European Central Bank points to return of sovereign debt crisis

Nick Beams

The European Central Bank (ECB) has issued a warning that the euro zone could again be engulfed in a sovereign debt crisis, as took place in 2012, because of low growth and financial vulnerabilities.

President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, at a press conference after an ECB governing council meeting in Frankfurt, Germany on January 25, 2024. [AP Photo/Michael Probst]

The crisis of 2012 was averted when the then ECB president Mario Draghi said he would do “whatever it takes” to save the European financial system and the single currency. But under conditions where the contradictions of the European and global capitalist economy have intensified since then, guarantees by the central bank will no longer be sufficient.

The warning of a new crisis was set out in the ECB’s annual Financial Stability Review published on Wednesday. It pointed to the potential return of “market concerns over sovereign debt sustainability” under conditions of a worsening international environment marked by geopolitical uncertainty.

“Cyclical headwinds for euro area growth are compounding structural issues of low productivity and weak potential for growth across the euro area economy,” it said.

On Monday, clearly basing herself on the review released two days later, ECB president Christine Lagarde delivered a speech in Paris that made clear the response of the European ruling classes to the worsening economic situation would be a deepening assault on the working class.

She said that unless there was an increase in productivity, the euro bloc risked facing “a future of lower tax revenues and higher debt ratios,” which would mean “fewer resources for social spending.”

In fact, the offensive is already under way as major manufacturing companies, particularly in the auto industry, now embroiled in a global war for markets and profits, initiate plant closures and massive job destruction.

The European political establishment has been shaken by the return of Trump to the US presidency and what his threats of tariffs hikes and trade war will mean for the economy.

Lagarde did not directly address the issue of US tariffs but emphasised that the “geopolitical landscape” was “fragmenting into rival blocs, where attitudes towards free trade are being called into question.”

Europe was particularly exposed to the effects of trade war because it was “more open than others,” with trade accounting for more than half of the continent’s economic output.

The problems were compounded by the lag in technological development with Europe specialising in technologies developed in the last century and falling behind in the technologies of the future. Lagarde noted that “only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies are European.”

Europe, she continued, needed to “adapt quickly to a changing geopolitical environment and regain lost ground in competitiveness and innovation.”

Under the capitalist mode of production, where economic “health” is not determined by the well-being of the population but by the bottom line, regaining “lost ground” invariably means intensified exploitation of the working class, using technology, and other means, to boost profits combined with an attack on its social conditions.

The ECB review devoted considerable space to underlining the mounting financial vulnerabilities which have grown markedly since the crisis of more than a decade ago and how what might seem to be relatively small events can have large consequences.

It cited as an example the global turbulence in July when a lower-than-expected increase in US job numbers and a tightening of Japanese monetary policy indicated “greater sensitivity to macroeconomic data surprises, raising the potential for heightened volatility going forward.”

The review pointed to a number of sources for risks to financial stability, citing what it called “stretched valuations in equity and corporate bond markets,” that is elevated market pricing of financial assets boosted by speculation. These risks could be “amplified by non-bank liquidity and leverage vulnerability.”

In other words, confronted with turbulence in the markets, when there is a “dash for cash,” financial firms engaged in speculative trading could suddenly discover their financial assets are not worth what they thought they were, they do not have enough money on hand and that their credit lines were not as secure as they had believed.

And the problems extend beyond financial firms to governments.

The review warned that “heightened policy and geopolitical uncertainty, weak fiscal fundamentals and sluggish trend growth raise concerns about the sustainability of sovereign debt in some euro area countries.”

Another problem area was “credit risk concerns” in some areas of the corporate and household sectors which “may lead to asset quality concerns for banks and non-banks.”

Elaborating on the dangers confronting governments, it referred to the breakdown of all the political mechanisms of the post-war period which has seen the growth in support for right-wing populist and even outright fascist forces.

Using the anodyne language of such reports, it said political fragmentation over the past three decades had “made it more challenging to form stable government conditions” leading to delays in “reaching agreement on key fiscal and structural reforms” [code words for attacks on social services spending].

Furthermore, geopolitical uncertainty could be “particularly challenging for countries where public debt levels are high, given their limited fiscal space to support the economy in the event of adverse shocks.”

Interest rates had started to come down, but this did not imply an easing of debt problems because, as the review noted, “sovereign debt service costs are expected to rise in the future as maturing debt is rolled over at higher interest rates than on outstanding debt.”

While the ECB did not directly state that social spending must be cut, it called for “greater discipline” on current spending to make space for increased expenditure on defence and the “structural challenges” of climate change.

The ECB warned that high funding costs and weak economic growth would continue to affect corporate balance sheets, especially of commercial real estate and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

“The debt servicing capacity of SMEs appears to be particularly vulnerable to a slowdown in economic activity and higher borrowing costs,” it said.

Ukraine prepares to end transit of Russian natural gas

Jason Melanovski

Ukraine is preparing to completely end the transit of Russian natural gas to Europe as of January 1, 2025. A previous agreement that had allowed for the movement of the energy resource, albeit at a drastically reduced volume, through Ukraine’s pipelines is coming to an end.

Gas burns in front of a business center damaged by a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Sunday, September 1 2024. [AP Photo/Yevhen Titov]

According to Energynews, Russian gas flows to Europe via its western neighbor had already dropped “from 117 billion cubic meters in 2008 to just 14.65 billion in 2023, underscoring the decline of this historical corridor.”

Currently, the only active metering station of Russian gas to Ukrainian pipelines, which is located in Sudzha on Moscow’s side of the border, was taken by Kiev’s forces during Zelensky’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August. On November 10, Spain’s El Pais reported that Ukraine’s military is prioritizing holding onto the territory, where it stationed two of its “best regiments,” the 95th and 80th airborne assault brigades. They are outfitted with the high-tech equipment, including German Leopard and American Abrams tanks.

Meanwhile, Russian forces are continuing to advance in the Donbass region, where the Ukrainian military is facing manpower and ammunition shortages, and also working to dislodge Zelensky’s military from Kursk.

Whatever the outcome at the Sudzha metering station, the official end of the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine to Europe underlines the fact that the war is part of a metastasizing global conflict. One of the goals of the US—to weaken Russia as a major energy supplier to European markets through the complete decoupling of its infrastructure from Ukraine—poses dangers to Europe and threatens the eruption of open conflict within the trans-Atlantic alliance.

As a result of the ending of the gas deal, Russia stands to lose $6.5 billion unless it can redirect its exports to other markets. Ukraine could see .5 percent of its GDP shaved off by totally ending its role as a transit route.

The European think-tank Bruegel also noted recently that the end of the contract would open Ukrainian pipelines to targeting by Moscow’s forces. They have thus far been left undamaged due to the flow of Russian gas through them. Much of Ukraine’s electrical and power infrastructure has been crippled by the war. Last week, Zelensky’s government announced that it was imposing rolling blackouts throughout the country as winter approaches, in order to preserve what remains of the country’s power grid.

Russia has offered to continue sending natural gas to Europe through Ukraine, provided a separate agreement is negotiated between Kiev and the destination countries. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told reporters on November 6 in Sochi, “Of course, in my opinion, the European countries that currently receive gas through this corridor are interested in continuing such cooperation.

“We are ready to supply (gas), but not much depends on us, so probably this should be negotiated directly between the users and the country through which the transit is provided,” Novak explained.

Earlier in October, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal ruled out an extension of the current gas transit agreement during a meeting with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in Western Ukraine. “Ukraine once again says it will not continue the transit agreement with Russia after it expires,” Shmyhal told reporters, adding, “Ukraine’s strategic goal is to deprive the Kremlin of profits from the sale of hydrocarbons which the aggressor uses to finance the war.”

Despite the overall reduction in Russian gas to Europe since the start of the war, in 2023 shipments via the Ukrainian transit route met 65 percent of demand in Austria, Hungary and Slovakia, according to the European think tank, Bruegel. All of these countries’ supplies are now at risk, as events last week made clear.

This past Friday, Russia informed Austria that it was suspending its gas deliveries the following day, a move for which Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer claimed it was fully prepared for. “No home will go cold ... gas storage facilities are sufficiently full,” he told reporters.

Hungary no longer gets significant natural gas from Ukraine, having switched to receiving deliveries from Russia via the TurkStream pipeline that runs along the bed of the Black Sea. Slovakia continues to be dependent on Russian gas sent via Ukraine.

The EU, which has been publicly dismissive of any possible continuation of the Ukraine-Russia gas transit deal, is continuing to maintain this stance following the news of the shutoff to Austria.

Speaking with Reuters at a UN climate conference in Azerbaijan, EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson told reporters that “all EU countries receiving gas via the Ukraine route have access to other supply sources that could fill the gap. ... We have been very clear that an alternative supply is available, and there is no need for the continuation of Russian gas transiting via Ukraine to Europe.”

Regardless of the European powers’ efforts to project an image of confidence, underlying the situation are growing tensions with the United States, which has worked to ensure that Europe is ever-more dependent of American energy supplies. In September 2022, Kiev, with the aid of Washington, blew up the Nordstream 1 and 2 pipelines, which carried gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea.

In 2018, President Donald Trump, who will return to office next January, publicly attacked Germany at a NATO meeting in Brussels. “Germany is totally controlled by Russia,” he said. “They will be getting between 60 and 70 percent of their energy from Russia and a new pipeline.”

The decoupling of Russian gas from Europe became a fundamental goal of the Trump administration, which sought to increase the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG). When Trump was first in office, the US was a relatively minor player in the global LNG industry but now occupies a leading role in the European market.

As the Financial Times reported last Monday, “As the EU faced dwindling pipeline gas supplies from Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the bloc stepped up imports of LNG from around the world to make up for the shortfall. The US was the primary supplier of LNG, and now accounts for about 40 percent of the EU’s import of the super-chilled fuel, according to Kpler, a commodity data group.”

While Russian LNG is a major part of EU energy imports, second only to the US, on November 8 European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed replacing Russian LNG with US LNG during a phone conversation with Trump. “We are still receiving a lot of LNG from Russia. And why not replace it with American LNG, which is cheaper and lowers our energy prices,” Von der Leyen said, according to Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is reportedly in talks with Azerbaijan and the EU over substituting the Russian gas currently flowing through its pipelines with Azeri gas, which in reality would simply be Russian gas rebranded as Azeri. According to the Kyiv Independent, Azerbaijan supplied Europe with around 12 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas last year. Brussels’ and Baku’s goal is to ramp this up to 20 bcm annually by 2030.

However, questions remain on the ability of Azerbaijan to deliver the necessary quantities. As a result, conflicts are emerging within Europe about the viability of accepting the complete cut-off of Russian supplies. Some appear to be leaving the door open on another deal to keep Russian gas flowing, despite EU officials’ statements to the contrary.

Montel News reported on Monday about the potential of a new gas deal with Moscow. “A source close to a large central European energy firm remains convinced stakeholders will bash out a deal at the last minute,” a source told the press outlet.

“The draft of that deal is already in the cupboards with the Russians,” the person stated. “The delivery point for that deal will not be the Ukrainian-Slovak or Ukrainian-Hungarian border, but will move 2,000km to the east.”

The plan would be for an EU company to accept delivery of the gas at the Russia-Ukraine border and pay Ukraine directly for use of its pipeline. “The challenge is how to dress it up in such a way that the deal would be sold to the Ukrainian public, the EU and to Russia, so everybody at the end of the day will claim victory,” the individual told Montel News.

Berlin Senate prepares widescale social and cultural cutbacks

Markus Salzmann

The last few years in Germany have been marked by drastic austerity measures with funding diverted to finance a massive military build-up. The collapse of the German coalition government will further exacerbate this development. The Berlin state government (Senate), a coalition of the CDU and SPD, is already anticipating the budget cuts to be implemented at a federal level.

Senators in the Berlin House of Representatives [Photo by Sandro Halank / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The Berlin Senate wants to save three billion euros next year alone. Cuts of at least another 1.8 billion euros are planned for the years 2026 and 2027. To this end, the CDU and SPD have agreed on a fiscal policy freeze, with all budget items to be frozen at the 2025 level. Currently, the city’s total budget is around 40 billion euros.

In September, the Senate administrations were instructed to stop making firm funding commitments for 2025. To this end, a “circular letter to secure the 2025 budget” was sent out to all departments, Finance Senator Stefan Evers (CDU) explained. The aim was “not to raise false expectations among recipients of grants and subsidies for the coming year, for example,” according to the finance administration.

Former state governments, which were led by the SPD for 22 years and included coalitions involving the Left Party and the Greens, had already made massive cuts in the areas of health, education and social services, making Berlin a centre for widespread poverty.

The drastic nature of the planned cuts is made clear by the statement of a spokeswoman for the finance ministry, who explained: “We have to reduce government spending to a normal, sustainable level after the spending explosion of the last five years.”

The state government had already decided on significant cuts for the current year with each department called upon to reduce its budget by around two percent, saving around 550 million euros.

In the Berlin Senate, there is talk of “the most severe budget crisis since the bank scandal.” In 2001, the billions in losses incurred by the state supported Bankgesellschaft Berlin were passed on to the population through brutal austerity measures implemented by the Senate (a coalition of the SPD and the Left Party/PDS) headed by Klaus Wowereit (SPD). Today, much more far-reaching cuts are on the agenda under even more stringent conditions.

The Senate is currently deciding on the specific cuts behind closed doors and they will not be made public until the end of November. Little has been revealed so far. What is certain, however, is that almost all areas will be affected by the cuts.

There are to be massive savings in the sector of education and child care. Berlin schools are already no longer allowed to book school trips. Senator for Education Katharina Günther-Wünsch (CDU) justified this by saying that it was necessary to stabilise the budget. Here, both the costs for the teachers involved are to be saved, as are subsidies for poor families. Around 30 percent of pupils from poorer families were until recently entitled to these subsidies. Other costs for business trips and trips for teachers are also to be cancelled.

Further savings are planned for the renovation of schools and daycare centres, which are in a dilapidated state across the board. New buildings could be smaller than planned. According to press reports, the additional construction of urgently needed daycare centres could be cancelled.

The twelve Berlin music schools are particularly affected. The permanent employment of 1,800 teachers, which is laid down by law, has been delayed for months. Finance Senator Evers has stated that funds would only be made available if they were financed by reducing the services offered by the music schools. As a result, about 25 to 30 percent of music students would lose their places. Around 18,000 students would be affected.

Severe cuts are also expected in the areas of health and social services. Around 40 health care institutions and similar independent organisations have already submitted a document to the Senate, as they justifiably fear for their continued funding and survival.

The majority of them provide important services on behalf of the state, such as pastoral care, hospice work, support for people with chronic illnesses or care for people without health insurance. As a rule, these organisations are completely dependent on funding from the state.

For many years and decades, these services have been hopelessly underfunded and it is not uncommon for them to be maintained only through the commitment of employees. But the planned austerity measures threaten to be devastating.

“Even now, public funds for health care for homeless and homeless people and people without health insurance in Berlin are insufficient,” said Peter Bobbert, President of the Berlin Medical Association, warning against destroying the city’s social infrastructure.

The CDU and SPD are also planning severe cuts in the cultural sector. Senator for Culture Joe Chialo (CDU) has so far refused to comment on how much will be saved and where. Overall, the targeted cuts amount to a volume of around 120 million euros.

There are already fierce protests against the planned cuts. In an open letter to the Berlin Senate, the signatories warn of the consequences of drastic cuts. Opera, concert and theatre institutions would have to cut back their operations and reduce jobs, and some would probably have to close. Among the well-known signatories are conductor Daniel Barenboim, actor Lars Eidinger and theatre director Frank Castorf.

The fact that a scenario of well-known concert houses closing is not out of the question was confirmed by the governing mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) as early as the summer of this year. In connection with a possible sale of the Komische Oper, Wegner stated that the situation of the state budget “allows no room for manoeuvre.” Currently, the renovation of the building, which has been urgent for years, is being postponed again with reference to the alleged necessary savings.

Further cuts are also expected in the area of climate protection, although the city has hardly any significant expenditure here. At the beginning of the year, the so-called climate special fund, which had previously been announced with great fanfare, was scrapped at the instigation of the tax authorities. Now measures such as the planned installation of solar panels on state-owned buildings will also fall victim to the red pencil.

This devastation of the city’s social fabric can only be enforced against the resistance of the population. It is therefore considered certain there will be no cuts affecting the police, secret service and security apparatuses. Interior Senator Iris Spranger (SPD) has spoken out clearly against any savings in this area and has been supported by the entire Senate.

Australian government determined to slash international student numbers despite rejection of enrolment cap bill

Mike Head

The Albanese Labor government has vowed to keep drastically cutting the number of international students in Australia, regardless of the impending defeat in the Senate of its reactionary bill to impose caps on enrolments at universities across the country.

Labor is intent on outdoing the Liberal-National Coalition opposition in making overseas students, along with immigrants and refugees, scapegoats for the intensifying cost-of-living, housing and social crisis affecting millions of working-class households.

The Coalition announced on Monday that it would join the Greens in voting in the Senate against Labor’s signature plan to cut migration numbers by slashing international student enrolments. Labor’s response was to demagogically accuse the Coalition of being “soft” on the anti-immigrant witch hunt.

Australian federal Minister for Education Jason Clare [Photo: X/@JasonClareMP]

Education Minister Jason Clare told reporters on Monday that the Coalition’s decision to block the bill would destroy opposition leader Peter Dutton’s credibility on migration. “You can’t talk tough on immigration and then go soft on this,” Clare said.

Clare vowed to continue cutting international student numbers by denying them visas through the government’s December 2023 directive known as Ministerial Direction 107, supposedly designed to block “high-risk” students coming to live in Australia. 

Under this regime, the Labor government also more than doubled non-refundable student visa application fees from $710 to $1,600—the highest in the world—slowed visa processing and imposed harsher English language requirements and “genuine student” tests.

These measures have already cut the student arrival numbers from 577,295 in 2022-23 to 376,731 in 2023-24, and led to more than 60,000 visa refusals so far in 2024. This has triggered thousands of job cuts in universities and private education colleges. 

The attack on international students forms part of Labor’s plans to halve overseas migration to 235,000 annually for the next three years. The Coalition has vowed to cut annual net migration even further, to 160,000, which could reduce annual international student inflows to less than 15,000.

Both parties are ramping up their anti-immigrant agitation, seeking to divert in a poisonous nationalist direction the growing working-class hostility to the devastation of living conditions. The ruling classes globally are on the same path, now spearheaded by US president-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to mobilise the military to deport millions of immigrants.

Coalition shadow finance minister Jane Hume accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government of “opening floodgates to record levels of international students” and claimed that this had exacerbated rental shortages in inner city areas.

In truth, international students make up only 4 percent of the rental market, yet rents have soared, as have home mortgage repayments, due to a combination of billionaire property developer profiteering and government-backed interest rate hikes to try to suppress workers’ wage demands.

Under Labor’s enrolment cap plan, 15 universities were to have had their numbers reduced for 2025, particularly targeting those with the highest numbers of Chinese students. Across the country, enrolments were to be cut overall by more than 50,000, to 145,000, for publicly-funded universities, with severely damaging consequences.

Labor is also continuing to starve the universities of adequate funding, exacerbating the crisis produced by their ever-greater reliance on exorbitant international students’ fees because of years of funding cuts by successive Labor and Coalition governments.

Those fees and the flow-on effects of student spending on housing and other services have become a $51 billion-a-year revenue-earning industry for Australian capitalism, making it the ruling class’s fourth-highest export earner after iron ore, coal and gas.

International students have been treated as cash cows as a direct result of the education “revolution” imposed by the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments of 2007 to 2013. This “revolution” created a corporate-style market, which forced universities to fight each other for full fee-paying international enrolments.

The bill’s rejection, just weeks before the start of 2025, has now thrown the country’s 39 public universities into chaos. While the bill was still pending, some proceeded with 2025 enrolments, while others paused international student applications and established waiting lists to avoid going over the caps that the Albanese government had announced.

In October alone, universities announced more than 1,000 job losses, while others resorted to staffing freezes and/or the decimation of contract and casual staff, especially in the humanities and arts. Those cutting hundreds of jobs included the Australian National University, the University of Canberra, James Cook University, the University of Southern Queensland and the University of Wollongong.

Greens education spokeswoman Senator Mehreen Faruqi described the rejection of the Labor government’s bill as “a big win for the tertiary education sector” and international students. In reality, the assault will continue.

Faruqi also underscored the Greens’ hopes of propping up the Labor government after the next election, due by May. Since barely scraping into office in 2022, Labor’s support has further disintegrated among workers and youth because of the gutting of living standards and its backing for the US-armed Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Faruqi told the media: “We know there is a very good chance that there will be a minority government, with the Greens in balance of power or having influence in that minority government, we can actually push Labor to be better and to support the tertiary education sector.”

This flies in the face of the historical record. The Greens formed a de facto coalition with the last minority Labor government, that of Julia Gillard from 2010 to 2013, as it slashed university funding, cut welfare entitlements and joined the Obama administration’s military and strategic “pivot to Asia” to confront China.

Today, the cuts to international students are also aimed at forcing the chronically under-funded universities to integrate themselves more fully with the demands of big business and the military, as set out earlier this year in the Albanese government’s Universities Accord. 

The Accord insists that universities must reshape both their teaching and research in partnership with employers, and in line with the building of a war economy, including through the AUKUS pact, in preparation for a US-led war against China.

While starving the universities of funds, the government is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into AUKUS military spending, as well as backing the Zionist barbarism in Gaza and Lebanon and the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.

The main campus trade unions, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), have been complicit in Labor’s assault. In September the NTEU asked its members to sign a petition to the government calling for “phase-in periods for any caps” on international students, not the reversal of them.

The NTEU falsely claimed that the enrolment cuts could be implemented without any job losses and that vice chancellors’ warnings about thousands of job cuts were just “scare mongering.”

Trump’s tariff threats bring warnings of “recession, poverty and conflict”

Nick Beams

Even before he officially takes office on January 20 and begins implementing his policies, the ascent of Donald Trump to the US presidency has sent tremors through the world economy.

The main issue, at least to this point, is the effect of the tariff hikes Trump has advanced—a 60 percent imposition of all goods from China and a 10 to 20 percent tariff on imports from other countries.

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024, in Atlanta. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]

The summit meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Community (APEC)—an organisation established in 1989 to promote free trade—held in Lima, Peru, over the weekend was dominated by a man who was not even there.

As Bloomberg reported: “At first, speakers tiptoed around saying his name for the first few hours of the two-day conference… Once the floodgates opened, however, Trump was just about all people talked about.”

Delivering a keynote address, without directly naming Trump, Vietnam’s president Luong Cuong, drew attention to the key concerns, warning that “isolationism, protectionism, and trade wars lead only to recessions, conflict and poverty.”

He was not just making a general defence of the free trade order but would have had in mind the position of Vietnam. In recent years it has generated the fourth largest trade surplus with the US—after China, the European Union and Mexico—as a result of the shift of some manufacturing from China.

Its trade surplus now makes it a target for an attack by Trump who told Fox Business in 2019 that Vietnam “takes advantage of us even worse than China.”

In the course of discussion and commentary, the protectionist US Smoot-Hawley legislation of the 1930s and its disastrous consequences are increasingly being recalled. It is estimated to have led to a 14 percent contraction in world trade, setting off economic conflict that played a significant role in creating the conditions for World War II.

In a meeting with outgoing US president Joe Biden on the sidelines of the APEC meeting, China’s president Xi Jinping stuck in the main to his usual phrases about the need for global cooperation to overcome the difficulties facing humanity for which “neither decoupling nor supply chain disruption is a solution.”

He told Biden he was ready to work with Trump to improve the relationship between the world’s two largest economies.

But he did deliver a warning: “If we treat each other as an adversary or an enemy, viciously compete with and harm each other, the Sino-US relations will encounter twists and turns or even regression.”

He specifically took issue with the US policy of denying China access to the most advanced AI chips and other technology on “national security” grounds. US national security adviser Jake Sullivan has characterised the ban as a “small yard, high fences” policy.

Xi told Biden this policy should not be pursued by major economies. His warning carried some weight because, as a number of analysts have noted, while China may have been caught somewhat on the backfoot by the tariffs of the first Trump administration it is much better prepared for the second.

As the Financial Times (FT) noted in a recent article, China has introduced anti-foreign sanctions laws against firms deemed to be acting against its national interests.

“An expanded export control law,” the article continued, “means Beijing can also weaponise its global dominance of the supply of dozens of resources such as rare earths and lithium that are crucial to modern technologies.”

It cited remarks by Andrew Gilholm, head of China analysis at a consultancy firm, who said the damage Beijing could inflict on the US in retaliation had been underestimated.

“I keep telling our clients: ‘You think you’ve priced-in geopolitical risk and US-China trade warfare, but you haven’t, because China hasn’t seriously retaliated yet.’”

China is not the sole target of Trump tariff warfare. Europe is very much in the firing line. While US stocks have surged ahead since the election, albeit with something of a downturn in recent days, European markets have taken a hammering because of fears of what US tariffs will bring.

“Investors fear that Europe will be in the front line of the coming trade war,” Chris Turner global, head of markets at the financial firm ING, told the FT.

Markus Hansen, a portfolio manager at another firm, told the newspaper: “Trump’s not messing around. His administration wants to get going on tariffs from day one.” European companies “will find themselves in the crossfire.”

The tariff war comes as European manufacturing firms, especially in the continent’s largest economy, Germany, have had the cheap energy basis of their growth over the past several decades shattered by the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. German manufactured prowess was in no small part powered by cheap Russian energy. That has now gone.

Europe is being hit on two sides. On the one hand, it faces a direct attack from the US as Trump deepens the measures against the EU he initiated in his first term. At the same time, it could be caught in the pincers of the US-China conflict. One of the consequences of US measures will be that China will seek to increase its exports to Europe.

Some of the geo-economic problems confronting the EU were outlined in a recent article on the major US foreign policy journal Foreign Affairs.

It said that in recent years EU officials had announced a series of measures to strengthen the bloc.

But the new situation required more than “drafting agendas and appointing well-meaning leadership.” The EU was hamstrung by numerous institutions and 27-member states and suffered from “internal dysfunction when it comes to geoeconomics.”

Those conflicts were recently on display when the European Commission decided to impose a 40 percent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. The move was opposed by five countries, spearheaded by Germany, where the vitally important auto industry opposed the move fearing retaliation would hit its Chinese export market. Another 12 countries abstained.

Pointing to the global economic warfare, still in its initial stages, in which Europe is embroiled, the article said the bloc’s policy was largely reactive.

Adopting the language of the foreign policy establishments of the major imperialist powers, it said policy focused on “protecting Europe from China’s unfair trade practices, Russian aggression, or the United States’ potential imposition of sweeping tariffs.”

“And even in these points, there is little agreement among EU member states or even within European institutions. European policymakers say they aim to ‘de-risk’ from China, but they cannot settle on a definition of what that concept means or what it would entail in practice.

Record homelessness in London, surge in rough sleepers since Labour took office

Simon Whelan & Robert Stevens

Several reports attest to a massive increase in homelessness in London, with another surge since Labour came to power in July.

A report published last month by London Councils group, a cross-party organisation representing London's 32 borough councils and the City of London—estimated that there were now more than 183,000 Londoners homeless and living in temporary accommodation, costing local boroughs around £4 million per day. “London is grappling with the most severe homelessness crisis in the country,” it declares.

London’s homelessness emergency notes that this represents the highest level of homelessness ever recorded in the capital, equivalent to one in 50 Londoners.

London’s homelessness emergency report [Photo: London Councils group]

Child homelessness has reached staggering levels with the report stating, “The number of Londoners in temporary accommodation includes almost 90,000 children. London Councils estimates this is equivalent to one out of every 21 children living in the capital and means on average there is at least one homeless child in every London classroom.”

An enormous 320,000 households are on waiting lists for social housing in London.

London’s population is almost 9 million (8.9 million) and its wider metro area almost 15 million. The report extrapolates on the basis of the 8.9 million figure.

The study explains, “London is the epicentre of a national emergency--homelessness is a major concern across the UK. However, London accounts for over half of England’s homelessness figures. As the situation in the capital worsens, the impact is increasingly felt beyond its boundaries. This is demonstrated by the number of out-of-London homelessness placements boroughs must make due to the chronic shortage of affordable accommodation in the capital, which in turn can exacerbate housing pressures elsewhere in the country”.

A homeless man sleeping in a shop doorway in Romford, London, December 2022

The huge increase in homelessness is stretching the resources of local councils, many already teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, to breaking point. London “boroughs’ collective spend is around £114m each month--or £4 million every day--on temporary accommodation for homeless Londoners. It warns, “London boroughs are currently forecast to overspend on their homelessness budgets this year by £250m despite an increase in funding.”

In the first months of the Labour government the number of people sleeping rough in London has risen by almost a fifth, to a new record high. A total of 4,780 rough sleepers were seen on the capital’s streets between July and September, according to the latest figures from the Combined Homelessness and Information Network (Chain). 

This represents an increase of 18 percent from 4,068 people in the same quarter of 2023, and up 13 percent from 4,223 in the weeks between April and June this year. Chain’s data showed nearly half, 49 percent (2,343) of those counted between July and September, were new rough sleepers. The number of rough sleepers it recorded between July and September was the highest quarterly figure since their records began in 2009.

Almost 12,000 (11,993) people were witnessed rough sleeping in the UK capital in the year to March 2024, according to Chain’s statistics--the highest ever recorded by Chain for a single year. The total number of rough sleepers in the year to March was up by 58 percent on the 7,581 people seen rough sleeping 10 years ago, in 2014-15.

The Glass Door Homeless charity, which operates emergency shelters across London are preparing for a hectic winter. Its shelters opened November 4 and will remain so until April. There were more than 1,500 applications for its shelter spaces last winter, an 80 percent increase on the previous year that saw the waiting list for men seeking emergency shelter closed three times due to excess demand.

Chain’s figures reveal almost half of rough sleepers in London are UK nationals, 8.1 percent are Romanian nationals and Polish nationals make up 5.1 percent. There has been a 41 percent increase in the number of young people aged between 18 and 25 sleeping rough compared to 2023. Of the total of rough sleepers, 52 percent of those assessed were experiencing mental health issues, with another 35 percent having issues with drink and class A drugs.

Reporting on the record breaking number of rough sleepers, the Daily Mail noted, “Westminster--a hub for luxury shopping and late-night entertainment--had by far the highest number of rough sleepers”. 

It said of a recently evicted migrants rough sleeper encampment in Park Lane, “Opposite their home are the luxury Park Lane Hilton and The Dorchester hotels where room rates can start from more than £1,000 a night. Top of the range cars such as McLarens, Bentleys and Ferraris line the streets nearby and an Aston Martin showroom has pride of place next to the five star Grosvenor House Hotel.”

Grotesque inequality is illustrated not to elicit sympathy. The migrant rough sleepers are demonised for being poor and for blighting the life-styles of the super-rich. “Tycoons” the article complains, “who look out on the camp from their penthouses are infuriated to see people drinking at 7am and using Hyde Park's shrubberies as toilets.”

Before the general election the then ruling Conservatives sought to implement new laws that could have seen “nuisance” rough sleepers arrested for how they “smelt”. Under the proposed legislation, those deemed a “nuisance” would have been fined as much as £2,500 and/or jailed if they refused police orders to shift from a certain locality.

In the prelude to Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London (2023), Caroline Knowles of Queen Mary University of London notes how in contrast to the silence on the vast siphoning off of societies wealth by the super-rich, the “Media and political attention focus on the habits of the poor, with impecunious migrants and refugees providing a focus for popular discontent... 

“Plutocrats are a tiny proportion of London’s population, yet their wealth is extraordinary… Yet as wealthy residents increase so do the ranks of the dispossessed. The number of homeless people in London without a fixed residence, some of them rough sleepers, increased sharply from 2010, when, following massive public investment to forestall financial collapse threatened by the banking crisis of 2008, a politics of austerity hit the public finances and the budgets of local councils.”

“A direct line can be drawn between London’s housing and social welfare crisis and the super-rich,” writes Knowles “including international developers and investors who have bought up the city’s real estate, and wealthy residents who--permitted to do so by permissive governments--avoid making a fair contribution to the public finance.”

Rising homelessness is the most naked expression of entrenched poverty. Stephanie Ratcliffe of St Mungo’s homeless charity said the record rise in new rough sleepers over the last year is being driven by the cost-of-living crisis and a shortage of suitable housing in the capital. “People who have never been at risk of homelessness before--that’s never been a tangible possibility for them--are finding themselves in that position and sleeping on the street, which I think is very shocking and heartbreaking”, said Ratcliffe.

Fueling the emergence of widespread rough sleeping and homelessness in London and across Britain is the destruction of public housing. Demolition of countless housing estates, gentrification, right-to-buy legislation, the marketisation of housing associations, and a failure by government of all political stripes to invest in substantial new public housing since the 1970s has created a disaster for the working class. 

Nearly 60,000 public housing units have been demolished in England in the last 10 years. Over 161 London council estates have been demolished since 1997 and another 123 estates are set to go. Deliberately, brick by brick, London’s working class is being deprived of public housing and frequently kicked out onto the pavement.

Mass layoffs announced in France at Auchan and Michelin

Anthony Torres

Farmers are beginning nationwide protests in France and rail workers have announced strikes starting December 11, as workers face a wave of mass layoffs announced across Europe and internationally.

The empty parking lot of an Auchan hypermarket is seen in Plaisir, France. [AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere]

Supermarket chain Auchan has announced an unprecedented slashing of thousands of jobs in France. This comes amid mass sackings in the auto industry, with tens of thousands of jobs threatened at Volkswagen in Germany, as well as at Stellantis in the United States and internationally.

Beyond the 2,400 jobs threatened at Auchan, auto parts maker Michelin has announced the closure before 2026 of two factories in western France, Cholet and Vannes, threatening 1,254 jobs. Michelin nevertheless recorded a record €3.6 billion operating profit in 2023.

The restructuring planned by Auchan includes rationalizing Auchan-France’s and Auchan-International’s customer support services, as well as the international products department. Some 784 jobs are threatened, including 138 that are currently vacant. The rationalizing of Auchan’s logistics operations for home deliveries threatens to close three warehouses that are to be replaced by drive-ins, axing 224 jobs.

In Auchan’s supermarkets, 915 jobs would be cut. Three stores are to close—at Clermont-Ferrand, Woippy and Bar-le-Duc—as well as a smaller store at Aurillac and six shops. These would impact 466 jobs.

In the last quarter, France has lost 25,000 jobs. Milee, the distributor of publicity brochures, formerly known as Adrexo, has gone into bankruptcy. Currently, no one is offering to buy its operations. After several waves of mass sackings in 2024 the 5,000 remaining jobs are also threatened. France’s Insee national statistics office confirms an economic downturn that is unprecedented since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Official projections are that unemployment will rise back over 8 percent this coming year.

These mass sackings are the response of the capitalist class to the international economic and political crisis triggered by the pandemic and the NATO war with Russia. As the pandemic began, trillions of euros in public funds were handed over to financial markets and major corporations for speculation to enrich the financial oligarchy and build a war economy. These policies, together with Europe’s decision to cut itself off from cheaper Russian gas, has triggered an inflation crisis and vastly intensified the budget and debt crises of the major European states.

Trump’s election victory in the United States has accelerated the decision of the European bourgeoisies to carry out mass sackings in Europe, amid mounting fears of the trade war policies Trump will employ against both China and Europe.

In a question-and-answer session at the National Assembly on November 5, Prime Minister Michel Barnier hypocritically declared: “I am not proud, ever, of a policy that would destroy jobs. I want to know what corporations have done with money we gave them. We will ask these questions, and we will see whether the money was well spent or badly spent, in order to draw lessons for the future.”

The owners of Auchan are the Mulliez family, whose net worth of €28 billion makes them the 7th-largest fortune in France, according to the 2024 list established by financial magazine Challenges. Between 2013 and 2018 alone, this corporation benefited from €83 million in grants of public funds.

French Economy Minister Antoine Armand, while on an official visit to Calais, tried to lull Auchan workers to sleep, claiming: “The state will ensure that the defense of jobs remains at the center of the corporation’s strategy, and that the priority during this transformation remains with jobs.”

The Barnier government’s promises are so many lies designed to hide its complicity in corporate jobs cuts. Already in 2020, as the pandemic began, the Mulliez family carried out one restructuring plan and used Macron’s labor law reforms to declare bankruptcy, slash jobs and buy up other stores. This included the 98 stores of the Casino supermarket chain, whose total value is estimated at around €1 billion.

Now, to justify its almost 2400 layoffs, the corporation is claiming: “Since 2012, Auchan has undergone a constant fall in the number of customers in its supermarkets and a fall in its operating revenues. Over this period, and before the purchase of Casino supermarkets, its market share fell from 12.1 to 8 percent, its profits were reduced by €2.26 billion, and its EBITDA was divided by six. Given these results and in an ultra-competitive climate, Auchan must react.”

Mass redundancies at auto parts suppliers Schaeffler and Continental in Germany

Marianne Arens

With the help of the IG Metall union, many companies are currently pushing through long-planned mass redundancies and site closures. In Hesse, in addition to VW Baunatal and Opel/Stellantis, this particularly affects the automotive suppliers Schaeffler and Continental. The latest IG Metall contract in the metal and electrical industries, which guarantees two years of “industrial peace,” has given management the green light.

Continental plans to close its sites in Schwalbach am Taunus and Wetzlar by the end of 2025. Some of the workforce there are to move to Frankfurt or Babenhausen, with 630 jobs also being destroyed at the Frankfurt site. One hundred and ten jobs are also to be cut in Babenhausen. In total, Continental is cutting 1,200 of the remaining 8,000 jobs in the region, and 1,100 workers are to be forced to relocate. Continental plans to cut 7,150 jobs worldwide in order to reduce personnel costs by €400 million annually.

The Schaeffler Group, an important manufacturer of drive technology, has also announced job cuts in Schwalbach am Taunus. Schaeffler only took over Vitesco Technologies Group AG, the automotive supplier spun off from Continental, in October 2024. Just three weeks later, Schaeffler announced 139 job cuts at Vitesco in Schwalbach. The company plans to cut 3,700 jobs across Europe, 2,800 in Germany.

The company, which employs 120,000 people worldwide, wants to “utilise synergies” and “increase the savings potential to €290 million per year” over five years—in other words: lay off employees.

There is great anger and a willingness to fight among those impacted. A faint reflection of this can even occasionally be seen in the local press. For example, a young Continental worker from Wetzlar told Hessenschau regional news programme “All our plans for the future have been turned upside down. We only got married last year, now have a child and wanted to build a house. That’s all in limbo now.”

Another called it a “slap in the face,” adding, “It’s sad that this is coming to an end.” Employees in administration, research and development have been particularly hard hit.

In the protests and warning strikes of recent weeks and months, the workforce has been almost totally united. There can be no doubt about their determination to fight. However, IG Metall is refusing to lead the necessary fight. It made this clear with its latest wage agreement where it committed to preventing industrial action at least until the early elections in February.

In addition, IG Metall chairwoman Christiane Brenner, who stands behind the agreement, has been a deputy chairwoman on Continental’s Supervisory Board for years at an annual salary of €270,000. With its officials in the pay of management, IG Metall blocked any resistance three and a half years ago when Continental destroyed over 10,000 jobs and flattened its large Aachen plant,

Many still remember the dispute at Continental in Karben and other branches in Hesse. Each was left to fight on its own. At no point did IG Metall organise serious industrial action uniting workers at all locations. Instead, it helped ensure the closure of one location after another. Karben will also be finally wound up next year.

Workers must draw definite conclusions from this experience. They need their own, independent rank-and-file action committees to overcome the division fostered by IG Metall between sites, groups and sectors and unite all employees, whether permanent or contract workers. The ultimate goal must be to take control of such important global production companies themselves, to put them at the service of society and to expropriate their current owners.

These owners and their managers are waging a ruthless class war. The so-called “social partnership” has turned into a one-way street: The trade union, through its networks in the workplace, ensures that any resistance is nipped in the bud. The attacks on jobs and wages are part of a global capitalist offensive and a new wave of trade war paving the way for armed conflict.

The captains of industry and shareholders belong to a class of the super-rich. This applies above all to Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler and her son Georg Schaeffler, who are in 27th place on the list of the 500 richest Germans, with a fortune of over €7.7 billion. The Schaeffler family is also the main shareholder of Continental AG and recently acquired its spun-off automotive division Vitesco.

The management boards of both companies were paid bonuses totaling millions, and in July, Continental shareholders decided to pay out around €440 million in dividends. Of this sum alone, 46 percent—more than €200 million euros—will once again end up in the Schaeffler family’s bank account.

Both Continental and Schaeffler owe the origins of their wealth to crimes committed under Nazi rule culminating in the Second World War. Here are some historical facts:

• At Continental, immediately after Hitler came to power in 1933, all managers were obliged to join the Nazi Party (NSDAP). The Executive Board, Supervisory Board and Works Council were purged of Jewish members and opponents of the regime. The company described itself as a “Christian and purely German company.”
• The war brought an unexpected economic upswing, as production—aircraft tyres, fuel tanks and a wide range of troop equipment—was geared entirely to the needs of Hitler’s army, the Wehrmacht. Continental was a “company important to the war effort” and a “model National Socialist [Nazi] company.”
• The exploitation of tens of thousands of forced labourers, including prisoners of war, “civilian workers from occupied territories” and concentration camp inmates, was particularly profitable. Continental did not even shy away from having the rubber soles of Sachsenhausen concentration camp prisoners tested for wear, which meant that people were hounded to death on the “shoe test track.”

The origins of the Schaeffler fortune also goes back to the Nazi era. The company, which was officially founded in Herzogenaurach in 1940, actually had a Jewish predecessor: the “Davistan Krimmer, Plüsch und Teppichfabriken AG” owned by the Frank family, who had to flee Germany in the 1930s. This company, which was quickly renamed “Wilhelm Schaeffler AG,” also produced armaments for the Wehrmacht during the war and profited from the proximity of its owners, the direct ancestors of the current owners, to the Nazi regime.