive order prohibiting US companies from doing business with Huawei and the Commerce Department added the corporation to its “entity list,” which requires licences to sell it US goods.
US allegations—never substantiated—that Huawei equipment could be used by the Chinese government for espionage and even sabotage and therefore constituted a national security threat, amount to the pot calling the kettle black. In 2013, Edward Snowden, a US National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower, exposed the extent of the NSA’s massive spying operations, not only on rivals like China but on its own allies and US citizens.
While American intelligence agencies may be concerned about Chinese spying, a less publicised fear is that the use of Huawei equipment in the US and other countries could be a barrier to their own spy and cyberwarfare operations.
Biden has not only upheld Trump’s restrictions against Huawei and other Chinese hi-tech corporations but extended them. A series of bans culminated in March last year in restrictions on the sale of the most advance semi-conductors and related manufacturing equipment to any Chinese company. The US also sought to extend the ban to other countries, by threatening penalties against foreign companies that used US parts in the manufacture of chips or chipmaking equipment sold to China.
Washington inveighs against Chinese government assistance to companies like Huawei as impermissible state subsidies. However, alongside this week’s ban on sales by Intel and Qualcomm to Huawei, on Tuesday the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced $420 million in grants for companies from the United States and its military allies to build phone network gear that can compete against that produced by Huawei.
The economic war on Chinese corporations is not simply restricted to hi-tech telecommunications but is taking place across a broad front. That includes heavy tariffs on a wide range of Chinese goods and punitive measures against other hi-tech Chinese products such as electric vehicles (EV). Moreover, it takes place alongside a vast US military build-up and strengthening of military alliances throughout the Indo-Pacific in preparation for war with China.
Already involved in an escalating war against Russia in Ukraine and backing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the US is plunging recklessly towards war with China, which it regards as the chief threat to its dominant position.
The impact of El Niño heavy rains and flooding has wreaked havoc on the lives of millions across Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. This is now being compounded by the impact of Cyclone Hidaya in the coastal areas of East Africa.
No sector has been left unscathed. Torrential rains and flash floods have caused hundreds of deaths, tens of thousands of displaced, the collapse of entire infrastructures and the destruction of crops.
Kenya has been particularly badly affected. According to the National Disaster Operations Centre, an estimated 210 people have been killed, 164 injured, and 72 left missing, while 194,305 people have been displaced by heavy rains and flooding. Critical infrastructure has also been affected, including roads, bridges, dams, and health facilities. Schools have been ordered to close.
In Nairobi County, the home of Kenya’s capital, an estimated 147,061 people are affected and 20,968 families displaced by the heavy rainfall. The majority of deaths have happened in the slums of Mathare and Kibera, where residents have accused the government of William Ruto of neglecting them.
One resident in Mathare told Al Jazeera, “The government says they deployed the military and the national youth service and they are stepping up search and rescue missions, but where are they? It has been a week, and where are they? I have not seen anyone here in Mathare. Not one person from the government has come to help us”.
Residents take refugee at Ombaka Primary School after fleeing floodwaters that wreaked havoc in Ombaka Village, Kisumu, Kenya. [AP Photo/Brian Ongoro]
In the most tragic single event, a mudslide in Mai Mahiu claimed the lives of 71 people after water blew through a blocked river tunnel under a railway line in Nakuru County, causing a flash flood, as many of the victims lay at home sleeping.
Human Rights Watch published findings that working-class neighborhoods and the poorest areas have been most severely impacted by the floods due to “less solid structures, congestion and poor sanitation infrastructure”.
The floods are also having a devastating impact on agriculture, already affected by several years of drought. Hunger is now looming. According to the Kenya Red Cross Society, at least 8,565 livestock have been lost and 36,344 acres of croplands damaged.
There is now a risk of disease outbreaks. Cholera, spreading from contaminated water supplies, has been detected in 34 people. Stagnant water, creating breeding grounds for mosquitoes, is expected to increase the number of malaria cases.
In neighboring Tanzania, floods claimed the lives of at least 155 people and injured 236 others. More than 200,000 people and 51,000 households were affected. Ferry services between Tanzania’s capital, Dar es Salaam, and Zanzibar were suspended as Cyclone Hidaya approached with maximum winds of 120kph.
In Burundi, torrential rains have affected more than 179,200 people and displaced 31,200 since the start of the year. In a country already suffering high levels of food insecurity, it is estimated that 10 per cent of the country’s crop area for the 2024 agricultural season has been affected.
In Rwanda, heavy rains and floods killed 14 people, and damaged roads and bridges. In Somalia, more than 127,000 people have been affected, with 8,376 displaced and 7 children killed.
The severity of the latest record rainfall and flooding is another demonstration of the destructiveness of capitalist-induced climate change and global warming. Scientists have warned for decades that more intense rainfalls will be triggered as greater levels of moisture accumulate in the heated atmosphere.
East Africa is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change, with extreme weather events growing increasingly common and intense, including severe droughts, rains and floods. Since late 2020, the region has suffered its worst drought in 40 years.
The fight against climate change is fundamentally a class question. Invariably, across the region and the globe, it is the poorest layers of the population—whether workers, pastoralists, small farmers and/or people living in informal settlements—who suffer most from these frequent climate-related catastrophes.
On the other side, the wealthy layers live in the affluent neighborhoods of Nairobi, Kigali, Dar es Salaam, Mogadishu and Bujumbura, away from flood-prone areas and with access to generators and good sewage systems. They drive SUVs that skim over badly damaged roads and potholes, can work remotely using laptops, and can afford highly inflated food prices and store them in their pantries. If affected by viruses, they can access top private health facilities.
Rooted in these affluent layers, politicians cynically urge the poor to pray their way out of the crisis. The Ruto government has made a call for prayers to address the flood situation, a year after Ruto invoked God to dismiss the probability of extreme rains and refused to make any preparations while ruthlessly imposing IMF-dictated tax hikes and subsidy cuts and violently crushing anti-austerity protests, claiming the lives of over 70 protestors.
The fight to throw off imperialist exploitation is inextricably bound up with the struggle against this venal oligarchy that function as the local representatives of the imperialist powers and global corporations.
Less than 0.1 percent of the population in Kenya (8,300 people) own more wealth than the bottom 99.9 percent (more than 44 million people). That 0.1 percent includes Ruto, the current opposition leader Raila Odinga and former President Uhuru Kenyatta. The country has one of the fastest growing echelons of the super-rich anywhere in the world.
Tanzania is home to Mohammed Dewji, with a portfolio of $1.77 billion, the 13th richest person in Africa. He is the CEO of METL, a conglomerate founded by his father in the 1970s. He is part of an elite that has enriched itself in sectors such as energy, agriculture, telecommunications, and Fast Moving Consumer Goods.
Rwanda has been run for three decades by the Western-backed dictator Paul Kagame, with a personal net worth of at least $500 million. He and his family members control the majority of the Rwandan economy through a holding company called Crystal Ventures.
This ill-gotten wealth must be expropriated and directed towards meeting urgent human needs, including measures for anticipating, mitigating, and responding to extreme weather events such as heavy rains and floods.
Infrastructure must be made capable of withstanding severe weather conditions and advanced satellite technology and geographical information used to predict high levels of flooding. Drainage systems must be maintained and enhanced, sand dams and rainwater harvesting systems constructed, and projects launched to restore and conserve wetlands, which serve as natural water absorbers. Planning regulations must be tightened and stringently enforced to prevent construction in flood-prone zones and safeguard natural buffers like forests and grasslands.
But such crisis measures can only achieve their ends to the degree that they are tied in with a global struggle against capitalism by the working class—especially in the imperialist centres where the global corporations plan their pillage of the planet—that would facilitate a rapid transfer of resources and technology to the oppressed countries.
Funding the fight against the climate crisis also means stopping the flow of resources to military spending, rapidly accelerating as the major imperialist powers prepare for conflict on a scale not seen since 1945 and drag with them their former colonies run by their proxies. Ruto is increasing Kenya’s ties with the US, whose drive to oppose the rise of China across the African continent threatens to plunge the whole region into an arms race and war.
Over the weekend, as the country drowned in floods, Nairobi announced it was acquiring a high-tech missile defense system from the genocidal regime of Israel using a $1 billion loan from Tel Aviv. Nairobi claims growing security threats in the Gulf of Aden from Al-Shabaab in Somalia—which has no aircraft—and the Houthis in Yemen, who have a single fighter jet—an ancient F-5.
Defence spending in the country has grown by 38 percent from 2021 to 2024, from $925 million to $1.2 billion.
Donald Tusk’s government in Poland plans to take tougher action against refugees, both those from Ukraine who enjoy special status and refugees from the Middle East who cross the border from Belarus.
At the beginning of the year, 101 organisations and 550 intellectuals, artists, lawyers and activists had already appealed to the government to stop the illegal pushbacks to Belarus. These include Amnesty International Poland, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, and refugee organisations such as Grupa Granica.
Individual supporters include personalities such as Wanda Traczyk-Stawska and Anna Przedpełska-Trzeciakowska, who took part in the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis in 1944, as well as award-winning artists such as actress Maja Komorowska and director Agnieszka Holland.
The previous PiS-led government had organised an unprecedented smear campaign against Holland for denouncing the devastating conditions at the border in her film Zielona Granica (Green Border). Former EU Council President Tusk won the Polish elections last October, not least because he presented himself as a democratic alternative to the authoritarian PiS.
The tightening of the country’s anti-refugee policies shows that this is not the case. The attack on defenceless refugees serves governments around the world to stir up chauvinist sentiments, strengthen right-wing forces and attack the democratic and social rights of the entire working class. Tusk is no exception. He proves once again that the pro-war policy—which he pursues just as aggressively as the PiS—is not compatible with democracy.
Expansion of Fortress Europe
When an increasing number of refugees crossed the EU’s external border from Belarus to Poland in 2021, ruling circles from Warsaw to Brussels unleashed a hysterical smear campaign. They claimed that Belarus and Russia were waging a “hybrid war” against the EU, justifying the deprivation of rights and dehumanisation of asylum seekers. Tusk had already supported this from the opposition at the time and is now seamlessly continuing this propaganda.
The appeal to the Polish government states:
We Europeans know what it leads to when we allow people to be deprived of their dignity and fundamental rights because of their affiliation to a national, ethnic, or religious group. No human being should be treated like a “weapon.”
The appeal bitterly refers to Tusk’s election campaign promise to restore the rule of law:
Pushbacks must be stopped immediately. If this is delayed, the Polish authorities are condoning human rights violations. We had a different idea of the legality we were promised.
But the government does not want to stop the human rights violations, it wants to expand them. Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński had already called for the borders to be “one hundred percent impermeable.” In February, he and Tusk announced a “modernisation” of the border protection facilities.
The 5.5 metre high and 186 kilometre long steel fence, which is secured with cameras, drones and patrols, is already unrivalled in Europe—at least since the dismantling of the “Iron Curtain” between West and East in the 1990s. On top of that, the military barriers are destroying the Białowieża Forest nature reserve. The last primeval forest in Europe is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
According to NGOs such as Grupa Granica and Pro Asyl, 5,000 border guards, supported by 10,000 soldiers who were deployed to the border under the PiS government, ensured 3,346 pushbacks could be carried out between May and August 2023 alone. Since the beginning of 2024, the border guard has officially reported 2,300 attempted border crossings and 1,771 pushbacks.
At least 60 deaths have been confirmed since 2021 and a further 300 people are considered to have “disappeared.” The number of unreported cases is likely to be dramatically higher. Many have been seriously injured trying to cross the fence. The restricted zone along the border is also notorious for human rights violations in detention centres and attacks on journalists and volunteers.
In November, Polish border officials shot a 22-year-old man from Syria in the back as he tried to cross the fence. He survived after an operation in hospital. The public prosecutor’s office stated that it was an “unfortunate accident” and that the soldier had “stumbled.” Such statements also make clear that the Tusk government’s promise to legally investigate the violations of the law at the border under the previous government are absolutely worthless.
A few weeks ago, a woman with a newborn baby was apprehended by Polish border guards. As Grupa Granica reports, the heavily pregnant woman had already been turned back twice by the officials. She had then given birth to her child in life-threatening conditions in no man’s land.
At a press conference at the beginning of April, Tusk declared that as Polish head of government, he was obliged to ensure the effective defence of the Polish border. He was of the opinion that “even strict methods of protection against illegal migration can be more or less humane.”
The Polish government’s “humane” plan envisages sealing the border so hermetically that not a single refugee can get past the border fence. According to the repugnant and cynical logic of the Tusk government, if no one can get in, there will be no illegal pushbacks.
Tusk said he was aware “that some people were disappointed by this,” but that he had never hidden his position. In fact, Tusk had supported the PiS government’s measures from the outset and engaged in racist agitation against immigrants during the election campaign.
Tusk has also attacked the new EU immigration pact (GEAS), which provides for the detention of refugees in deportation camps similar to concentration camps and effectively abolishes the right to asylum, because it contains a means for the distribution of refugees. “We will protect Poland against the redistribution mechanism,” he declared.
Tusk is supported by an alliance of parties ranging from the extreme right-wing Polish People’s Party (PSL) and the Greens to the social democratic SLD and the pseudo-left Razem. The latter is particularly dishonest. After the coalition negotiations, it announced it would not join the new government, but would support it, obviously realising it would be tantamount to political suicide if it openly supported Tusk’s extreme right-wing agenda.
Ukrainian refugees
Ukrainian refugees, who still enjoy a special status, are also increasingly becoming the target of attacks. To this day, Polish government representatives like to boast that over 3 million Ukrainians fled the war to neighbouring Poland. In fact, it was mainly the civilian population who helped the refugees on their own initiative and looked after them. The government, on the other hand, cut their social benefits after just a few months in order to force the refugees, some of whom were traumatised, into work. Many have therefore moved on or commute back and forth regularly.
A week ago, Defence Minister Kosiniak-Kamysz (PSL) defamed Ukrainians as “shirkers” who had fled because they did not want to go to war. “I think that many of our compatriots were and are outraged when they see young Ukrainian men in hotels and cafés and when they hear how much effort it costs to help Ukraine,” he told Polast News.
Kosiniak-Kamysz promised that the government would support Ukraine in the repatriation of men fit for military service. The far-right Zelensky government is trying to recruit more men with the new mobilisation law and the suspension of consular services in order to send them to the front as cannon fodder.
“We as Poles have long suggested to the Ukrainian side that we can help identify those who are militarily obligated and should go to Ukraine. This is a civic duty,” the Polish minister of defence said. The ministry’s press office added that “support for the return/repatriation of Ukrainian citizens of military age” required “bilateral agreements” and Poland was “ready for such talks.”
The government has already taken the first step. It has extended subsidiary protection only until June 31, 2024 for all those who came to Poland after the start of the war, but not for Ukrainians who were already in Poland before then. The deadline has also raised eyebrows. The European Council decided to extend the protection until March 4, 2025. The Polish government reportedly wants to extend the deadline by a further year after June.
As this short extension alone will cost the state coffers almost 2 billion zlotys (€450 million), the government is working on abolishing subsidies for accommodation and meals (40 zlotys/€9.3 per day). These had already been restricted in June 2022 and only applied to senior citizens, disabled people and women with children. Now they too are to receive nothing.
Of the just over 1 million Ukrainians who came to Poland in 2022, around 90 percent are women, children and elderly people. However, at least another million Ukrainians were already living and working in Poland on a regular basis. There is now a growing fear among them that they will also be sent to the front.
The Tusk government’s attacks on refugees go hand in hand with its own preparations for war. All Poland’s parties are supporting an insane rearmament programme, and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski has repeatedly declared his willingness to send his own troops to Ukraine. At the same time, the government is cultivating the fascistic dregs of society with its agitation against immigrants, which it needs to suppress opposition from the left in its own country. The fight for democratic rights is therefore inextricably linked to the fight against war.
Europe is becoming a key battleground for the marketing of electric vehicles (EVs) as the European Commission prepares to bring down what has been called a “blockbuster” report on whether Chinese subsidies are unfairly undercutting their European rivals.
Models pose near the BYD Seal 06 Dmi unveiled during Auto China 2024 held in Beijing, Thursday, April 25, 2024. [AP Photo/Ng Han Guan]
Trade and tariffs were one of the main topics in the discussions between Chinese president Xi Jinping and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in Paris on Monday.
Following the meeting, Macron said there had been some advances on the issue of whether China would impose retaliatory tariffs on French cognac.
Von der Leyen struck a belligerent tone on the key issue of EVs. She repeated the claim that China’s “surplus production” was causing market distortions.
“We will defend our companies, we will defend our economies,” she said.
Marcon’s concerns go well beyond brandy. He struck a similar tone to Von der Leyen in a recent newspaper interview in which he said trade relations with China had to be framed with regard to France’s economic security.
There needed to be an “update” because China had “excess capacity in many areas and exports massively to Europe.”
He was not proposing that France distance itself from China but “we must better protect our national security, our sovereignty … and be much more realistic in defending our national interests.”
The same issues are being raised in the US as the Biden administration is developing further anti-China measures on a range of high-tech products. These include EVs and “smart cars” on the basis that they are a threat to “national security”—underscoring the link between economic and military warfare.
There is no question the Chinese state provides support for what it regards as key sectors of manufacturing.
This is in line with the push by Xi to develop the “new productive forces” regarded as central to the next stage of China’s economic development. This is under conditions where the old “model” based on massive real estate and infrastructure projects has run into major problems, not least the growth of debt.
China’s policy, however, is not out of line with what is taking place in the rest of the world. One of the largest state subsidy schemes is the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act which provides major handouts and tax breaks to corporations investing in green technology and has been denounced by the EU as protectionist.
The EU Commission report, which was initiated last September, will be released in a few weeks, with predictions that it will call for tariffs on Chinese imports ranging between 15 and 30 percent.
Such is the greater technological development carried out by Chinese companies and their more efficient production methods that the price of their EVs will still come in lower than those of their European counterparts if tariffs are set at that level.
According to analysis by the Rhodium Group, an independent research organisation, the results of which were reported in the Financial Times, it would take a tariff as high as 50 percent to make the European market unattractive for Chinese EV exporters.
Examining the position of BYD, one of the major Chinese EV manufacturers, it found that even with a 30 percent tariff, Chinese exports to Europe would still remain “highly attractive.” Chinese production is rapidly expanding and is expected to reach 6.6 million EVs by 2026, up from 2.9 million at the end of last year.
A report on BYD published in the FT last month indicated the driving forces behind its rise to prominence.
State subsidies play a role in China as they have in every technological development around the world as the historical record shows.
One need only recall the role of the state-funded military industrial complex in the US in computer technology and many other areas, or the role of state funding in Japan’s economic rise.
Subsides play a role, but the rise of BYD and other Chinese firms is primarily driven by major technological advances and more efficient production methods. It already rivals Tesla as the world’s largest EV manufacturer, functioning as a vertically integrated structure. In China, which is the world’s largest auto market, BYD’s lower cost pure-battery and plug-in hybrids comprise one-third of all EV vehicles sold.
Last year the company had revenue equivalent to $83.2 billion, a five-fold increase from 2018.
According to the FT report, the company has stakes in six lithium mines across three countries assuring access to the metal vital to produce its batteries. It develops its own computer chips and software programs. Broader social forces also work in its favour.
“The company is able to recruit from the millions of graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) who pour out of China each year—China had 3.6mn Stem graduates in 2020, compared with 820,000 in the US, according to Georgetown University data,” it said.
It employs close to 100,000 people in research and development based at 11 different locations in China and “on average, its researchers apply for 19 new patents every working day.”
Chinese companies enjoy a significant cost advantage in the building of new factories for the manufacture of batteries. The cost in China is $50-60 million per gigawatt hour compared to $100 million elsewhere.
In 2022 BYD made a major breakthrough when it developed new technology which fused together the battery cell with the body of the vehicle, applicable not only to cars but buses, trucks and other commercial vehicles, reducing costs and weight while increasing rigidity and improving crash safety.
There is another factor at work which was alluded to in comments from Tim Buckley of the Australia-based think tank Climate Energy Finance cited in the FT report.
“They are strategically far sighted,” he said of Chinese firms. “They don’t have the myopic short-termism of Western capitalism.”
This is a reference to the parasitism endemic in major corporations, especially in the US, where shareholder value, often elevated by the investment of profits into share buybacks, has become a key driving force of their operations. This is at the expense of technological development and safety, as the case of Boeing which its series of crashes graphically illustrates.
However, none of this will halt the drive by the US or the EU to impose tariff and other restrictions on Chinese EV producers.
The EU has already had some experience in the economic irrationality of such measures. In 2012 it imposed a tariff regime against imports of Chinese solar panels but then had to lift the controls because it could not find enough suppliers in Europe.
Notwithstanding this history, it will not be repeated because a new dynamic is now at work in the global economy.
The annual reports for 2024 released Monday by the trustees of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds have become the signal for renewed demands for cuts in retirement and healthcare benefits on which tens of millions of Americans depend.
The trustees projected that the reserves backing the programs, which provide income for retirees and cover hospital and medical expenses for the elderly, will be depleted by 2033 and 2036, respectively. This will mean an immediate cut of 21 percent in benefits provided by the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund, which covers some 70 million Americans, and a shortfall of 11 percent in hospital coverage for 66 million Medicare recipients.
This graph shows that the effective tax rate of the 400 richest Americans has declined by more than 30 percent over the last 48 years, while the bottom half of Americans has seen their taxes increase by 1 percent. [Photo: New York Times, data from Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman]
Both programs are funded by trust funds whose income comes from payroll taxes that are not dependent on the annual congressional budget process. While current payroll taxes would keep the programs running, the long-running deficit of revenues compared to mandated benefits could no longer be offset by dipping into previously compiled reserves.
Monday’s reports are in line with actuarial warnings going back decades showing long-term erosion and eventual insolvency of these massive programs, which remain the core of the very limited social welfare system in capitalist America.
Both Social Security and Medicare could, from a financial standpoint, be made whole simply by raising the cap on income subject to payroll taxes from the current level of $168,600, which targets working class and middle class people, to a figure high enough to seriously impact the vast sums pocketed by the rich and the super-rich.
This would more than offset demographic changes in the US population—a shrinking workforce, a higher proportion of elderly and retired people—who live longer than their forebears in the 1930s when Social Security was enacted and the 1960s when Medicare was launched—and consequently fewer people paying taxes to support a growing population of beneficiaries.
The impossibility of “fixing” the problem is due to the completely oligarchic character of American society. It is a de facto dictatorship exercised by billionaires and the gargantuan aggregates of capital they control, through the mechanism of two parties that do their bidding.
One example is the editorial posted Monday by the Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (net worth, $202.6 billion), berating both the Democrats and Republicans for failing to address the funding crisis of Social Security and Medicare. While the column (“The crisis Biden and Trump don’t want to deal with”) supports raising the payroll tax cap beyond the current level, it does so in order to call for increasing the Social Security retirement age and “slowing benefit growth” for “the top half of earners”—a category that would include masses of working and middle class people.
Along similar lines, the Bipartisan Policy Center chided the politicians for their unwillingness to propose “serious reforms” and make the “difficult choices” required to “save” the programs.
In other words, the working class must be made to pay for the crisis of Social Security and Medicare fueled by the refusal of the oligarchs to pay more than a pittance, if that, in taxes.
It is necessary to crack the whip all the harder under conditions where Biden and his Republican “colleagues” have just passed a record military budget of nearly $1 trillion and approved a $95 billion supplementary military request to fund the escalating war with Russia over Ukraine, funnel more arms to the fascist Israeli regime as it carries out genocide in Gaza, launch a war against Iran and prepare for all-out war against China, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation.
Already, homelessness and food insecurity among retirees in the US are at record levels, and life expectancy is declining.
The latter is, for the ruling class, a positive. The Bipartisan Policy Center may have let the cat out of the bag when it wrote, following the release of the Social Security and Medicare reports:
This many Americans entering retirement is only part of the problem. Compounding the stress on Social Security’s finances is how long those retirees are living.
Providing adequate income and healthcare for the entire population in America, the richest country in the world, and, indeed in all countries, is a revolutionary question. Just last Friday, the New York Times published a column by the noted economist Gabriel Zucman, who wrote:
In the 1960s, the 400 richest Americans paid more than half of their income in taxes. Higher tax rates for the wealthy kept inequality in check and helped fund the creation of social safety nets like Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps.
Today, the superrich control a greater share of America’s wealth than during the Gilded Age of the Carnegies and Rockefellers. That’s partly because taxes on the wealthy have cratered. In 2018, America’s top billionaires paid just 23 percent of their income in taxes.
For the first time in the history of the United States, billionaires had a lower effective tax rate than working-class Americans.
US intelligence agencies believe that Vladimir Putin “didn’t order” the killing of Russian oppositionist Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison on February 16. The revelation, published by the Wall Street Journal in late April, came from undisclosed sources within the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the State Department and is “broadly accepted” within these institutions.
Alexei Navalny listens to a question while speaking to the media in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2013. Russian authorities on Friday, Feb. 16, 2023, say Navalny died in prison. He was 47. [AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko]
According to the WSJ, “The U.S. assessment is based on a range of information, including some classified intelligence, and an analysis of public facts, such as the timing of Navalny’s death and how it overshadowed Putin’s re-election.”
Indeed, the forces that have benefited the most so far from the oppositionist’s end are not the Kremlin, but its right-wing critics, the White House and NATO, all of whom immediately blamed Moscow when Navalny died and used it to whip up anti-Russian sentiment. With the war against Russia in Ukraine resulting in little more than failed “counteroffensives,” massive body counts and societies on both sides of the Atlantic increasingly disgusted by violence, Washington and its allies seized upon Navalny’s death this winter to try to breathe new life into their fight for “democracy” in Russia.
They are now working to elevate his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, as the heir to his legacy. Time magazine included her in its just-published list of the 100 most influential people of 2024. The blurb written about her was authored by Vice President Kamala Harris. Germany’s news network Deutsche Welle, as well as the country’s prestigious Ludwig Erhard Summit, recently each announced that Navalnaya will receive their annual “freedom” prize.
Neither the White House nor the agencies cited by the Wall Street Journal have responded to the newspaper’s revelation. The New York Times and the Washington Post, both of which play a leading role in promoting the anti-Russian line in the mass media, buried the news and failed to report on it. Political commentators in Europe dismissed it. Slawomir Debski, director of the government-funded Polish Institute of International Affairs, declared that “Putin was personally invested in [Navalny’s] fate,” such that “the chances for this kind of unintended death is low.”
The WSJ article has provoked sharp denunciations from Navalny’s supporters within the Russian opposition. Leonid Volkov, a central figure in the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) founded by Navalny, said those who arrived at the conclusion “clearly do not understand anything about how modern day’s Russia runs.” “The idea of Putin being not informed and not approving killing Navalny is ridiculous,” he added. However, he did not declare that the newspaper’s account of what US intelligence officials said was false.
From the moment the news broke that the Russian oppositionist had collapsed in a prison yard in western Siberia, the FBK has been insisting that the head of the Kremlin masterminded his death. This claim is an essential element of their false characterization of Navalny, what he represented and the political movement of which they are now jockeying for control. According to them, the Russian oppositionist had a broad base of popular support, was beloved by millions and was the personification of democratic values. Because he was all of these things, Putin had to kill him and did kill him.
But their depiction of Navalny—a far-right, pro-market Russian nationalist who allied with fascists, celebrated the importance of doing so and commanded no popular support outside well-to-do-layers in the major cities—was complete nonsense, and so was their alleged “proof” of Putin’s involvement.
In February, Maria Pevchikh, the head of the FBK (an organization that refuses to make public information about its funding sources) released a well-made, seven-minute YouTube video in which she declared that “Navalny was everything that Putin could never be” and “he hated him for it.” In answer to the rhetorical question as to why the Kremlin leader had to kill him precisely now, she says that she knows “the answer” and has “not the slightest reason or desire to hide it.”
Pevchikh, who is expertly done-up, claims that Putin acted in order to stop a prisoner exchange secured by her organization through strong-arming Western politicians. This was done, she declares in an effort to impress the viewer, with the aid of “the wealthiest people on the planet.” In return for Navalny, the Kremlin was to get Vadim Krasikov, a Russian imprisoned in Berlin on charges of carrying out a murder at the behest of Moscow. Instead, according to her, Putin, having decided, “I just need to get rid of that bargaining chip,” had Navalny killed. This was his solution to the fact that he did not want to continue with the prisoner swap.
Leaving aside the puffing up of the FBK as some sort of influential organization capable of telling Western governments what to do (as opposed to vice versa), this makes no sense. Any prisoner exchange agreed to by the Russian government could only have been executed with the president’s prior approval. If Putin did not want to release Navalny, he simply would not have agreed to the swap. One does not kill off one’s own “bargaining chips.” One removes them from the table and puts them in one’s pocket.
Clearly aware of her unconvincing logic, Pevchikh admits Putin’s actions were “absolutely irrational.” She leaves it at that, however, and this is the sum total of the proof that the Russian president killed Navalny.
The WSJ’s revelation that multiple US intelligence agencies have determined that Putin did not order the murder of his critic come as news reports indicate that the Russian opposition is riven by various divisions. While powerful layers within the US ruling class have, at least for the moment, thrown their public support behind Navalny’s widow, there are many other contenders for the prize of America’s leading stooge in Moscow.
The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have both recently carried articles about the tensions among these layers, a theme which the Financial Times also took up last year. Ex-Russian billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, right-wing former chess champion Garry Kasparov, Kiev-based Ilya Ponomaryov, Israeli-based social media personality Maxim Katz, Yulia Navalnaya, FBK-personnel Leonid Volkov and Maria Pevchikh and others inside and outside of Russia are all vying for the role of leader of the opposition.
In a March 19 article, the New York Times lamented the “insularity” of the oppositionists grouped around the FBK, the back-and-forth squabbling between them and other Kremlin critics and the fact that the organization was unable to turn out more a than a few dozen people to a demonstration called to commemorate Navalny’s death outside the Russian embassy in Vilnius.
But, whatever the differences within the various layers of the anti-Putin forces, they all share, as these recent news articles made clear, a few things in common—unabashedly pro-market policies, hatred of the Russian working class and a commitment to the US-NATO effort to break up and dominate Russia. None of them enjoy significant support in the Russian masses.
An April 17 Wall Street Journal article titled, “Infighting Divides Russian Opposition in Exile,” noted, “Most opposition figures do agree on a twofold strategy: first, to gradually sow discontent inside Russia and maintain the support of the 10% to 20% of Russians they estimate to be disillusioned with the Russian president; second, to seize on any unrest inside Russia and turn it into a street movement or rally around whichever protest leader comes to the fore.”
According to the newspaper, oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky put the matter succinctly, stating, “I’m ready to back the devil if he helps destabilize this regime.” Anticipating a split in the Putin-regime elites, Khodorkovsky declared, “You need to back one group of bad guys against another.” Such are Russia’s great fighters for “democracy.”
