Why Does the U.S. Hate Peace?

Ted Rall

Give peace a chance, the song urges.

But the United States won’t have it.

Olympic diplomacy seems to be working on the Korean peninsula. After a pair of South Korean envoys visited Pyongyang, they issued a promising communiqué. “The North Korean side clearly stated its willingness to denuclearize,” the statement said. Considering that the Korean crisis and a derpy emergency management official had Hawaiians jumping down manholes a few months ago, this news comes as a relief.

Then comes the rub. The South Korean statement continued: “[North Korea] made it clear that it would have no reason to keep nuclear weapons if the military threat to the North was eliminated and its security guaranteed [my emphasis].”

In other words, the DPRK is saying — reasonably — we’ll get rid of our nukes but only if you promise not to invade us. That guarantee would have to be issued by two countries: South Korea and the United States.

This would directly contradict long-standing U.S. foreign policy, which clearly and repeatedly states that the use of military force is always on the table when we don’t get our way in an international dispute.

Kim Jong-On has good reasons to be afraid of us. In a speech to the UN President Trump threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea. President George W. Bush declared them a member of the “Axis of Evil”; we invaded and currently occupy Iraq, one of the two other supposed Evildoers. After deposing and enabling the execution of Iraq’s president. Last week Bush’s UN ambassador John Bolton published a legal argument for nuking North Korea without provocation.

Believe it or not, this is the soft side of U.S. foreign policy.

For decades South Korea has tried to deescalate its relationship with the North, not infrequently expressing its desire to end formal hostilities, which legally never ended after the Korean War, and move toward the long-term goal of a united Korea under a single government. And for decades the United States has stood in the way, awkwardly trying to look reasonable as it opposes peace. “We do not seek to accelerate reunification,” a State Department spokesman said recently.

To say the least.

“South-North talks are inextricably related to North Korea-United States relations,” South Korean President Kim Dae Jung said in 2001, after Bush canceled dialogue with the North. The South, dependent on more than 20,000 U.S. troops stationed along its northern border, was forced to suspend reunification talks too.

The Reagan Administration pressured its South Korean ally to break off reunification talks in 1985.

Nixon did the same thing in 1974. After Nixon’s resignation later that year, President Gerald Ford opposed a UN resolution to demilitarize the border by withdrawing U.S. troops.

Even Mr. Reasonable, Barack Obama, refused to listen to South Koreans who want peace (and to visit long-lost relatives in North Korea). Celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice, Obama threatened to loose the dogs of war: “The United States of America will maintain the strongest military the world has ever known, bar none, always. That is what we do.” What Obama would not do was allow North and South Korea to sit down and work out their differences. Before talks, Obama said, North Korea would have to denuclearize. After which, of course, there would be no need for talks because, hey, regime change is fun!

Why, a sane person might ask at this point, would U.S. policymakers want to risk World War III over two countries that repeatedly say they want to make peace and get back together?

For my money a 2007 analysis by the geopolitical thinktank Stratfor comes closest to explaining what’s really going on inside the Beltway: “The basic global situation can be described simply. The United States has overwhelming power. It is using that power to try to prevent the emergence of any competing powers. It is therefore constantly engaged in interventions on a political, economic and military level. The rest of the world is seeking to limit and control the United States. No nation can do it alone, and therefore there is a constant attempt to create coalitions to contain the United States. So far, these coalitions have tended to fail, because potential members can be leveraged out of the coalition by American threats or incentives.”

The U.S. is the Great Global Disruptor. “As powers emerge, the United States follows a three-stage program. First, provide aid to weaker powers to contain and undermine emerging hegemons. Second, create more formal arrangements with these powers. Finally, if necessary, send relatively small numbers of U.S. troops to Eurasia to block major powers and destabilize regions.” For example, Iran is the emerging hegemon in the Middle East. The U.S. undermines Iran with trade sanctions, props up rivals like Saudi Arabia with aid, and deploys U.S. troops next door in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Similarly the U.S. keeps China off-balance by propping up Taiwan and setting up new U.S. bases in the region. We play India against Pakistan, Europe against Russia.

A united Korea would create a new power center, potentially a new economic rival, to the U.S. in the Pacific Rim. So the U.S. uses threats (“totally destroy”) against the North and incentivizes the South (free border security).

It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so sick. Here’s to the day the two Koreas see through us.

Just How Unequal Are America’s Major Corporations?

Bob Lord

That America’s income distribution has grown dramatically more unequal in the past 40 years is beyond debate. The share of the top 1 percent has doubled since 1980, to over 20 percent of all income.

Could it get any worse? A look at America’s large, privately held corporations suggests it could.

When Americans think of large corporations, most of us think of corporations like Pepsi or ExxonMobil, whose shares are publicly traded.

We can know a fair amount about these companies from the reports they file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Thanks to an Obama-era rule that recently went into effect, we even know how much their CEO makes compared to typical workers.

Many large corporations, however, are privately owned. Typically a single shareholder, members of the same family, or perhaps a small group of investors owns all the stock of one of those corporations.

These private owners aren’t required to release much financial information, and few do so voluntarily. So their finances are much more opaque.

According to Forbes, there are over 200 privately held corporations in America with over $2 billion in annual revenue. The largest, Cargill, had $109 billion in revenue in 2016.

Unlike at publicly traded corporations, we don’t know just how unequal things are between the employees of those privately held corporations and their owners. Might those owners be stingier with workers?

I began to wonder about this when I saw an announcement by Ronald Cameron, the owner and CEO of the poultry processing Mountaire Corporation, of bonuses he’d decided to give his hourly employees. Those bonuses, he said, were made possible by the tax legislation recently passed by the Republican Congress.

Mountaire, according to Forbes, has 6,000 employees and just over $2 billion in annual revenue. If every employee qualified for the maximum bonus of $1,000 Cameron announced, Mountaire’s employees would receive $6 million in bonuses total.

Cameron, I’d noticed, is also a major Republican donor. He contributed over $14 million to Republican candidates for the 2016 election, including $2.4 million to Trump.

In other words, he was substantially more generous with politicians than with the 6,000 employees whose hard work has made him a very rich man.

What then, I wondered, might the income distribution be for the population at Mountaire — that is, the 6,000 employees and Cameron? What percentage of Mountaire’s profit does Cameron pay to his 6,000 employees, and how much does he keep for himself?

Mountaire doesn’t release that information. But we can make an educated guess based on what we know about similarly sized, publicly traded poultry processing companies.

Based on profit margins from those companies, along with data from a recent salary survey of Mountaire employees, Mountaire likely is paying $180 million or less in wages to its 6,000 employees each year — leaving about $200 million in pre-tax profits for CEO and owner Cameron.

In other words, over half the income at Mountaire may go to one person. That’s 600 times as concentrated as in the country overall.

Mountaire could be an outlier. But consider this: CEOs at publicly traded corporations resisted reporting their ratio of CEO compensation to median worker pay for seven years. Honeywell recently became the first corporation to report its CEO to worker pay ratio, an eye-popping 333 to 1.

That’s how bad it is at the companies we know about. How bad might it be at the companies we don’t?

Wasting Food In A Hungry World

Moin Qazi

India produces enough food to meet the needs of its entire population yet, it is unable to feed millions of them, especially women and children. India ranks 100th among 119 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2017, where it has consistently ranked poorly. Despite the fact that every twelfth Indian has to sleep on an empty stomach, the country wastes food worth a whopping Rs 58,000 crores in a year, about seven percent of its total food production. It is lost   during harvest, or on the journey from farm to markets, that is production, processing, retailing and consumption Lack of cooling facilities is the major reason for crops perishing after harvest.

As you trudge through the mire of any government-run food auction yard, or mandi, piles of supposedly fresh produce lies everywhere, rotting in the sun and competing with mangy dogs and scampering mice for your attention

One of the major ways of enhancing food security in India is by simply controlling wastage. It is the most obvious place to start. India is the second-largest producer of vegetables and fruits but about 25-30 percent of it is wasted due to inadequate logistical support, lack of refrigerated storage, supply chain bottlenecks, poor transport and underdeveloped marketing channels. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) puts this figure at around 40 percent, worth around $8.3 billion.

Twenty-one million metric tonnes of wheat, which is almost equal to Australia’s annual production, rots each year due to improper storage. According to the Associated Chambers of Commerce, the country experiences a post-harvest loss of Rs 2 lakh crores annually due to a lack of food processing units and storage facilities. Without making urgent improvements to its ‘cold chain’ infrastructure, India’s food problems will remain highly critical.

The World Bank recently stated that nearly 60 percent of the country’s food subsidies do not reach the poor; they are syphoned off by the middlemen. It is high time that the government made some fundamental changes. Reforming the faltering public distribution system or plugging the loopholes in it is overdue.

The Food Corporation of India (FCI) was set up in 1964 to offer impetus to price support systems, encourage nationwide distribution and maintain sufficient buffer of staples like wheat and rice but its performance has been woefully inadequate, in comparison to the needs of the country. Around one percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) gets shaved off annually in the form of food waste. The FCI has neither a warehouse capacity nor the manpower to manage this humongous stockpile of foodgrains.

Every year, the government purchases millions of tonnes of grain from the farmers to ensure that they get a good price for their produce, for numerous food subsidy programmes and to maintain an emergency buffer. The cruel truth, however, is that most of the produce is left out in the open, vulnerable to rain and attacks by rodents or stored in makeshift spaces, covered by tarpaulin sheets, thus increasing the chances of spoilage. Several countries are now using metal grain silos to guard against fungus attacks on the grain stock.

It is estimated that one million tonnes of onions vanish on their way from farms to markets, as do 2.2 million tonnes of tomatoes. Tomatoes get squished if they are packed into jute sacks. Overall, five million eggs crack or go bad due to lack of cold storage. Just three states of India—Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana—grow most of India’s grains and the food has to be transported to far-flung areas.

A study undertaken by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (2013) highlights that the underlying cause of post-harvest loss in the country is due to the lack of infrastructure for short-term storage, particularly at the farm level, as well as the lack of intermediate processing in the production catchments. If there are no proper roads linking fields to markets, farmers cannot easily sell their surplus produce, which may then spoil before it can be eaten. Improving road and rail capacity enables farmers to reach buyers and likewise, fertilisers and other agricultural inputs to reach farmers.

The Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, has uncovered that only 10 percent of the perishable produce has access to cold storage facilities in India. These are mostly used for potatoes to meet India’s robust demand for chips. This, along with inappropriate supply chain management, has resulted in India becoming a significant contributor to food wastage both at pre and post-harvest levels. The study estimates that India needs storage facilities for another 370 million metric tonnes of perishable produce.

Added to the wastage of food, there is a depletion of precious resources involved in its production. According to the United Nations, India is estimated to use more than 230 cubic kilometres of fresh water annually, for producing food items that will be ultimately wasted. To put this into context, this amount of water is enough to provide drinking water to 100 million people every year. Besides this, nearly 300 million barrels of oil used in the process are also ultimately wasted.

Meeting the food needs of a growing population in India (1.7 billion by 2050) while reducing food loss and waste poses a serious challenge. Wasting a kilogram of wheat and rice would mean wasting 1,500 and 3,500 litres of water, respectively, that is consumed in their production.

Despite being the world’s largest banana producer, it only holds 0.3 percent share of the global banana market. Production is fragmented compared to the large-scale commercial farms of its competitors, with small-hold farmers having little business or technical support. Less than 4 percent of India’s fresh produce is transported by cold-chains, compared to more than 90 percent in the UK. Better cold storage, improved infrastructure and education about food handling could help transform this situation.

The cost of delivering energy to remote, rural regions for running storage facilities is quite steep and this means that even when storage facilities are built, they may not be able to function. A lack of education on post-harvest practices often results in poor quality control and food being damaged during handling.

The government needs to tighten its public distribution system, which mainly supplies subsidised grain to the poor and modernise other areas, such as computerisation of outlets and satellite control over the movement of transport vehicles.

In recent years, numerous initiatives and interventions have been undertaken by the Indian government, and local and international actors to target food loss and wastage across the agricultural value chain. For instance, the Indian government is seeking to streamline and modernise agricultural value chains, through reformation of the PDS to reduce the waste and loss associated with the distribution and storage of foodgrains. The government is also extending support for the setting up of cold chain projects whereby 138 cold chain projects have been installed.

Studies have also indicated that on-farm interventions can also contribute towards reducing food losses and waste. For instance, a pilot study sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has revealed food loss reductions of around 60 percent during field trials, testing low-cost storage techniques and handling practices. Another study, undertaken in Punjab, which focused on the harvesting of ‘Kinnow’ (a citrus fruit), demonstrated how on-farm food losses decreased from ten percent to only two percent when a combination of harvesting techniques was used.

India has developed some modern supply chains linked to food processing companies, such as Nestlé, Pepsi, Unilever and Del Monte but these handle only a fraction of the country’s perishable food produce.

India needs to mobilise large-scale investments in cold storage methods, refrigerated transport and other modern logistics to modernise its food supply chain. More than investment, a strong will by the political class and an imaginative thinking on the part of the policy-makers is needed.

Offshoring Indian Agriculture: Is India Becoming a GMO Trash Can?

Colin Todhunter

The regulatory system for GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in India is in tatters. So said the Coalition for a GMFree India (CGMFI) in 2017 after media reports about the illegal cultivation of GM soybean in the country.

In India, five high-level reports have already advised against the adoption of GM crops:

1. The ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’, imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal [Feb 2010];
2. The ‘Sopory Committee Report’ [August 2012];
3. The ‘Parliamentary Standing Committee’ [PSC] Report on GM crops [August 2012];
4. The ‘Technical Expert Committee [TEC] Final Report’ [June-July 2013]; and
5. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment and Forests [August 2017].

Given the issues surrounding GM crops (including the now well-documented failure of Bt cotton in the country), little wonder these reports advise against their adoption. Little wonder too given that the story of GM ‘regulation’ in India has been a case of blatant violations of biosafety norms, hasty approvals, a lack of monitoring abilities, general apathy towards the hazards of contamination and a lack of institutional oversight.

Despite these reports, the drive to get GM mustard commercialised (which would be India’s first officially-approved GM food crop) has been relentless. The push for approval is currently being challenged in the Supreme Court, even though, despite serious concerns, the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) deemed it necessary to give it the nod.

GM mustard is being undemocratically forced through with flawed tests (or no testing) and a lack of public scrutiny: in other words, unremitting scientific fraud and outright regulatory delinquency.

This crop is also herbicide-tolerant (HT), which is wholly inappropriate for a country like India with its small biodiverse farms that could be affected by its application.

GM crops illegally growing

Despite the ban on GM cops, in 2005, biologist Pushpa Bhargava noted that unapproved varieties of several GM crops were being sold to farmers. In 2008, Arun Shrivasatava wrote that illegal GM okra had been planted in India and poor farmers had been offered lucrative deals to plant ‘special seed’ of all sorts of vegetables.

In 2013, a group of scientists and NGOs protested in Kolkata and elsewhere against the introduction of transgenic brinjal in Bangladesh – a centre for origin and diversity of the vegetable – as it would give rise to contamination of the crop in India. As predicted, in 2014, the West Bengal government said it had received information regarding “infiltration” of commercial seeds of GM Bt brinjal from Bangladesh.

In 2017, the illegal cultivation of a GM HT soybean was reported in Gujarat. Bhartiya Kisan Sangh (BKS), a national farmers organisation, claimed that Gujarat farmers had been cultivating HT crop illegally – there is no clearance from the government for any GM food crop.

There are also reports of HT cotton illegally growing in India.

All of this is prompting calls for probes into the workings of the GEAC and other official bodies.

CGMFI spokesperson Kavitha Kuruganti says that the regulators have been caught sleeping. It wouldn’t be the first time: India’s first GM crop cultivation – Bt cotton – was discovered in 2001 growing on thousands of hectares in Gujarat, spread surreptitiously and illegally by the biotech industry. Kuruganti said the GEAC was caught off-guard when news about large scale illegal cultivation of Bt cotton emerged, even as field trials that were to decide whether India would opt for this GM crops were still underway.

In March 2002, the GEAC ended up approving Bt cotton for commercial cultivation in India. To this day, no liability was fixed for the illegal spread.

The tactic of contaminate first then legalise has benefited industry players before. In 2006, for instance, the US Department of Agriculture granted marketing approval of GM Liberty Link 601 (Bayer CropScience) rice variety following its illegal contamination of the food supply and rice exports. The USDA effectively sanctioned an ‘approval-by-contamination’ policy.

Illegal GM imports

Now, in 2018, Kuruganti says that a complaint lodged with the GEAC and a Right to Information (RTI) application seeking information regarding the illegal GM soybean cultivation in the country has stirred the apex regulatory body to bring the issue to the notice of the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), months after the issue became public.

In reply to the RTI application, the GEAC responded by saying it had received no complaint about such illegal cultivation. Kurauganti says this is a blatant lie: the BKS had collected illegally cultivated soybean samples for lab testing and the report was sent to the GEAC along with a letter of complaint. GM HT soybean has not been granted permission for field trials, let alone large-scale cultivation.

It is also understood that apart from the BKS, the Government of Gujarat also alerted the GEAC to the illegal cultivation.

Kuruganti says:

“The fact that the GEAC is writing now to the DGFT to take action (on preventing the illegal GM imports), makes it clear that it lacks any real intent to take serious action about the violations of its own regulations. It also indicates that it is putting up a show of having “done” something, before an upcoming Supreme Court hearing on PILs related to GMOs.”

Her assertion is supported by Rohit Parakh of India for Safe Food:

“Commerce Ministry’s own data on imports of live seeds clearly indicates that India continues to import genetically modified seeds including GM canola, GM sugar beet, GM papaya, GM squash and GM corn seeds (apart from soybean) from countries such as the USA… with no approval from the GEAC as is the requirement.”

Kuruganti concludes that the regulatory system is a shambles and is not preventing GMOs from being illegally imported into the country or planted. Moreover, the ruling BJP has reneged on its election promise not to allow GM without proper protocols.

Offshoring Indian agriculture

It is not a good situation. We have bogus arguments about GM mustard being forwarded by developers at Delhi University and the government. We also have USAID pushing for GM in Punjab and twisting a problematic situation to further Monsanto’s interests by trying to get GM soybean planted in the state. And we have regulators (deliberately) asleep at the wheel.

The fact that India is importing so many agricultural commodities in the first place doesn’t help. Relying on imports and transnational agribusiness with its proprietary (GM) seeds and inputs is not a recipe for food security. In the 1960s, Africa was not just self-sufficient in food but was actually a net food exporter. Today, courtesy of World Bank, IMF and WTO interventions, the continent imports 25% of its food, with almost every country being a net food importer.

Is this want India wants? Based on its rising import bill, self-reliance and food security seems to be an anathema to policy makers. In response to the government’s decision to abolish import duty on wheat in 2017, Ajmer Singh Lakhowala, head of the Punjab unit of Bharatiya Kisan Union, said sarcastically:

“The import of cheap wheat will bring the prices down. It appears the government wants the farmers to quit farming.”

As I have previously outlined, at the behest of the World Bank and courtesy of compliant politicians in India, it certainly seems to be the case.

Self-sufficiency is not to the liking of the US and the World Bank. Washington has for many decades regarded its leverage over global agriculture as a tool to secure its geostrategic goals.

Whether it involves the import of subsidised edible oils, wheat, pulses or soybean – alongside the ongoing neglect of indigenous agriculture and farmers by successive administrations – livelihoods are being destroyed, food quality is being undermined and Indian agriculture is slowly being offshored.

Britain: 15,000 jobs in retail and leisure under threat, as jobs go throughout economy

Richard Tyler

In the space of two weeks, some 15,000 jobs in the UK retail and leisure sectors have been wiped out or are under threat. On top of this, thousands more jobs in engineering are set to be slashed to prop up company profits.

Home electronics firm Maplin and retailers Toys R Us and have both gone into administration, which could lead to the closure of some 300 stores with the loss of 5,500 jobs. Restaurant chains Prezzo and Jamie’s are to shut down nearly 140 outlets, placing at least 1,000 jobs at risk.

Floorcovering chain Carpetright announced its third profit warning in just four months, with the future of one quarter of its 400 stores in danger, threatening thousands of jobs. Shares in the company fell to an historic low, costing nearly £12 million in lost value, as the firm said it was in discussion with the banks about its existing loans. Retail chain Mothercare also announced last week it was talking to bankers, leading to a 21 percent drop in its share value, wiping out £6 million from the firm.

In Scotland, budget airline Ryanair is to cut the number of flights from Glasgow, endangering 300 jobs. In Northern Ireland, Sensata, which makes a wide range of sensors and electrical protection equipment, is to cut 125 jobs at its Carrickfergus factory. In Wales, management could seek up to 4,000 redundancies between the two companies once a merger of Tata Steel with ThyssenKrupp goes ahead. This has now moved closer following agreement by the IG Metall union in Germany.

On the High Street, falling sales at That’s Entertainment outlets have led to the company’s owners, musicMagpie, saying it was reviewing the long-term viability of its stores, “which in the worst-case scenario would lead to the closure of all 29 current outlets by the end of May 2018.”

Facing pre-tax losses of £123.5 million last year on a 10.7 percent fall in like-for-like sales, fashion retailer New Look has sought a company voluntary agreement (CVA) as a means of staving off bankruptcy. It plans to close 60 of its nearly 600 UK stores, placing the future employment of nearly 1,000 staff at risk. However, if the CVA proves unsuccessful many more of the firm’s 15,300 UK workforce could lose their jobs.

Among the big four supermarket chains, Morrisons has announced it is cutting 1,500 shop floor jobs. Market leader Tesco is slashing 1,700 jobs in managerial and supervisory roles after already imposing 1,200 redundancies at its head office last year. As part of an ongoing restructuring plan, Sainsbury’s is also eliminating many more senior roles, with staff being offered lower-paid jobs or facing redundancy.

Factors that have impacted negatively on the high street retail and leisure sectors include uncertainty over the impact of Brexit, and the changing face of shopping with the growth of online giants such as Amazon taking away business.

Other closures include: Coca Cola, which is to shut two bottling plants with the loss of 288 jobs; 2 Sisters Food Group, the UK’s largest supplier of supermarket chicken, could close three poultry plants at a cost of 900 jobs; department store chain Debenhams has marked 320 management jobs for the axe in a major cost-cutting exercise.

The decline in UK manufacturing jobs is set to continue, with European plane maker Airbus saying up to 3,700 jobs could go across the four “home” countries where it manufactures—UK, France, Germany and Spain—due to falling orders for its A380 and A400M aircraft. One union representative put the possible job losses in the UK at 500.

At engineering giant Rolls Royce, thousands of highly skilled and relatively well-paid jobs in its 22,000 UK workforce could go as the company continues its cost-cutting drive to boost profits. This enabled the firm to return £4.9 billion in pre-tax profits for 2017, after having faced a £4.6bn loss the previous year.

Chief executive Warren East told the Telegraph the introduction of a more “simplified staff structure” would have “implications for jobs” but refused to say how many.

Engineering company Babcock is to axe 500 jobs, ten percent of the workforce at its Devonport dockyard, where it services Royal Navy warships and submarines. The cuts follow a year-long review, which the company said was to “ensure that as a business we remain competitive.”

This week it was announced that an additional 87 people have lost their jobs as a result of the collapse of Carillion—the UK’s second largest construction firm and major government contractor—earlier this year. The number of redundancies resulting from the collapse now stands at almost 1,460.

As these new job losses were being announced, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that unemployment in the UK was already rising at its fastest rate in nearly five years, with young people particularly hard hit. The 1.47 million jobless reported by the ONS conceals a much higher figure, when those who no longer register unemployed or who are under-employed are considered.

The composition of the UK workforce has changed significantly over the last quarter century. Manufacturing jobs, once the backbone of the British economy, have fallen from almost 7 million in 1978 to just under 3 million today.

While the numbers in employment (including self-employment) have risen from 19.6 million in 1992 to 26.6 million at the end of 2017, this masks many important structural changes.

The numbers of those in part-time employment has risen considerably over this period, among women by a quarter, and by a staggering 130 percent among men. The increase in those now classed as working in self-employed jobs is even higher, rising some 147 percent from just over 1.8 million in 1992 to 4.5 million in 2017.

At the same time, wages for most workers have stagnated or sunk as they failed to keep up with inflation. This has seen the growth of the “working poor,” with 60 percent of those in Britain classed as poor in 2017 living in a household in which at least one person works.

Transnational beer corporation creates water crisis in northern Mexico

Alex González

Hundreds of thousands of people in the northern Mexican states of Baja California and Coahuila are threatened by a water crisis fueled by beer-manufacturer Constellation Brands, a Fortune 500 company. The company set up large beer manufacturing plants in drought-prone areas, exacerbating water shortages in cities that do not have the necessary infrastructure for mass beer production.

Local workers and farmers have formed an independent water defense committee to fight against the corporation and the complicit state and federal governments.

We will not give up our water even for beer. Credit: Mexicali Resiste Facebook page

Constellation Brands, the third largest beer manufacturer in the United States, owns the well-known Corona, Modelo Especial, and Negra Modelo brands. In 2015, the company invested over $2 billion to expand its plant in the northern city of Zaragoza, Coahuila, and in 2016 began construction of a new multimillion-dollar plant in Mexicali, Baja California. The company set up production in northern Mexico due to the area’s proximity to the United States, seeking to take advantage of the NAFTA agreement to export beer across the border without paying tariffs.

Mexicali and Zaragoza have dry, desert-like climates. Temperatures can reach 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) during the summer. Mexicali—the drier of the two cities—receives less than 40 cubic millimeters of rain a year and relies almost entirely on the Colorado River, from where some 30 million people obtain their water. However, access to water from the Colorado River is increasingly precarious due to its status as one of the most overexploited rivers in the world. Only 7 percent of the river’s flow reaches Mexico, and scientists estimate that the river’s flow will decrease by 5 to 20 percent within the next 40 years due to climate change.

The manufacturing of beer is a water-intensive process, with 3 liters of water required to produce 1 liter of beer. In Mexicali, with a population of 1 million people, a single corporation is threatening to overwhelmingly dictate the city’s water usage. According to data provided by Constellation Brands, the Mexicali plant would require 20,000 million liters of water per year. This is equivalent to the amount of water needed by a city of 750,000 people, or 75 percent of Mexicali.

Just in its initial phase, it is calculated that the plant will use 81 percent of the total water currently used by Mexicali’s industries. If Constellation Brands is allowed to operate at full capacity, the company’s Mexicali plant would consume more water than all industries in Mexicali and the neighboring city of Tijuana combined. The company has stated that it plans to stay in Mexicali for at least 50 years, with the plant’s opening date set for 2019 or 2020.

The water situation in the municipality of Zaragoza, with a population of 8,000, has already reached crisis levels because of the company’s operations. “We have no more water for human consumption,” stated mayor Leoncio Martínez Sánchez. “We are worried because we are being affected by this extraction of 1,200 liters of water per second by this beer manufacturer. It does not make sense that while Constellation Brands has industrial amounts of water to make beer, the municipality does not even have 100 liters for people to drink or use in their homes.”

Constellation Brands received sweetheart deals to set up the plants in northern Mexico, with the full support of the state and federal government. The company reportedly acquired land from the state for pennies on the dollar. According to media reports, the government sold the corporation land in Mexicali for just 11 pesos per square meter (about 60 cents USD). Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto personally received Constellations Brands president Robert Sands in 2015 to signal his support for the company.

Rather than using federal funds to improve Mexicali’s water infrastructure system, the federal government approved a 500-million-peso project (about 2.6 million USD) to build a 47-kilometer (30 miles) pipeline to supply water directly to the Mexicali Constellation plant.

The events in Mexicali echo the irrational and profit-driven maneuver taken by city of Flint, Michigan to build the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA) pipeline, which culminated with the switch of the city’s water supply from Lake Huron to the polluted Flint River. The project was entirely redundant, running parallel and just 6 miles away from the existing pipeline.

The Mexicali pipeline project was put on hold earlier this year in the wake of massive social anger against the deal. On January 16, workers and peasants from Mexicali Resiste (also known as the Committee to Defend Water in Baja California) blocked access to the plant’s construction site. The peaceful protests were greeted with over a hundred state police officers, resulting in at least 12 arrests and seven injuries.

In the aftermath of the protests, Baja California Governor Francisco Vega, a member of the right-wing Party for National Action (PAN), threatened to meet any future mobilizations with repression. Placing the rights of corporations above those of the working class, Vega stated: “Everyone in Baja California has a right to protest, but never by affecting the liberty and the rights of others,” stated Vega. “Dialogue is open, but they have shown themselves to be violent.”

The events in Mexicali follow protests by 40,000 people last January against the Baja California Water Law (Ley de Aguas de Baja California), which would have privatized water services, increased rates and cut off residents’ water after 90 days of non-payment. The local legislature was forced to repeal the law just seven days after the demonstrations.

Politicians and pseudo-left groups have been quick to blame US consumers for the water crisis, claiming it is their supposedly backward need for beer that is responsible for the situation facing Mexican residents. This nationalist poison is aimed at dividing the working class in Mexico and the United States and deflecting social anger away from the source of the crisis: the capitalist system.

The naked irrationality of the capitalist system is plain for all to see. Because of the economic benefit of manufacturing on one side of an invisible line versus another, a corporation found it profitable to set up beer manufacturing plants in the desert—all at the expense of over a million people. The water crisis in northern Mexico can only be addressed by replacing the profit system with a scientifically-planned economy, democratically controlled by the international working class.

Workers facing water crises in Flint, Puerto Rico, South Africa, Kentucky, Mexico and countless other areas around the world must unite to fight for socialism and the reallocation of the ill-gotten gains of the ruling elite to guarantee their social rights.

YouTube threatens to shut down right-wing Infowars channel

Trévon Austin

On March 3, right-wing radio host Alex Jones, publisher of the conspiracy theorist website Infowars, tweeted that his YouTube profile, called the “Alex Jones Channel”, had been frozen and received warnings that “all 33 thousand videos” would be erased within 24 hours.

The next day, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed that the company had removed advertisements from the channel, in a move known as “demonetization.” Several videos posted by the channel have already been removed.

Infowars is a clearinghouse for right-wing conspiracy theories and a gathering place for neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Jones, who has his origins in the far-right militia movement, declared on his program last year that Democrats and communists were planning to unleash “white genocide.” He was also one of the main proponents of “Pizzagate,” claiming that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor. Jones has been praised by the editor of the Daily Stormer and other far-right figures around the world.

Notably, censoring Jones’ channel has only brought more attention to the right-wing demagogue. Jones, whom claims to be “anti-establishment,” announced that his account was facing “the biggest censorship we have ever seen.” YouTube targeting his channel serves to confirm his allegations, garnering him more support among layers of the population who are opposed to the status quo.

In bringing attention to the implications of YouTube censoring the Alex Jones Channel, the WSWS remains resolutely opposed to the retrograde politics of Jones and those who associate with him. However, the WSWS defends the democratic right to free speech on the Internet and systematically opposes censorship of any kind.

The impetus for suspending the channel came from a video following the Parkland school shooting which suggested student protesters were not victims of the attack but “crisis actors.” Jones’ channel received a strike for the video and a second strike a few days later when it posted a video titled, “David Hogg Can’t Remember His Lines In TV Interview”—which similarly questioned the authenticity of the 17-year-old student activist.

YouTube’s policy states that any account given three strikes faces deletion: the first strike is a warning, the second a temporary suspension and the third a termination. Strikes expire after six months but can also be appealed, YouTube said.

According to YouTube the videos were for violating the site’s community guild lines. However, YouTube’s policies are vague “common-sense rules that’ll help you steer clear of trouble,” according the company itself and it was never clearly stated what policies the videos Jones posted violated.

In reality, censoring The Alex Jones channel has nothing to do with a violation of policies, but represents an incremental step in the broader campaign to censor the Internet. By targeting an ultra-right-wing figure that a vast majority of the population reviles and ridicules, those behind the campaign rely on the population dismissing the targeting of Jones as a good riddance.

The attacks on Jones have parallels to the moves against National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen, who was indicted last Thursday for having posted three images of executions by the Islamic State (IS) group on her Twitter account in December 2015. The targeting of “low-hanging fruit” like Jones and Le Pen is an attack on democratic rights, and a precursor to more censorship.

Since the tales of “Russian meddling” began to circulate in 2016, social media and technology giants, in partnership with the US government and intelligence agencies, have been engaged in a concerted effort to silence voices of opposition. Over the past year, under the banner of combating hate speech and “fake news,” Google has cut off search traffic to left wing, progressive and socialist websites and de-monetized YouTube accounts which have been flagged or don’t meet newly enforced and vaguely defined criteria.

Google, Facebook, and Twitter have all implemented measures aimed at diminishing content not deemed “authoritative,” or acceptable within the pre-circumscribed margins of the corporate media. Facebook altered its algorithms to reduce the visibility of certain news stories, and Twitter has banned the Russian-funded media outlets RT and Sputnik from advertising on the platform. For its part, Google-owned YouTube hired 10,000 reviewers to censor YouTube content and has become more aggressive in implementing its content rules.

Last year, YouTube openly admitted on Twitter that it is censoring videos based on content, stating, “if the video is also not suitable for a wider audience … then it might see poorer performance.”

Undoubtedly, the censorship of YouTube videos has a significant impact on political discourse. YouTube enjoys a virtual monopoly on pre-recorded video sharing and monetization, with approximately 1.5 billion viewers who watch 1 billion hours of video per day, and hundreds of hours of video uploaded each minute. Furthermore, videos are expected to account for 80 percent of all consumer-based internet traffic in 2019, indicating the far-reaching consequences of censorship measures.

Beneath all the noise about “fake news,” the internet is being turned into a tool and weapon of the ruling classes. It is being sold under the guise of fighting Russian disinformation, and any focus on Jones and Infowars conveniently deflects attention from the larger implications of this shift.

Hospital workers protest layoffs in Michigan

Carlos Delgado & Esther Galen

Nurses and other healthcare workers picketed outside Borgess Medical Center in Kalamazoo, angered by the wave of layoffs and cutbacks imposed by Ascension Health Michigan, which owns 14 hospitals in Michigan.

Ascension is the largest US non-profit hospital chain, with 140 Catholic hospitals. It’s Michigan hospitals include the St. John-Providence system in southeast Michigan, Crittenton Hospital in Rochester Hills, Genesys in Flint, Borgess in Kalamazoo and St. Mary’s in Saginaw.

Another huge hospital corporation, Tenet Medical, has also been cutting jobs in Michigan. Tenet, which is a for-profit system, operates the Detroit Medical Center, the largest hospital complex in the state and the city’s biggest single employer.

Demonstration of nurses and supporters outside Borgess Hospital in Kalamazoo, Michigan

According to Crain’s Detroit Business, the job cuts by Ascension could amount to more than 1,000 across the 14 hospitals, and the layoffs could affect nurses, therapists, nurses’ aides, patient care techs and transporters. Crain’s also reported that at the Detroit Medical Center, about 300 have been laid off, including those working in dietary and food service areas, clerks in nursing units, support staff and middle managers in clinical departments. The DMC has laid off waves of workers over the past several years.

Some of the driving forces of the hospital cuts are federal funding cuts, increases in uncompensated care because of cutbacks to Medicaid and Obamacare, a declining number of insured patients and more patients who cannot pay the balance of their bills even when they have insurance.

At Borgess Medical Center in Kalamazoo, between 60 and 70 nurses were laid off effective Sunday, March 4, sparking the picket line protest the following day. World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke with some of the nurses as they marched outside the hospital.

One nurse, Linda, said, “Ascension wants to change the staffing so that it’s more unsafe, where nurses will take care of too many patients. And we’ve gotten rid of a lot of the auxiliary staff. So we are protesting that. It’s not safe. We want to do a good job. It’s hard to do a good job when you don’t have the resources. We’re not a factory. We’re people who care about the patients. We don’t even have people to answer the phones anymore. We need the auxiliary staff, too. We’re all a big team, and they keep cutting from our team. It’s not right.”

Anne Miller, a critical care nurse, had her job eliminated and had to apply for another position within the hospital. “At one point they said that we would be one to four ratio on another floor,” she said. “And they cut that back and made it one to five. And that floor got to the point where it was just a little too busy and chaotic. And everybody was terribly sick, to the point of being critically sick. And there were lots of people I sent to critical care. It just got to the point where it was unsafe. And they cut down the nurses’ aides, which made more work for the nurses to do.”

She said that patients in critical care had been intubated and then waited as long as four hours for a bed because of the strain on facilities. She added that even a nurse to patient ratio of one to three was “next to impossible” for critical care nurses. “You have five or six IV pumps running, people beeping on ventilator. And those drips can’t stop, because if they stop, they could die. It makes it hard to be able to care for people when you can’t do a good enough job. I’ll leave feeling horrible that I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. And for a true nurse, you might as well just slap me. Punch me in the face to know that I’ve left when I didn’t do a good job that I was supposed to do. That hurts me.”

Anne Miller dismissed the claims by Ascension that there is “no money” to fund adequate staffing levels. “I think they’re making themselves look extremely stupid. Because of the fact that, on the same day they posted they’re going to make all these cuts, they announced a $35 million surgical suite that they’re going to build. So you don’t have a little extra funding to keep the nurses we have? That sounds a little dumb.”

She pointed to reports that Ascension CEO Tony Tersigni now makes $17 million a year: “That’s a lot of money. I will probably never see that in my entire life in my own salary. I will work my entire life, and I will never see $17 million. That’s disgusting. That’s ridiculous. It’s a terrible, terrible thing.”

She continued, “I think it’s terrible that people of low economic status can’t get the help that they need. They can’t get the basic screenings that they need, which is sad. It’s really, really sad. People die. People die all the time. Cancer diagnoses that were, ‘Oh, I’ve had a headache for the last six months, but I was afraid to go in and do something about it.’ They don’t have any insurance. They have no place to go, nothing to do. And then they come in, and they’re dead.”

April, a Borgess nurse, holds a sign stating that Ascension CEO Tony Tersigni's $17.6 million compensation is enough to pay the annual salaries of 260 registered nurses

Joni Kester, another critical care nurse, said the cuts in staffing would endanger the patients. “We’ve been working lately with minimum staff here, and even less than minimum staff,” she said. “And it’s unsafe. Patients are suffering for it. Ascension has ‘acceptable losses.’ That’s their term. That refers to patient deaths. So there are going to be ‘acceptable losses’? No, we don’t accept that. There doesn’t need to be acceptable losses because there’s not enough staff. That’s just wrong.”

Like the other nurses, she had heard the reports of the bonanza for CEO Tony Tersigni: “In 2014 he made $17 million, and $10 million of that was bonuses that he got for cutting. It’s got to stop. Maybe he should take not so many bonuses and help patients a little more.

“The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer and not taken care of. But all the rich people seem to have wonderful health care. They have way more than they need. The funny part is, if they had to come to the hospital, they would want to be taken care of as appropriately as the next person, but they don’t want everybody else to have that.”

Nearly every hospital in the Ascension system across Michigan has been hit by the layoffs. St. John River District Hospital closed its Intensive Care Unit, laying off 30 workers, and 52 out of 68 staffed beds. There were layoffs at St. John Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit, Providence Hospital in Southfield, St. John Macomb-Oakland units in Plymouth and Warren, and Crittenton Hospital in Rochester Hills, as well as Borgess.

Ascension officials have declined to discuss the layoffs in any detail, but the nominally nonprofit corporation is proceeding just as ruthlessly in its cost-cutting as any other private capitalist firm. Crittenton improved its finances from a net loss of $4.7 million in 2016 to a net income of $9.8 million in 2017, but still is cutting further.

According to Crain’s, St. John Hospital in Detroit will cut 250 jobs, including nurses, patient care technicians, unit clerks, patient transporters and others in medical-surgical and intensive care units, with some non-medical workers being replaced by lower-paying contractors who supply patient transport, dietary and housekeeping services.

St. John is also cutting more nursing clerks, inpatient pharmacy technicians, occupational therapists and physical therapists.

Half the unit clerks at Providence Park Hospital in Southfield are to be laid off, and some administrators and mid-level managers will also lose their jobs at several of the hospitals.

Russian economy stagnates as presidential election approaches

Andrea Peters

As the March 18 presidential election in Russia approaches, the Kremlin has sought to shore up the government’s position by highlighting indicators that the country’s economy is in recovery and promising to improve social conditions. While President Vladimir Putin is expected to easily win re-election, popular dissatisfaction with his regime has grown in recent years, bound up with an economic downturn linked to falling oil prices and Western sanctions.

Recent polls show a sharp dip in support for the Russian leader in the country’s large cities, with his popularity rating declining by 12 points in urban centers of a million or more people in February.

Evidence points to continuing economic stagnation and distress for the overwhelming majority of the population. In 2017, Russia’s gross domestic product grew by 1.5 percent, ending two consecutive years of decline. The uptick was largely driven by rebounding world prices for oil and gas, which continue to be the mainstay of the country’s economy.

Notwithstanding the Kremlin’s insistence that Russia can and must diversify economically, there are few signs that it is actually moving in this direction. Industrial production fell by 3.6 percent in 2017, due to a drop defense sector spending. Both federal and local budgets are dependent on revenues from natural resource extraction. Oil, gas, and metal ores alone accounted for 40 percent of last year’s increased tax revenue.

Gas and coal deliveries to the European market are currently at record highs for Russia. However, shifts in Germany’s energy policy and conflicts with Ukraine over transit routes through its territory threaten Russia’s position, reports the liberal press Nezavisimaya Gazeta (NG).

Russia’s growth rate lags behind the global average, as well as that of other natural resources-dependent economies, with the exception of Venezuela. “Zero growth” is the “new normal,” declared NG on March 5.

There is an ongoing crisis in Russia’s banking industry. In 2017, the government bailed out three of the country’s top private firms—Otkritie, B&N, and Promsvyazbank—with multi-billion dollar injections of funds. According to the Central Bank, the actions were necessary to stop the risk of financial contagion. Funneling of further money into the private banking sector is expected in 2018, with the industry confronting an estimated 2.7 trillion rubles ($47.7 billion) in unfunded liabilities, according to the Analytical Credit Rating Agency.

After four years of decline, January data showed an increase in year-over-year real wages. However, real incomes, of which pension payments make up a large portion, fell. Rosstat, the government’s official statistical agency, sought to cover up this fact by including a one-time five thousand ruble pension payment made in January 2017 in its calculations. This provoked a storm of public criticism. Rosstat was compelled to release revised income data in early March.

While inflation in food prices has finally stabilized according to official statistics and 2017 saw an increase in retail sales, households continue to report high levels of economic distress. According to a recent study by the Institute of Social Analysis and Prognosis (ISAP), 40 percent of Russians do not have the resources necessary to “adapt” to the economic crisis. “These are, above all, the elderly, those who reside in villages and small cities, people without a higher education, workers of different skill levels, employees in retail and consumer services, and the unemployed have been the worst impacted. If the situation in the economy does not improve, their welfare will continue to worsen, poverty will spread,” reported a March 6 article in the newspaper Vedmosti.

Consumer debt has risen dramatically in Russia, with households turning to borrowing in order to sustain living standards. By the end of 2016, however, 20 percent of consumer loans in the country were non-performing.

In his address to the nation in February, President Putin promised to boost spending on education and healthcare, increase productivity by five-fold, double the share contributed to the country’s GDP by small and medium-sized enterprises, raise the subsistence minimum by 50 percent and halve the country’s poverty rate over the next six years. Official estimates place the number of poor at 14 percent of the population but researchers estimate it to actually be closer to 22 percent, about 40 million people.

The Russian president failed to provide any details as to how he would accomplish his economic goals. Over the past several years, his government has systematically cut funding for schools and medical services, and left many infrastructure and transportation improvements unfunded. What remains of Russia’s public health and educational systems is marred by corruption, with more than half the population reporting paying bribes for allegedly “free” services.

Putin’s promised improvements and predictions about Russia’s forthcoming economic rebound are based, in part, on future annual growth estimates of around 2.2 percent from the Ministry of the Economy. Experts believe this to be highly improbable.

The Kremlin’s limited populist appeal is an attempt to divert attention away from the right-wing economic policies it is preparing to institute, including an increase in the retirement age and the implementation of regressive tax reforms.

In an indication of the government’s approach, the Russian Labor Ministry recently announced that it would raise the maximum amount an unemployed worker could receive from 4,900 ($86) to 8,000 rubles ($140) a month, and cut in half the length of time the individual could receive such payments—from one year to six months.

US “allies” scramble for tariff exemptions

Nick Beams

US strategic allies around the world are seeking ways to have their countries excluded from the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on steel and aluminium, invoking “national security” considerations.

Attention will be directed to Europe over weekend where the European Union’s chief trade negotiator, Cecilia Malmström, is meeting with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in Brussels today.

The meeting was not called in direct response to Trump’s measures—it was scheduled 10 months ago to discuss, among other things, overcapacity in global steel markets. But it is now shaping up as an indication of how both sides will proceed.

Last Wednesday, the EU threatened to impose counter-tariff measures against US exports into Europe, including on bourbon and various foodstuffs amounting to around $3.5 billion, if the US measures go ahead.

Speaking at a panel discussion yesterday in Brussels, Malmström again took issue with the Trump administration, emphasising the strategic relationship between the EU and the US.

“We had been in talks with our American friends for quite some time to explain to them that whereas we share the concerns over overcapacity in the steel sector, this is not the right way to deal with it,” she said.

“And it is certainly not the right way to include Europe in that because we are friends, we are allies, we work together, we cannot possibly be a threat to national security in the US so we are counting on being excluded.”

The indications so far, however, are that the EU will get short shrift. White House National Trade Council director Peter Navarro, who was among the leading proponents of the measures, is a strident opponent of both China and Germany on trade. Trump earlier responded to threats of EU retaliation with a warning that tariffs could be imposed on imports of European cars.

Malström said she hoped the EU would obtain an exclusion. If not, the EU and other countries would take up the case in the World Trade Organisation (WTO). “We are also preparing with member states a list of rebalancing measures [the imposition of tariffs on US goods] that could possibly enter into force,” she said. “We hope that will not be the case of course, because nobody has an interest of escalating this situation, but if we have to do that, that’s what we will do.”

The battle for exemptions threatens to deepen the rift between Britain and the rest of the EU, of which the UK is still formally a member, despite the Brexit vote. Divisions have emerged over the announcement that British international trade secretary Liam Fox will travel to Washington next week to “maximise the UK’s case for exemption.”

According to one press report, EU sources said that if Britain secured favourable terms, Brussels would regard this as a “breach of trust” and against the rules of the EU.

In television comments, Fox emphasised that Britain was not in the same position as the EU. “We produce very high-value steel, some of which can’t be sourced in the United States—and so these tariffs will simply push up the price of steel there. We also make steel for the American military program, so it’s doubly absurd.”

However, the European Commission’s position is that it will not tolerate special treatment for the UK or any other EU member that seeks to cut a separate deal.

The commission vice-president in charge of trade policy, Jyrki Katainen, said yesterday: “We cannot accept that the EU is divided into different categories. We don’t want to see the division between the member states.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would leave negotiations on the tariffs to the EU but Germany viewed the measures “with concern.” She backed the EU plan for counter-measures but “the preference should lie with talks.”

Japan, which is an ally of the United States, is also seeking an exemption, as is South Korea, which could be hard hit.

At a press conference yesterday, Hiroshige Seko, Japan’s minister for trade and industry, said: “It’s extremely regrettable and I’d like to work on the Americans to exempt us. Tit-for-tat retaliatory measures don’t profit any country. I’d like to consider the necessary response in the WTO framework.”

South Korea has virtually no chance of an exemption because the US regards it as a conduit for cheap re-processed Chinese steel.

Hopes that the WTO and its so-called rules based order can prevent a drive toward open trade war are based on a failure to recognise the implications of the shift being undertaken by the United States.

The dominant position in the White House is that the WTO system has worked against the interests of the US. This view is not an invention of Trump and his “America First” supporters. It was emerging under the Obama administration, which sought to develop new arrangements to place the US at the centre of a network of economic pacts, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Speaking at yesterday’s Brussels panel on trade, Robert Zoellick, who served as US trade representative under President George W. Bush, pointed out the far-reaching implications of any WTO ruling on the Trump measures.

“Here’s the risk: The WTO decides, well, the EU, or whoever brings action is right, this isn’t national security,” he said.

“But then what happens when [commerce secretary] Wilbur Ross or somebody else says ‘wait a minute. Those people in Geneva can decide what is in America’s national security. Should we be part of the WTO?’

“Or, the reverse, the WTO says ‘well, we let countries decide their own national security.’ Then you’ve created a very big loophole.”

In other words, the objective logic of the US move, based on the invocation of “national security”—the tying of trade to military considerations—leads to a breakdown of the entire post-war trading system. In its place, there is a return to dog-eat-dog relations that had catastrophic consequences in the 1930s, playing a major role in creating the conditions for World War II.

Opposition to Trump’s measures in US ruling circles is not grounded on their disastrous global implications. The objection is that they have been misdirected and should be more clearly focused on securing allies for a conflict with China.

US Business Roundtable president Josh Bolten, who was White House chief of staff under President George W. Bush, summed up this position in an interview with the Financial Times.

“They are offending and damaging the very people who we need to help us with the China problem,” he said. “Exemptions just make a very bad decision slightly less bad. All the major problems with the decision remain.”