Trump announces Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to invest $100 billion in US manufacturing

Shih-Yu Chou

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC), the world’s largest contract manufacturer of the most advanced chips, would invest $100 billion in the United States over the next four years, US President Donald Trump declared on March 3 at the White House. He spoke alongside US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and the corporation’s chief executive, Che Chia Wei.

Trump referred to Wei as a “legend” since the next planned investment would bring the company’s total investment in the US to $165 billion. The expansion includes three new fabrication plants (fabs), two advanced packaging facilities, and a major research and development center, consolidating this project as “the largest single foreign direct investment in US history”, as TSMC indicated.

Trump had previously asserted, “Taiwan took our chip business away”, and “we want that business back”. Prior to the spectacle at the White House, TSMC had already committed to investing $65 billion in advanced semiconductor production in Phoenix, Arizona. One fab has started to manufacture advanced 4 nanometer (nm) chips in the US since October 2024.

The generally law-abiding TSMC did not even submit the investment plan to Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs for assessment and approval, as it had previously done. In other words, the announcement was made unilaterally by the Trump administration.

Following Trump’s statement, Taiwan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung noted in an interview on March 5 that the projected investment was in line with US strategic interests, and hence should be considered as a boost to semiconductor supply chain resiliency.

Trump was “very pleased” with the deal, he said. TSMC played “an indispensable role in bringing about America First.” Lin went on to urge the public to contemplate how to “Make Taiwan Great” and craft “a win-win situation” for both the United States and Taiwan.

His rhetoric echoed the statement made by Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, who promised to “collaborate with” the Trump administration in order to establish “democratic supply chains” for industries connected to high-end chips on February 14.

The opposition Kuomintang (KMT) and the KMT-aligned media railed against the investment plan, accusing the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of “getting nothing back” for “handing over Taiwan’s silicon shield” to the “business-minded” Trump administration. Unlike the Biden-Harris administration, Trump showed “no commitment to democracy and the defense of democratic allies of the US”. By ceding TSMC to the US, the DPP government had gradually turned Taiwan into Ukraine.

The term “silicon shield” was coined by Australian journalist Craig Addison, who authored a book of the same title in 2001. Since then, the Taiwanese bourgeoisie and corporate media have peddled the fiction that the concentration of global semiconductor production in Taiwan has made the island “an indispensable player” on the world stage. This supposedly ensures that if China invades, the United States will intervene to save the island.

Taiwanese nationalism feeds off this fantasy. The island’s ruling class and academics use the term “silicon shield” interchangeably with TSMC and “the holy mountain that safeguards the nation”. They brandish their case of Dunning-Kruger effects—a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence overestimate their capabilities.

Examples abound. Lai declared in 2023 that TSMC’s “achievements” and “products” were shared by the world. As a result, not only Taiwan must defend TSMC, but “the world has a responsibility to do its share” and to “safeguard world civilization”.

Wu Jieh-min, an establishment scholar at Academia Sinica, the island’s leading research institution, similarly asserted in 2024, the ultimate strength of the silicon shield stemmed from “the global consequences of any disruption to the chip supply chain… Any attack on Taiwan would... jeopardize global economic stability. That is the essence of the Silicon Shield.”

Despite tactical differences between the ruling DPP and the opposition KMT, the competing claims of “strengthening Taiwan’s silicon shield” and “handing over the island’s silicon shield” are demonstrably false.

It is necessary to examine to how the US imperialist bourgeoisie delivered a set of blows to Japan’s semiconductor industry before exposing the fraudulent notion of the silicon shield.

In the late 1970s, Japan established itself as a major semiconductor manufacturer, particularly in DRAMs. According to a RAND report, the United States’ market share of DRAMs plummeted from 70 percent to 20 percent between 1979 and 1986.

In the 1980s, the US semiconductor industry complained that it took years to file a successful patent application, and that by the time the patent was granted, the original design had become obsolete. This enabled the Japanese semiconductor industry to “pirate” the intricate circuit designs developed by US manufacturers.

In response, US President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984, making layouts of integrated circuits legally protected upon registration.

This did not substantially reduce the US trade deficit with Japan. It also did not hinder the Japanese bourgeoisie’s ambition to compete with the US in manufacturing. Japan’s semiconductor industry turned out to be the country’s largest capital investor.

In 1985, the Reagan administration then “advised” Japan to reduce its investment in the semiconductor industry. Japan swiftly turned down the request, citing the fact that a significant portion of semiconductors destined for the US were manufactured by Japanese subsidiaries of US corporations.

President Reagan with William French Smith making a statement to the press regarding the air traffic controllers strike (PATCO) from the Rose Garden, August 3, 1981 [Photo: White House Press Office]

According to the New York Times, Clyde Prestowitz, then counselor to the Secretary of Commerce, acted like a Mafia gangster when he told his Japanese counterparts, “It’s not the business of the United States Government to tell the Japanese how much to invest, but if you can see ahead of you a potential firestorm, you have to think about how to deal with it.” This viewpoint had bipartisan support and was regarded as a “rational” response to Japan’s economic rise.

Such a threat might sound familiar to many. Trump’s remark at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos is a different version of this, saying “if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then, … you will have to pay a tariff … which will direct hundreds of billions of dollars and even trillions of dollars into our Treasury.”

Lionel Olmer, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, then began to address claims of semiconductor dumping from Japan and its “predatory pricing policy” in the US market.

In September 1985, the US weaponized the dollar by “persuading” its G5 counterparts, which included France, West Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom, to conclude the Plaza Accord. The deal was intended to drive up major currencies (especially the yen) relative to the dollar, hence increase US exports and reduce US trade imbalances in manufactured goods with “allies”.

In September 1986, Japan “voluntarily” signed the US-Japan Semiconductor Agreement, which limits Japan’s semiconductor exports to the United States, particularly DRAMs.

An article in the New York Times, “Japanese Chip Makers Falter”, praised the US economic war on Japan, noting that the five largest Japanese electronics companies reported “plunges of between 50 and 80 percent in pretax profits” for the first half of 1986. Noticeably, Japan was projected to “displace the United States for the first time [in 1987] as the world’s largest supplier of semiconductors”. Japan’s predicament came as “it [had] reache[d] a huge milestone of success.”

Head of the Intel Corporation Andrew Grove enthused over the fact that “the memory-chip market has turned out to be Japan’s economic Vietnam”, the same article of the New York Times reported.

The Reagan administration subsequently inflicted a one hundred percent tariff on Japan electronic products in 1987. According to the Los Angeles Times, the punitive measure was intended to generate up to $300 million in revenue while punishing Japanese companies such as NEC, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Toshiba, and Oki by either pricing their products out of the US market or causing substantial sales losses. The Reagan administration was not an outlier in insisting that America got “ripped off” by Japan.

As NPR showed in an audio clip, Trump lamented on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show in 1988, “We let Japan come in and dump everything right into our markets and everything. It’s not free trade.” This was a political expression of the normalization of destructive measures against Japan, which emerged as the second-largest manufacturing powerhouse after the United States.

Unlike Taiwan, Japan was more than merely a contract manufacturer. Japan’s semiconductor design and manufacturing capabilities, as well as its contributions to “world civilization”, however, offered no protection whatsoever against US economic warfare.

When Japan’s chip makers faltered, Western imperialist bourgeoisies felt no responsibility to safeguard Japan. Likewise, they had no obligations to confront the US when Japan was forced to accept the provisions of the Plaza Accord. When existing rules were incompatible with Washington’s imperialist interests, it changed them at will.

Successive governments of Taiwan have since the 1950s served as an instrument of US imperialism. The Island’s political establishment has been far more loyal to Washington and compliant with requests made by the US than even US-backed proxy regimes such as Israel and Ukraine.

As indicated by a 2021 article in the US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters, the US and Taiwanese governments should devise a “scorched-earth strategy that would render Taiwan... unattractive if ever seized by force,” which would include the destruction of TSMC fabs and supply chains within the island.

Taiwan Semiconductor Yilan Plant [Photo by Kevin CW Lu / CC BY-SA 4.0]

In other words, the Nord Stream moment would pale in comparison to the ruin inflicted on the Taiwanese toiling masses by the ruling classes of the United States and Taiwan.

The opposition KMT felt so outraged at Trump’s announcement since the former deluded itself and the general public into believing the island’s ruling elite deserved to be treated as “an ally”, not as a pawn. The ruling DPP groveled at the feet of the American Führer precisely because it could serve no purposes apart from as a tool of US imperialism. Prior to the White House’s unilateral move, Taiwan’s Minister of Economic Affairs blurted out that “It would not be unreasonable to levy a 100 percent tariff on chips from Taiwan”

The Taiwanese ruling class, across the political spectrum, has thus far concealed the fact that, similar to the Smoot-Hawley tariff measures adopted by the United States in 1930 and the German Reich’s autarky policy, the global economic warfare launched by Trump’s fascist regime is a prelude to all-out wars on all fronts between nuclear-armed powers.

The relocation of semiconductor production (encompassing 3 nm, the most advanced 2 nm, and the future 1.6 nm chips) along with the supply chains to the US territory in the coming years would massively accelerate US war drives against China and European powers.

As Rosa Luxemburg explains powerfully in “The Accumulation of Capital—an Anti-Critique”:

What distinguishes imperialism as the last struggle for capitalist world domination… is the circle of development is beginning to close—the return of the decisive struggle for expansion from those areas which are being fought over back to its home countries. In this way, imperialism brings catastrophe as a mode of existence back from the periphery of capitalist development to its point of departure.

The American oligarchy declares war on public education

Nancy Hanover

New College of Florida students and supporters protest ahead of a meeting by the college's board of trustees in Sarasota, Florida. [AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell]

The Trump administration and newly confirmed Education Secretary and billionaire Linda McMahon have begun dismantling the US public education system. Public schools, built through 250 years of struggle, educate tens of millions of students and are overwhelmingly supported by the population as a fundamental democratic right.

According to a March 6 Washington Post article, congressional Republicans are pushing for a universal school voucher system in the budget reconciliation bill. Combined with the administration’s plan to shut down the Department of Education, this is part of a broader effort to dismantle public education entirely.

In line with Trump’s January 29 Executive Order, “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families,” the Republican voucher plan would divert $5-10 billion in public funds to private, parochial and homeschooling.

“The program would be fueled by a powerful, never-before-tried incentive: Taxpayers who donate to voucher programs would get 100 percent of their money back when they file their taxes,” the Post reported. Wealthy individuals and corporations could invest in or donate stocks to these programs, gaining dollar-for-dollar tax deductions while avoiding capital gains taxes.

The measure would be “the greatest threat to public education we’ve ever had at the federal level,” said Sasha Pudelski, director of advocacy for the School Superintendents Association.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump had a draft executive order to shut down the Department of Education (ED), though legal experts note it would require a 60-vote majority in the Senate. In the meantime, billionaires McMahon and Musk are executing a slash-and-burn operation—eliminating ED jobs, canceling grants and abruptly ending research and support programs.

The Department of Education provides critical support to underfunded schools and enforces anti-discrimination policies established through landmark rulings like Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (1975) and Plyler v. Doe (1982), which protect minorities, students with disabilities, English-language learners and immigrants. These gains are now under direct attack, with Trump using Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs as a pretext to dismantle democratic rights.

Last week, Trump slashed $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University as retaliation for student-led anti-genocide protests. This week, he ordered the denial of student loan forgiveness to teachers and nonprofit workers deemed to “harm American values” or who engage in “public disruptions”—effectively imposing a political loyalty test.

In K-12 education, an Executive Order now requires the teaching of the “1776 Report,” authored by far-right ideologues, along with other lies aimed at censoring the history of American imperialism, the suppression of the working class, and—above all—the class struggle and socialism.

Universal public education, a core ideal of the Enlightenment, has long been seen as essential to democracy and a safeguard against authoritarianism. Just three years after drafting the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson authored A Bill for the General Diffusion of Knowledge in 1779, reflecting the revolutionary founders’ belief that education was the foundation of democracy and social and political rights. “I know of no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves,” Jefferson wrote, adding, “The remedy is not to take power from them, but to inform their discretion by education.”

The expansion of public education, however, was won through mass struggles. The Civil War—the Second American Revolution—was necessary to secure education rights for black people and many poor whites while expanding the system nationwide. After the defeat of the slavocracy, President Ulysses S. Grant mandated that states “establish and forever maintain free public schools” of a secular character, reinforcing the democratic principle of the separation of church and state.

The fight against child labor and for universal public education was a central demand of the early American labor movement. This struggle was given a huge impulse by the 1917 Russian Revolution, which created the first workers’ state and launched an unprecedented campaign for literacy and education. A 1919 decree mandated education for all Soviet citizens aged 8 to 50. By 1939, literacy among men had risen to 87 percent—far exceeding rates in Western countries.

The rise of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) movement in the 1930s, led by socialists inspired by the Russian Revolution, along with the massive post-war strike wave of 1945-46 and the decades-long Civil Rights movement significantly advanced the fight for quality public education. By 1955, high school graduation rates reached 80 percent for the first time, and by the 1960s, college became widely accessible to the working class.

Trump and McMahon are demanding the closure of the federal education department in order to “return education to the states.” This is a rehash of the “states’ rights” slogan the Southern segregationists used to oppose the racial integration of public schools.

The working class did not receive public education as a gift—it fought for it. However, as American capitalism has plunged into crisis, waged endless wars and fostered skyrocketing social inequality—especially over the past three decades—both corporate-controlled parties have systematically defunded public education.

Trump is following the blueprint laid by Democratic President Bill Clinton, who “ended welfare as we know it” in 1996. By converting federal aid into state-controlled block grants, Clinton upended key New Deal and Great Society programs. Trump has made clear that he intends to do the same with Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), effectively gutting these critical educational programs.

Former Democratic President Barack Obama notoriously slashed Title I aid to impoverished schools and the IDEA, axing the jobs of hundreds of thousands of educators and further institutionalizing school choice and merit pay through Race To The Top. 

Last year, Biden allowed the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund (ESSER) to expire, cutting off a $190 billion lifeline to struggling school districts nationwide. This triggered mass layoffs, program cuts and school closures across the country.

Like every other aspect of his policies, Trump’s assault on public education is also a cash grab. Global venture capital investment in education businesses is surging, and the profit-mad oligarchy seeks to dismantle public education, siphoning its $850 billion budget into private hands or redirecting it to fund imperialist wars abroad.

But for the gangsters in the White House, this is about more than just privatization. Like every other democratic right, universal public education is fundamentally incompatible with the domination of society by an oligarchy.

The ruling class deeply fears the working class, freedom of inquiry and expression and education itself. It is using its control of the purse strings to fuel all manner of social backwardness, including xenophobia, racism, opposition to science and religious obscurantism. 

Trump and the oligarchy may believe they can destroy two-and-a-half centuries of democratic rights, but the working class, the most powerful constituency for democracy, must and will not let them.

The last two years have seen escalating struggles by educators across the world against austerity and cuts, including major strikes in the United Kingdom, Romania, Hungary, Portugal, Morocco, Kenya, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico and many other countries.

US bans Chevron from Venezuela’s oil sector amid rising military tensions

Andrea Lobo

Héctor Obregón, President of PDVSA meets officials and operators at a gas processing plant in Barcelona, Anzoátegui, December 5, 2024 [Photo: PDVSA]

On Tuesday, the US Treasury Department set April 3 as the final day oil giant Chevron will be able to operate in Venezuela, even for maintenance purposes. Licenses for other foreign energy corporations will also be scrapped.

The revocation of oil licenses is a brutal provocation amid heightened military tensions with neighboring Guyana and the United States. 

President Donald Trump ordered the Treasury Department to remove all “specific licenses” last week. Trump, who attempted to overturn the US elections in 2020 and is signing illegal executive decrees daily, said Venezuela has failed to meet democratic standards and respond efficiently to the deportation of migrants from the United States. 

The licenses had provided an exemption to several North American, European and Indian companies from ongoing US sanctions on Venezuelan oil and gas that were imposed under the first Trump administration.

Their revocation ends a financial lifeline for Venezuela, with immediate, catastrophic consequences. Chevron produces 2420,000 barrels per day, while Spanish Repsol, French Maurel et Prom and Italian Eni produce an additional 83,000 bpd, according to the latest figures available. In total, these firms account for about 30 percent of Venezuelan oil output.

Venezuelan reliance on Chevron for imported diluents to sell its heavy crude oil, technical expertise and resources for maintenance and operation will have a much broader impact. The sector had not recovered after years of declining infrastructure and capacity due to sanctions, mismanagement and corruption.

While private Chinese and Iranian firms are expected to step in, and Caracas has focused on appealing to India for cooperation on energy, China and Russia more broadly have pulled back from operations with Venezuelan oil to avoid further US sanctions.

Oil production has historically been the main source of income for the Venezuelan government to pay for salaries, vital services and imports, including food, medicine and materials needed for production and maintenance. 

The decision is only the latest instance in which the Trump administration responds to concessions made by other governments by pushing for more. It follows agreements reached in early February between Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell, which included the release of six American prisoners and the resumption of deportation flights to Venezuela. 

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, has insisted that none of these talks will lead to the recognition of Maduro and made clear the ongoing intentions of ousting the Venezuelan government. Washington has continued to recognize US-backed opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia as president-elect following elections last July which both González and Maduro claimed to have won. 

Along with the threats to “take back” the Panama Canal, control Greenland, invade Mexico and turn Canada into the 51st US state, the Trump administration is looking to assert its domination over the western hemisphere and turn its countries, particularly those with strategic natural resources like Venezuela’s oil reserves, into semi-colonies. 

The calculation behind these devastating sanctions was to encourage sections of the Venezuelan military and capitalist ruling clique to overthrow Maduro and set up a US puppet state; however, even after the economy was reduced to less than a fifth of its previous size and nearly 8 million people, roughly a third of the population, left the country, this strategy has failed to oust Maduro. 

This is due to the unpopularity of the far-right forces sponsored by the United States, who are known for demanding US sanctions and even an invasion, and not the result of popular policies by Maduro. On the contrary, the “Bolivarian” government has overseen an economic shock therapy to place the entire weight of the crisis on the shoulders of the working class while providing tax cuts and other incentives to foreign capital. A haphazard experiment of partial dollarization to overcome currency depreciation has made the economy much more vulnerable.

Given the failure of past coup attempts, Trump, Rubio and several other top officials have previously endorsed the possibility of a military incursion into Venezuela to overthrow Maduro. However, this could result in levels of destruction, death and economic cost akin to the US-led wars in the Middle East.

The recent decision by Donald Trump to revoke licenses that allowed Chevron to export Venezuelan oil is closely linked to rising tensions with neighboring Guyana.

Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali notified the Trump administration and other international allies on Saturday that an armed Venezuelan naval vessel had entered disputed waters that harbor a major offshore oil deposit being exploited by an Exxon-led consortium.

The Guyanese military, which operates in close collaboration with the Pentagon, deployed aircraft and naval vessels, while the US State Department warned on X: “Further provocation will result in consequences for the Maduro regime. 

Venezuelan Vice-President and Oil Minister, Delcy Rodríguez denounced Ali for telling “bald-faced lies” indicating that the naval activities took place in “disputed international waters.” The disputed territory of “Guyana Essequibo,” she added, “belongs to Venezuelan men and women and nobody else, and we will defend it with our lives. Don’t even dare, here we have a Bolivarian National Armed Forces, a civic-military-police union that stands up to defend our country.”

The nationalist bombast and militarism are signs of a cornered regime. The danger that Caracas makes the reactionary decision to move into the disputed territory and take the bait set up by Washington, similar to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, cannot be discarded.

Rodríguez called Trump’s license revocation “damaging and inexplicable.” But the intensification of efforts to install a puppet regime are not only explicable but the only reasonable expectation from US imperialism and its leader Trump, who models his regime after Hitler.

Japan experiences largest wildfire in 50 years

Ben McGrath

Japan’s largest wildfire in decades has been burning in the northeastern region of the country for more than a week. While rain in recent days has appeared to halt the fire’s spread, firefighters are continuing to bring it under control. Thousands have evacuated and at least one fatality has been reported.

Wildfire near Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, March 4, 2025 [Photo: X/watchtowergw]

As of Friday, the fire in Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture had burned 2,900 hectares of land, 9 percent of the city’s area. The last major wildfire in Japan of this magnitude occurred in 1975 when 2,700 hectares of land were burned in Kushiro, Hokkaido.

At least 78 homes have been destroyed while 4,596 people were ordered to evacuate. Until yesterday, 1,239 people were staying in 12 evacuation centers. Another 3,055 people were staying with friends and family members. In some cases, evacuees have been forced to live out of their cars.

Approximately 2,000 firefighters and members of the Self-Defense Forces (Japan’s military) were deployed to fight the blaze.

On Friday, the Ofunato government issued a partial lifting of evacuation orders impacting 957 people living in the city’s Akasakicho district. However, evacuation orders remained in place for other sections of the city as firefighters sought to confirm that the fire was no longer spreading.

Toshifumi Onoda, a spokesman for the local fire department, stated on Friday, “Aerial reconnaissance this morning has not confirmed any spread of fire, fire reaching buildings, or white smoke.” However, firefighters were still checking the forests for smoldering embers to ensure that the fire had been put out.

The fire began on February 26 under dry conditions, in part caused by low snowfall this year. It was the driest winter since 1946, when record-keeping began, the Japan Meteorological Agency stated. A dry-weather advisory had been in effect since February 18. On Wednesday, 26.5 millimeters of rain fell in Ofunato, more than the entire month of February, which saw just 2.5 millimeters of rain, a record low for the month.

Ofunato is located in northeastern Honshu, Japan’s main island. At least two other wildfires began around the city prior to the latest blaze, including on February 19 and February 25. Both were extinguished, but gave an indication of the danger that existed.

In addition, a large amount of kindling had accumulated on the forest floor in the region, including dry branches and fallen leaves, allowing the fire to spread more easily. Many of the trees are pine, which are highly flammable. Firefighting officials expressed concern that even if flames are extinguished on the tops of trees, embers beneath the kindling could continue to smolder and possibly reignite the blaze.

Akira Kato, an associate professor in forestry at Chiba University, explained to the media that three factors drove the Ofunato wildfire. First, the extended period of dryness the region has experienced this year. Second, the lack of undergrowth management in the forests around the city. He stressed that regular maintenance is necessary to prevent forest fires and to reduce their impact. Finally, the rugged terrain in the region makes it easier for wildfires to spread.

The intensity of the fire has shocked Ofunato city residents and people throughout Japan who believed that such large fires did not occur in humid countries. Kato explained in the Japan Times, “There is a big misconception that fires don’t occur in humid climates, but this is actually not true, and forest fires can occur anywhere in the world.” There are approximately 1,200 reported cases of wildfires in Japan each year, typically between January and May.

Natural disasters cannot be entirely predicted or prevented, but often they are compounded by inadequate planning and willful neglect by capitalist governments. “When fires occurred, (nature) was able to properly handle it in a natural cycle, but humans cut down trees and developed forests in various ways, disrupting this cycle,” Kato explained. “Once we’ve planted trees and meddled with nature, we need to have a sense of responsibility to continue to maintain it.” This includes regularly removing kindling and other materials that can cause fires to rapidly spread.

This basic maintenance, necessary to protect people’s homes and lives, did not take place, with inadequate attention paid to the country’s forests and to safety more broadly.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announced on Thursday, during a parliamentary upper house budget committee meeting, that he would apply the Natural Disaster Victims Relief Law to the victims of the Ofunato, claiming Tokyo would offer “generous financial support” to local governments. Victims, many of whom have had their whole lives turned upside down, will be offered a paltry 3 million yen ($US20,278) to rebuild their homes.

At the same time, the government has repeatedly earmarked record spending for imperialist war against China, including 8.7 trillion yen for 2025.

Wildfires in Japan and around the world are not simply the result of neglect, but the criminal attitude capitalist governments have taken to climate change. Last year was the hottest year on record, with the United Nations World Meteorological Organization confirming in January that temperatures had risen 1.55 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.

This surpassed the 1.5-degree rise that governments had agreed to keep below in the 2015 Paris Agreement. This supposed limit, itself inadequate to protect the environment, is in fact ignored, as the major capitalist powers responsible for climate change base their policies on the profit interests of big business, not science and human need.

Extreme wildfire activity around the globe has more than doubled over the past two decades. Northern and temperate forest regions are particularly affected. This includes Japan, which had its hottest year on record in 2024. Wildfire seasons are also becoming longer as conditions become drier.

Kaitlyn Trudeau, a senior research associate at Climate Central told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that large fires, once rare, are becoming more common as weather patterns shift. Trudeau stated, “Climate change doesn’t directly start fires, but what it is doing is making the conditions which allow fires to burn larger, faster, and become harder to fight more frequent and severe.”

This was highlighted most recently for millions around the world by the devastating wildfires that tore through Los Angeles, California in January. The danger from these fires will not disappear on their own. Addressing them requires a planned economy based on social need, not private profits.

Germany leads the way, as Europe rearms

Peter Schwarz

Europe is responding to the growing conflict with the US by massively rearming. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, yesterday presented the assembled heads of state and government of the European Union with a plan to “rearm Europe,” which she said would raise an additional €800 billion over four years for military equipment, military support for Ukraine and the development of a European defence industry.

A soldier fires a machine gun from a Leopard 2 tank at the Field Marshal Rommel Barracks in Augustdorf, Germany, Wednesday, February 1, 2023. [AP Photo/Martin Meissner]

Facilitated by a relaxation of EU debt rules and other incentives, €650 billion is to come from the member states themselves. The EU intends to provide a further €150 billion in a fund.

“We are in an era of rearmament. Europe is ready to massively increase its defence spending,” said von der Leyen, explaining her initiative. It was about both “the short-term urgency to act and support Ukraine” and “the long-term need to take much more responsibility for our own European security.”

In a televised address to the French people on Wednesday evening, French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated his offer to extend France’s nuclear umbrella to Germany and other European countries. He would “respond to the historic appeal” by future German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) and talk about an extended nuclear deterrent, Macron said. However, the decision on the use of nuclear weapons will always remain in the hands of the French president.

In contrast to von der Leyen, who kept a low diplomatic profile, Macron attacked the US directly. Unlike in the past, “our ally in America” can no longer be relied on, he said. “We must strengthen our defence. In this respect, we remain linked to NATO, but we must strengthen our independence. The future of Europe must not be decided in Washington or Moscow.”

Macron accused Russia of having “become a threat to France and Europe for years to come.” No one can believe “that Russia will stop after Ukraine.”

Germany is blazing the trail in Europe’s rearmament programme. On Tuesday evening, the leaders of the CDU, Christian Social Union (CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD), who are negotiating a coalition government, appeared before the press and announced a rearmament programme that hardly anyone could have imagined just a few days ago. At around €1 trillion, it is 10 times greater than the special fund that Olaf Scholz’s government adopted three years ago, which he described as a “new era.”

All defence spending that exceeds 1 percent of economic output (around €45 billion) is to be exempt from the debt brake, which sets strict limits on new government borrowing. Originally, a further special fund of €400 billion had been under discussion. With the regulation now proposed, military expenditure can be increased far beyond this. Experts estimate it could rise by at least €500 billion.

Special fund for infrastructure

In addition, the CDU/CSU and SPD have agreed on a special fund totaling €500 billion, which is also not subject to the debt brake. This is to be used to finance the expansion of infrastructure. However, this is not—as the SPD would have us believe—about repairing schools and investing in hospitals but about direct and indirect preparations for war.

In addition to the rearmament and expansion of the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces), which is financed from the defence budget, achieving “war readiness” requires the development of a huge arms industry that is independent of US imports and the expansion of war-related infrastructure. This is the purpose of the special fund.

The project is reminiscent of Hitler’s infamous Autobahn construction, which was also presented as a civilian project but in reality served in the rapid transport of troops. Today, the issue at stake is also the transport of troops. President of the IFO think tank Clemens Fuest, who proposed the fund together with other economists, told the F.A.Z. newspaper that it should be used to “invest in civil defence and in the military upgrading of infrastructure, stable bridges first and foremost.”

The fund will also focus on digitalisation, reconnaissance satellites, secure communication, drones and other weapons technologies that are crucial for modern warfare and in which Europe lags far behind the US, as well as independence from supply chains and the supply of raw materials and energy.

A background paper written by the President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Moritz Schularick, who, like Ifo head Fuest, is part of the group of economists who proposed the huge special fund, is revealing. The paper also bears the signatures of two leading defence industry executives, Thomas Enders, the former CEO of Airbus and current president of the think tank DGAP, and René Obermann, Airbus supervisory board chairman. Airbus is the second largest defence company in Europe.

The paper makes clear that the gigantic arms build-up is not for defence, as claimed, but to escalate the war against Russia with vast quantities of modern weaponry and to prepare for further wars.

The paper’s core is “an appeal to direct defence billions specifically towards creating an ‘asymmetric superiority’ in the event of war,” writes the F.A.Z., which has access to the text. Overall, the proposals are aimed at “superiority on the modern battlefield, and less on support or logistics aspects of defence.”

Germany must initiate a “SPARTA” project (Strategic Protection and Advanced Resilience Technology Alliance) for European defence, the economists and defence industry executives demand. This means “the immediate launch of major armaments programmes with a focus on new technologies and sovereign intra-European procurement.” Today, superiority on the battlefield is achieved through mass, in combination with technological excellence, as the war in Ukraine shows.

In the short term, the paper calls for, among other things, an “extensive drone wall over NATO’s eastern flank” with tens of thousands of combat drones. In the medium term, technical improvements such as a “European Multi-Domain Combat Cloud for the decentralised, networked use of data on the battlefield” are to be developed.

Constitutional amendment at breakneck speed

The CDU/CSU and SPD are seeking to adopt their huge rearmament programme with tremendous haste, ruthlessly disregarding election promises and democratic procedures.

They have agreed on the funding before the actual coalition negotiations on the joint programme of the new government, which will not be elected until mid-April at the earliest, have even begun.

In order to obtain the necessary two-thirds majority, the voted-out Bundestag will be convened once again to pass the necessary constitutional amendments in the third reading on March 17 at the latest. They are to be approved by the Bundesrat, the upper chamber of parliament, on March 21. The new Bundestag will then convene for the first time on March 25.

This unprecedented procedure, which ruthlessly tramples over the election results, was chosen because the SPD and CDU/CSU, together with the Greens, have the required two-thirds majority in the old Bundestag. In the new Bundestag, they would have to rely on support from the Left Party or the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The Greens are still reluctant. They are offended because they were not consulted at an earlier stage. However, they have already made it clear that they will vote in favour of the constitutional amendment if the words “climate protection” are inserted somewhere in the text.

Chancellor-designate Friedrich Merz vehemently spoke out against relaxing the debt brake during the parliamentary election campaign. Now, in less than 10 days, he has done a 180-degree U-turn and is in favour of a rearmament programme that would increase the national debt from the current 63 percent to 90 percent or even 100 percent of annual economic output within a short space of time.

Merz justified his new stance by saying that Europe must grow up in the face of new international challenges. “Whatever it takes” must now apply to defence, he declared. The phrase was coined by former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi, who used it during the financial crisis to announce support for the banks to the tune of around €500 billion.

The scale of the rearmament programme that is now being introduced is reminiscent of the early years of the Nazi dictatorship. The share of the military budget in the German national product rose from 1.5 percent in 1932 to 5.5 percent in 1935, the third year of Hitler’s rule. As financing from tax revenues was no longer possible, armaments were financed by state-backed loans. The higher the debts rose, the more inevitable the war became. Germany would have been bankrupt if Hitler had not invaded Poland in 1939 and later the Soviet Union and started the most brutal campaign of plunder in history.

Dominate Europe to become a world power

Sums on a similar scale are involved this time around. And the German ruling class is going down the same path again. It is trying to dominate Europe in order to become a world power.

Back in 2014, Ursula von der Leyen (then German defence minister) and the current Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (then foreign minister) announced that Germany must once again play a role in world politics that is commensurate with its economic weight. Since then, the country has massively rearmed and played a leading role in the war against Russia in Ukraine. Now those in power see an opportunity to free themselves from American domination.

An editorial published in Der Spiegel on March 6 expressed this with remarkable candour. Under the headline “America is now our adversary,” Mathieu von Rohr wrote: “The Western alliance is broken. Europe must now become strong itself—or it will perish.”

According to Der Spiegel, the significance of this fundamental shift for Germany cannot be overemphasised. The Federal Republic was in many respects an American creation, the US was a big brother. “That is now over.”

Von Rohr wrote almost triumphantly: “Dramatic events can awaken forces. Nobody strengthened Nato like Putin when he invaded Ukraine. ... There is no reason why 500 million Europeans cannot defend themselves against Russia alone. They are economically strong enough to be able to do so—and they will have to now.”

It is particularly important that “Germany, which has been so hesitant militarily in the past, must now take a leading role as the most important European nation.” Lifting the debt brake on defence spending can only be the beginning, he continued. Europe needs “strategic autonomy” and also requires nuclear armament.

One can find dozens of similar comments. Former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (Greens), for example, called for the reintroduction of compulsory military service and a European nuclear umbrella in an interview with Die Zeit, arguing that “the West is finished” and that “Europeans and Germans must now think about our own security.”

In its election statement, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) wrote that the response of Germany’s ruling class to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” was “Deutschland über alles.” It is “responding to Trump by rearming at a pace not seen since Hitler.” This is now being stunningly confirmed.

Zelensky faces mounting domestic political crisis amid clashes with Trump

Jason Melanovski

The demonstration in Berlin against the Zelensky regime in Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is facing an uncertain domestic political future as the Ukrainian government deals with the fallout from Zelensky’s disastrous meeting with US President Donald Trump and the potential imminent cut-off of US aid.

The already existing tensions within the Ukrainian ruling class are being exacerbated as US imperialism and the European imperialist powers themselves are divided over the Ukraine question. 

Since the pro-NATO 2014 coup against the elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the country has essentially existed as a US- and NATO-backed client state. With the funding and arms from NATO, Ukraine has waged a war against Russia for over three years now, which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

Now, amid mounting fatigue with the war and discontent in the Ukrainian population, there is significant anxiety in the Ukrainian ruling class that Zelensky has become a serious liability following the return of Trump to the US presidency.

Last Monday, shortly after Trump labeled Zelensky a “dictator without elections,” Ukraineʼs parliament held a vote on a resolution supporting the legitimacy of Zelensky’s presidency despite the undemocratic cancellation of the county’s presidential elections, which were scheduled to take place in the spring of 2024 according to Ukraine’s constitution. The vote was aimed at bolstering Zelensky just prior to his White House visit on Friday.

But although Zelensky’s own Servant of the People party holds an outright majority in parliament, the first vote failed to pass, garnering just 218 votes—eight short of the required 226 votes.

Later on Tuesday, the draft resolution ultimately passed after former President Petro Poroshenko announced that he and his European Solidarity party would no longer oppose the resolution as it was part of “key defense and international legislation.”

Just weeks prior, Zelensky had signed a decree that placed sanctions on Poroshenko for “high treason” and supporting a criminal organization. According to the country’s domestic security agency, the SBU, which led the investigation, the sanctions were placed due to Poroshenko posing “threats to national security, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine” and the “creation of obstacles to sustainable economic development.”

Poroshenko responded to the accusations by directly blaming Zelensky for the charges stating, “There are many accomplices in this crime: Zelensky’s entire team, the Cabinet of Ministers, which was forced to submit to an absurd proposal, members of his National Security and Defense Council. But the customer, executor, and signatory is one—Zelensky personally.”

Poroshenko became the president of Ukraine after the 2014 coup and has been a longtime political rival of Zelensky. In the 2019 presidential elections that brought Zelensky to power, Poroshenko was roundly defeated, despite being the preferred candidate of US imperialism at the time.

Since then, Poroshenko, a billionaire oligarch, has retained a significant political presence both at home and abroad. In Ukraine’s parliament, he has been serving as head of the European Solidarity Party. He has also often met with Western leaders, while at the same time fighting a plethora of criminal charges brought against him by the Zelensky regime.

Others sanctioned by Zelensky were Viktor Medvedchuk —a former pro-Russian opposition leader in Ukraine now residing in Russia—Kostyantyn Zhevago, Hennadiy Boholyubov, and Zelensky’s former financial backer and oligarch Igor Kolomoisky.

The sanctions mean that all related assets of the targeted individuals have been frozen. Poroshenko, Medvedchuk and these other individuals have also been blocked from conducting financial transactions, among other restrictions which will last indefinitely.

In the weeks since, Poroshenko has called for “national unity” and refused to criticize his political rival following last week’s debacle at the White House. However, he did state that he hopes Zelensky has a “Plan B” following his fallout with Trump.

These moves against Zelensky’s political rivals were taking place just as talk of a return to elections in Ukraine has surfaced in recent weeks, with some proposing presidential elections in Ukraine as part of any potential peace deal.

While meeting with Trump officials at the Munich Security Conference in February, Zelensky attempted to head off any attempt to impose elections on Ukraine by its Western backers.

“I am ready to speak about elections if you want. Ukrainians don’t want [them]; totally don’t want [them], because they are afraid. Because otherwise we will lose the martial law, our soldiers will come back home, and Putin will occupy all our territory,” Zelensky stated.

More recently, Zelensky offered to step down in exchange for NATO membership, a move that has been flatly rejected by the Trump administration as it seeks to abandon the US’s role in the Cold War military alliance and plot its own course for a potential war with China.

As Zelensky has turned to the EU for support in the wake of his White House visit, the Trump administration has already begun meeting with Zelensky’s rivals within the Ukrainian ruling-class.

According to Politico, four senior Trump officials held secret meetings in Kiev with Poroshenko, as well as with former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who in 2014 was recorded threatening to drop nuclear weapons on Russia.

Conversations reportedly centered on whether Ukraine could in fact hold snap elections with the ultimate goal of removing Zelensky from power. 

As a top Republican foreign policy expert told Politico, “Poroshenko’s people and Yulia [Tymoshenko], they’re all talking to Trump World, positioning themselves as people who would be easier to work with. And people who would consent to many of the things that Zelenskyy is not agreeing to.”

While Zelensky’s White House trip ultimately failed to secure a deal based on giving up a huge share of Ukraine’s critical minerals, oil, gas and infrastructure to US imperialism, there remains hope in the Ukrainian bourgeoisie that a deal can still be worked out that would salvage Ukraine’s status as a US client state.

Speaking to the Kyiv Independent, former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk—who was  handpicked for his role by US imperialism following the 2014 coup—urged the signing of the minerals deal, despite the blowup between Zelensky and Trump, as a means to save the Ukrainian ruling class.

“We urgently need to develop a roadmap on how to fix the situation we all find ourselves in. Neither Ukraine nor the Trump administration has benefited from this, only the war criminal (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. It is better to sign this (resources) agreement as soon as possible to show that Ukraine is ready for any kind of investment. If the U.S. president needs this deal to ‘sell’ it to his MAGA base, we are okay with this. But we need real investments and economic cooperation.”

Inter-imperialist tensions between the European powers and the US have also impacted the return of what the New York Times called in an article this week, the “Long shunned, Pro-Russia politicians.” Unsurprisingly, the newspaper failed to mention that the pro-Russia political opposition was systematically censored and persecuted under Zelensky with the help of the US prior to the start of full-scale war in 2022.

One such figure featured in the article is Oleksandr Dubinsky, a Ukrainian parliamentary member currently in prison. Dubinsky is pro-Trump and has been accused of having ties to Russia, despite at the same time being under sanctions from both the US and Russia. 

Following Zelensky’s White House debacle, Dubinsky called for an emergency parliamentary session on Zelensky’s impeachment on X.

“The events of the past hours—the public humiliation of Zelensky at the White House, Trump’s acknowledgment of Zelensky’s diplomatic failure, and Ukraine’s loss of unconditional U.S. support—have marked the final act of the regime’s collapse. But Zelensky has not only failed in foreign policy—he has driven the country into a state where anyone who disagrees with his course faces repression,” Dubinsky wrote.

“I appeal to all Members of the Ukrainian Parliament: stop wasting time, stop waiting! Zelensky is bankrupt. Zelensky is not Ukraine! It is time to put him on trial. If he cannot offer a real way out of the crisis, then it is up to us to make fateful decisions,” Dubinsky declared.

Brazil faces threat of historic dengue outbreak in 2025

Fátima Ferrante

Zoonosis team doing fieldwork to combat dengue outbreaks in neighborhoods of Osasco, in the metropolitan region of São Paulo, on 15/03/2024. [Photo: Paulo Pinto/Agência Brasil]

As part of a broad attack on public health in Brazil, all the criminal negligence the country has seen in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has served as a model for confronting a series of endemic tropical diseases that pose a devastating impact, especially on the country’s poorest population.

This is certainly the case with dengue, a neglected disease that was once popularly known in Brazil as “bone-breaking fever,” due to its severe symptoms that can last for weeks and which causes thousands of deaths every year. It can also leave the infected person with numerous sequelae.

In 2024, Brazil had the worst year for dengue in history, with more than 6.6 million cases, 6,216 confirmed deaths and another 489 deaths still under investigation. By the end of February, Brazil had 440,000 cases of dengue fever on record, with 177 confirmed deaths and another 413 under investigation. 

Just like last year, the government of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers Party - PT) is doing everything it can to minimize the situation of dengue in Brazil. On February 27, the Ministry of Health’s website celebrated a more than 60 percent decrease in probable cases of dengue compared to the same period in 2024.

However, numerous health organizations and experts have insisted that the epidemiological situation of dengue in 2025 could be worse than last year. On February 7, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) issued an epidemiological alert after 23 countries and territories in the region of the Americas registered 238,659 suspected cases in the first four epidemiological weeks of 2025, with Brazil accounting for 87 percent of these cases. These figures are 249 percent higher than in the same period last year.

PAHO also warned of the greater risk of dengue outbreaks in the Americas due to the increased circulation of serotype 3, or DENV-3, one of the four serotypes of the virus. It has already been identified in several countries in the region, including Peru, Colombia, and Mexico.

In Brazil, DENV-3 was detected for the first time in over 15 years last year. In an interview with Estado de S. Paulo at the beginning of February, infectious diseases doctor Alexandre Naime Barbosa, professor of Medicine at São Paulo State University (Unesp) and scientific coordinator of the Brazilian Society of Infectology (SBI), warned that this fact means that we have “a large number of people susceptible” to dengue.

He mentioned a survey from the end of last year which “showed that less than 30 percent of blood donors in São Paulo had had contact with the virus,” and a smaller number among children. According to Barbosa, “I’m talking about having contact, but if you have dengue fever once, you can have it again with the other three serotypes. Most people have never had type 3 dengue, and everyone is susceptible.”

As a result, a person can be infected at least four times with the dengue virus, and the four serotypes, according to the alert issued by PAHO, are circulating simultaneously in Brazil. As with COVID-19, subsequent infections with other serotypes can increase the risk of severe forms of the disease. DENV-3 has been specifically associated with more disease severity, even in people who have had their first infection with the virus.

Given this situation, Barbosa warned: “There’s no doubt that 2025 will leave a mark – and I’m not being alarmist or pessimistic. It will be the worst year for a dengue epidemic throughout the entire historical record, not only in the state of São Paulo, but also in Brazil.”

In fact, São Paulo, Brazil’s richest and most populous state, has already registered 50 percent more suspected cases this year than at the same time last year. It has the leading figures for dengue in Brazil, with 247,000 cases – more than half of the total – and 136 confirmed deaths, representing more than 75 percent of the country’s total deaths. This situation forced the government of São Paulo to declare a state of emergency for the disease throughout the state on February 19. In 2024, this occurred at the beginning of March.

Contrary to what the Lula government authorities claim, there has been no effective fight against infectious diseases such as COVID-19 and dengue fever in Brazil. After the Lula government and the entire Brazilian political establishment adopted the “forever COVID” policy, the same can be said for dengue. According to Barbosa in the interview with Estado, “dengue has become normalized as a disease we can live with, and that’s not true. Today we have various ways of mitigating and reducing the impact of dengue.”

In contrast to what is happening today, the scientific knowledge accumulated long ago in relation to dengue has already made Brazil itself an international example. It has been established for over a century that dengue is transmitted through the bite of the Aedes aegypti mosquito. This mosquito is also the vector for numerous epidemic viruses in Brazil and the Americas that cause Zika fever (which causes microcephaly), chikungunya, and yellow fever.

In 1969, Dr. Odair Franco wrote in his book História da febre amarela (History of Yellow Fever): “When we joined the Yellow Fever Service in 1935, we didn’t find any plan underway to eradicate Stegomyia fasciata [now Aedes aegypti] from Brazil. On the contrary, they believed it was impossible, due to the country’s territorial extension and the spread of the mosquito throughout the states and territories.”

Between 1947 and 1955, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation and PAHO, Brazil took part in a hemispheric program to eliminate Aedes aegypti. Actions such as port inspections, basic sanitation, and spraying of insecticides resulted in the eradication of the mosquito in 1958.

The mosquito returned to Brazil in 1967, due to failures in post-eradication surveillance, accelerated urbanization, and a population influx from countries where the vector persisted. More significantly, this happened three years after the US-backed military coup of 1964, which led to a brutal attack on public health in Brazil.

The control of Aedes aegypti to combat yellow fever indirectly prevented outbreaks of dengue fever. The reintroduction of the mosquito in the following decades, however, allowed dengue to emerge as an endemic problem from the 1980s onwards.

The temporary success of the 20th century highlights the importance of international cooperation; the integration of actions such as sanitation, education, and surveillance; and the continued maintenance of preventive measures, even after the vector has been eliminated. Today, in 2025, with more knowledge and more technologies – such as the Wolbachia method, rapid tests, and the vaccine – to combat dengue, there is no reason to believe that eradication is impossible. However, all this has been ignored by the Lula government.

Last year, the Lula government announced with fanfare that it would start immunizing the Brazilian population against dengue. The Ministry of Health has been acquiring batches of the Qdenga vaccine since last year, but the low production capacity of the Takeda laboratory in Japan has meant that immunization is restricted to the population between the ages of 10 and 14 and to 1,900 municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants where dengue has emerged more frequently in recent years. 

Without information campaigns to alert the population to the dangers of dengue, the vaccination campaign has been a failure. In São Paulo, only 11 percent of the target population received the second dose—the Ministry of Health’s goal is to immunize 90 percent of the target population. A public notice from the Brazilian Society of Immunizations (SBIm) indicated that only 53 percent of the doses distributed by the Ministry of Health had been applied, and 59 percent of the people who received the first dose did not return for the second.

Today, the public health crisis intersects with the climate crisis, which has increased the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events and favored the proliferation of the Aedes aegypti mosquito and dengue fever. According to Dr. Barbosa, in Brazil, “There are two things happening: it’s raining and it’s hot...perfect factors for the proliferation of Aedes aegypti.” He continued, “Five years ago, we didn’t talk about dengue in Rio Grande do Sul, much less in Santa Catarina,” the southernmost states in Brazil.

The dengue fever crisis in Brazil last year and the prospect of an unprecedented outbreak this year were the reasons for Lula’s dismissal of Health Minister Nísia Trindade. Her two years in office were marked by criminal negligence in relation to COVID-19 and harsh attacks on federal public hospital workers who have been on strike since last May against what in practice means privatization. 

Additionally, the Lula government has subjected the budget for health and other social rights to repeated freezes and cuts in order to maintain the “zero deficit” and “new fiscal framework” goals. On February 20, Globo reported that he “will need to block BRL 18.6 billion [USD 3.16 billion] in spending in the 2025 budget to ensure compliance with fiscal rules this year.”