Anti-corruption protests shake Zelensky regime

Jason Melanovski & Clara Weiss

Thousands protested in cities across Ukraine last week following the passage of a law placing the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) under direct control of the right-wing regime of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Demonstrators hold sign during a protest against a law that targets anti-corruption institutions in Lviv, Ukraine, Thursday, July 24, 2025. [AP Photo/Mykola Tys]

The protests were the largest to take place in Ukraine since the beginning of the NATO-backed proxy war with Russia that began in February 2022 and defied the country’s ongoing martial law status. In contrast to earlier and smaller protests by relatives of soldiers demanding that their husbands, brothers and sons be allowed to return from the front, these protests were widely covered in the pro-imperialist media, which made no reference to the immense human toll of the war.

Protesters carried posters with slogans such as “Corruption kills,” “Ukraine is not Russia” and “My father is not fighting for this.” The protests were dominated by layers of the middle and upper-middle classes, which have largely been shielded from the brutality of the war, either through education deferments or bribing themselves out of forced conscription. 

In 2014, these layers, the prop of Ukraine’s so-called “civil society,” combined with the violent intervention of the country’s far-right paramilitary groups such as the Azov Battalion and Right Sector, were mobilized for the overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych in the Western-backed coup. In recent years, they have been an important prop of the Zelensky regime. Several commentators have already likened the protests to the 2014 Maidan protests with Holocaust scholar Marta Havryshko raising the question “Will Zelensky become his own Maidan?” in the German Berliner Zeitung. 

The agency over which the conflict developed, NABU, was set up in the wake of that coup, which triggered an eight-year-long civil war in East Ukraine, leading up to Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Founded in 2015 by the right-wing nationalist government of Petro Poroshenko, NABU is almost entirely created and directed by the US. Its staff is trained directly by the FBI and European Union. 

In 2020, the former Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, complained that NABU was created by order of then US Vice President Joe Biden in order to undermine Ukraine’s own State Bureau of Investigation and “put there emissaries who listen to the United States.”

Throughout its existence, NABU has played a key role in the ongoing conflicts within the Ukrainian oligarchy and state apparatus.  

In March of 2023, Zelensky appointed Semen Kryvonos as the head of NABU, with much fanfare and claims that Zelensky and the Ukrainian government were finally getting tough on “corruption,” as demanded by the EU and US. Kryvonos reportedly has close ties to Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, one of the most influential figures in contemporary Ukrainian politics. 

Zelensky, under conditions in which his regime is in serious crisis despite its recent reconciliation with the Trump administration, had now clearly tried to establish complete control of the agency to remove any potential political adversaries such as Poroshenko. 

According to Zelensky, stripping the agency of its independence was necessary to combat “Russian influence.” A day prior, Ukraine’s security services (SBU) had carried out raids of the agency to supposedly arrest Russian spies.

But the naked power grab was a step too far for Ukraine’s European backers, who  regularly employ “anti-corruption” campaigns as a means of directly intervening in Ukraine’s oligarchic politics.

Following the law’s passage on July 22, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul wrote on X that “limiting the independence of anti-corruption agencies hampers Ukraine’s way towards the EU.”

According to EU spokesperson Guillaume Mercier, the EU directly intervened in the controversy, telling Politico, “The president of the European Commission was in contact with President Zelenskyy about these latest developments. President von der Leyen conveyed her strong concerns about the consequences of the amendments, and she requested the Ukrainian government for explanations.”

“The respect for the rule of law and the fight against corruption are core elements of the European Union. As a candidate country, Ukraine is expected to uphold these standards fully. There cannot be a compromise,” Mercier added. 

Following the domestic protests and foreign outcry, Zelensky appeared to backtrack, introducing a new bill last Thursday that he claims will restore NABU’s independence.

However, Zelensky failed to provide details on the text of the bill apart from calling it “well-balanced.” NABU itself stated that the new bill “restored all procedural powers and guarantees of independence” of the two agencies.

Zelensky, a former comedian with no military background, is viewed with disdain by Ukraine’s far-right who play an essential role in the Ukrainian state and especially in conducting the country’s ongoing war with Russia. Should Zelensky completely alienate the educated middle and upper-middle classes and his EU backers, it may well be the final nail in the coffin of a regime already in profound crisis. 

In a recent Substack post, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh reported that officials in Washington are actively planning to have ex-commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny installed to replace Zelensky. Zaluzhny has extensive ties to the country’s far-right and is an open admirer of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. He has been the ambassador to the UK since his dismissal by Zelensky and, in that capacity, has openly attacked Zelensky’s war strategy.

In yet another indication that the imperialist powers are actively considering the removal of the Zelensky administration, the Financial Times, the principal mouthpiece of British finance capital, published a lengthy article on Zelensky’s chief adviser Andriy Yermak last week. Yermak is widely considered something of a shadow president and has wielded immense influence in the Zelensky regime. Citing numerous former leading Ukrainian, US and EU officials, the article stressed that Yermak was centrally involved in the removal of Zaluzhny and the former foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba, as well as Zelensky’s most recent government reshuffle. 

According to the Financial Times, “Yermak has managed the unusual feat of irking US politicians on both sides of the aisle, according to current and former officials in Kyiv and Washington, a bipartisan achievement few can boast of and not the kind worth celebrating in Kyiv.”

The escalation of the conflict within the oligarchy and the protests come amidst an intense political crisis and growing social discontent. A recent poll showed that 70 percent of Ukrainians believe that their leaders use the war, which is estimated to have cost hundreds of thousands of lives already, to enrich themselves. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, such as the Trotskyist youth leader Bogdan Syrotiuk, have been imprisoned, thousands of Ukrainian men have been dragged to the front by press gangs and over 6.8 million people have fled the country, the majority of whom will never return. 

Under these conditions, last week’s protests may well portend a much broader movement by workers against the Zelensky regime and the war. However, given the bitter lessons of the 2014 Maidan coup and the transformation of Ukraine into an imperialist proxy for war against Russia, it is essential that workers and young people in Ukraine develop their opposition to the Zelensky regime and the war in complete independence from all factions of the oligarchy and the imperialist powers, based on the demand for unity with the working class in Russia, throughout Europe and the US.

Automotive supplier Segula files for insolvency: The tip of the iceberg

Marianne Arens

On July 9, Segula Technologies GmbH, based in Rüsselsheim, Germany, filed for insolvency in self-administration with the Darmstadt Local Court. This means that a further 500 jobs for engineers, technicians and developers are at risk.

Segula only came to Rüsselsheim eight years ago, when Opel was taken over by the French PSA Group. The French engineering service provider took over both the Opel development center in Rüsselsheim and the traditional test site in Rodgau-Dudenhofen.

Two years later, when the merger between PSA and Fiat-Chrysler created the third-largest global group Stellantis, Segula, with the support of IG Metall, promised to permanently secure 2,000 jobs, but this never materialized: At most, just under 900 people were employed at Segula before it rushed to downsize again.

Online real estate advertisement for the Segula building in Rüsselsheim

In the meantime, Segula has already transferred 200 of its 500 employees to the consulting sector, as those affected have reported to the WSWS. The remaining 300 engineers and technicians are to be made redundant. The six-storey building in Rüsselsheim is apparently already empty and is being offered for rent on the internet by real estate agent Colliers. The workshops are likewise half empty.

The owner of the buildings and the test site in Dudenhofen is still Opelwerke, which has belonged to Stellantis since the takeover by PSA. Stellantis is also Segula's primary customer. However, the Stellantis Group is in the process of relocating its testing activities from Germany to the plant in Balocco, Italy, which belongs to Fiat and therefore also to Stellantis.

At the Rüsselsheim ITEZ, the International Technical Development Center, the Opel Group has long employed around 7,000 highly qualified engineers, technicians, developers and car pilots in modern testing and development facilities.

The Opel test site in Rodgau-Dudenhofen, just south of Frankfurt, in particular, which has been in operation since the 1960s, is a “centerpiece” of automotive development alongside Untertürkheim (Mercedes) and Weissach (Porsche). In addition to modern testing facilities, it also includes more than 60 km of racing and test tracks and an almost 5 km long high-speed circuit, which is equipped with lighting for nighttime testing.

The Segula insolvency is just the tip of the iceberg. Over 9,000 jobs have been cut at Opel alone in the last eight years: Of over 19,000 employees (2017), just under 10,000 remain today. (Half a century ago, there were more than 40,000 in West Germany alone).

At the headquarters in Rüsselsheim, including production, development and administration, there remain no more than 8,000 employees. In recent years, the forge (around 200 employees, discontinued in 2021), toolmaking (over 200 employees, discontinued in 2021), CAD technology (100 employees, discontinued in 2024) and the transmission plant (200 employees, discontinued in 2021) have been shut down.

In production, the longstanding two-shift operation was reduced to a single shift in December 2024, and around 40 percent of employees are temporary workers who can be laid off at any time.

Around 1,000 workers are still employed at the Kaiserslautern engine plant, and around 1,100 workers are still building the Grandland SUV at the Eisenach plant in the German state of Thuringia; ten years ago, 1,850 workers were employed in Eisenach.

For years now the Stellantis Group has been attacking jobs and social benefits at its plants. When the group was founded in 2021, then-CEO Carlos Tavares, one of the highest-paid managers in the world, promised that the restructuring would take place “without plant closures and without compulsory redundancies.” He was supported in this by the respective trade union leaders, in Germany by the head of the works council Wolfgang Schäfer-Klug.

Since then, however, almost 100,000 of 281,000 jobs have been cut. The global corporation currently states that it will have 189,512 employees in 2025, while the so-called “value added,” the turnover per employee, has increased overall despite a current net loss: From 530,000 euro in 2021, turnover per employee has increased to an expected 740,000 euro (2025).

The Segula insolvency is also the tip of the iceberg for the entire German automotive and supplier industry. Automotive service providers such as Bosch and ZF have announced massive job cuts, and groups such as VW and Mercedes are cutting jobs. Daimler Truck—just one of the more glaring examples—plans to cut 5,000 jobs in the sites in Wörth and Gaggenau, which will also affect hundreds of jobs on the French side of the border. Just since the beginning of 2025 the employers' association Gesamtmetall has recorded a reduction of 60,000 jobs in the metal and electrical industries.

And as is usual in the entire automotive and metal industry, the so-called “employee representatives” from the IG Metall union are indispensable when it comes to job cuts. They have helped to draw up and then signed the redundancy plans practically everywhere they represent workers, often before even informing the workforce, and see their most important task as preventing any expression of resistance from workers during implementation. The Segula insolvency again throws a spotlight onto role the unions play in this.

At Segula, the union stands among those most responsible for today's misery. During the takeover by the PSA Group eight years ago, the works council and IG Metall agreed to a three-stage process to cut 2,000 jobs at the development center and bring in Segula. Employees were put under pressure to either take the redundancy payments or switch to Segula.

Today, Segula's “insolvency in self-administration” is not, as officially claimed, intended to assure an “orderly and secure restructuring process.” The company has no intention of continuing to operate the two sites in Rüsselsheim and Rodgau-Dudenhofen. The insolvency serves to circumvent its legal and collective bargaining obligations and to avoid the six-month notice period and severance payments for long-serving employees.

It also puts an end to the policy of bridging periods of low orders with reduced work hours. All the promises made by works councils and IG Metall officials that any job cuts would be “socially responsible” are bursting like soap bubbles.

Even the current policy of “socially responsible” job cuts means that temporary workers who have no protection against dismissal are always fired first, and then older employees are forced out of the company through severance payments and early retirement schemes. This inevitably leads to poverty in old age as a result of lower pensions. At the same time, more and more jobs that are subject to social security contributions and are reasonably well paid are being destroyed and thus made inaccessible for the younger generations.

As the example of Segula shows, today even these downsizing models have been exhausted. More and more employees understand that it is now all or nothing and that they only stand a chance if they see themselves to be part of the working class and take up the fight independent of IG Metall. They are confronted not only with shareholders and managers, but also with a trade union bureaucracy that is paid handsomely for its services in suppressing the class struggle.

In politics, they are confronted with the government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, which has embarked on a course of rearmament and war in Germany and that supports the horrific genocide in Gaza. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) is a prominent part of this government, and IG Metall, closely linked to the SPD, fully supports this war course.

In reality, affected workers at Segula are already part of a global pool of colleagues in the automotive branch. Segula itself is the German subsidiary of the French technology group based in Nanterre, which operates a total of 140 branches in more than 30 countries worldwide with 15,000 employees (around 1,000 at eight locations in Germany). The Stellantis Group employs almost 200,000 people worldwide, and more than 400,000 including temporary workers and suppliers. Stellantis owns the plants of Chrysler, Fiat, Peugeot, Citroën, DS, Opel, Vauxhall, Alfa Romeo, Dodge, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati and Abarth.

While shareholders, top managers and trade union bureaucrats ensure that the costs of tariffs and restructuring such as e-mobility and AI are passed on to employees, workers themselves are constantly being put under further pressure. Ruthless methods are enforced in the factories, leading to dangerous situations in the workplace.

Spanish far right intensifies anti-immigrant assaults under PSOE-Sumar government

Santiago Guillen

Fascist mob in Torre Pacheco, Spain [Photo: Guillermo Rocafort @GuillermoRocaf1]

In Spain, far-right groups are continuing the offensive against immigrants under the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE)-Sumar government.

For two consecutive weekends, fascist groups have mobilized across towns in Spain to assault migrants. From July 12 to 15, several hundred far-right militants attacked Moroccan migrant workers living in the town of Torre Pacheco, in the region of Murcia. Armed with baseball bats and pepper spray, they assaulted residents, smashed vehicles, and vandalized immigrant-owned businesses such as kebab shops.

On July 19, 170 fascists gathered illegally in Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid, in front of a large immigrant detention center, chanting slogans such as “Christian Spain, not Muslim,” “This is our land and we must defend it,” and “Immigration destroys your nation.”

The trigger for the fascist assault in Torre Pacheco was a report of a beating of a local resident by individuals of North African origin who were passing through the town. The attack was condemned by townspeople, including local Muslim residents.

Torre Pacheco is a town of 41,000 inhabitants, of whom 31 percent are foreigners from up to 96 different nationalities. More than 50 percent of these (around 6,300 people in 2025) are Moroccans, many of whom have lived there for over 20 years and have children born in Spain. Agriculture is the main economic activity in the town, with 60 percent of agricultural contracts held by immigrants, especially Moroccans, who work in manual agricultural labor, greenhouses, and field services.

These workers represent the most brutally exploited sector of the working class in Spain, performing hard labor with long hours and low wages. Many are undocumented, working under near-slavery conditions without contracts or labor rights. They also suffer from poor housing conditions, with little investment and a lack of public services in the neighborhoods where they live.

As early as 2020, the Association of Moroccan Immigrant Workers called on unions and progressive political parties to support them to achieve a “dignified” job so that “unscrupulous exploiters no longer continue reaping enormous sums of profits at the expense of dividing workers and deregulating the labor market.” Five years later, neither the unions nor those so-called progressive parties like the Socialist Party (PSOE), Podemos, or Sumar, despite being in government, have done anything to improve the conditions of these workers.

In the case of Alcalá de Henares, the fascists used the alleged rape committed by a resident of the CAED (Reception, Emergency, and Referral Center) as a pretext. This center houses 1,700 immigrants from West Africa, especially from countries such as Mali and Senegal, who have arrived via the dangerous maritime routes crossing the Atlantic or the Mediterranean. As of May this year, the NGO Caminando Fronteras has reported 1,865 deaths or disappearances of people attempting to reach Spain through these maritime routes.

Immigrants live in overcrowded conditions, receive insufficient clothing, scarce and poor-quality food, and are not allowed to bring in food from outside. They lack adequate medical and social services and stop receiving financial aid after the fourth month.

The far right’s claim that crime has increased due to immigrants at the CAED is completely false. Since its opening in October 2023, the 7,000 people who have passed through the center have committed 17 crimes, compared to 14,500 committed by the rest of the local population.

The atmosphere for these far-right attacks was previously prepared by the fascist party Vox. At the beginning of July, they proposed the “remigration” of up to 7 million immigrants who could be expelled if they “do not integrate” or commit crimes, regardless of whether they have Spanish nationality, as is the case with many of the workers in Torre Pacheco attacked by fascists.

Vox tried to justify its statements by declaring: “Some who are so worried about the end of the world, about climate change, should worry more about the end of Spain due to demographic replacement. In 2045, Spaniards will be a minority in their own country.”

“Remigration” is Vox’s version of the executive order “Protecting The American People Against Invasion,” launched by Trump in January, which presents immigration as a serious threat to national security and public safety, and under which the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has already deported 150,000 people.

But this fascist offensive against immigrants does not come out of nowhere; it continues the offensive carried out in recent years by the PSOE governments with their pseudo-left allies Podemos and Sumar. The big difference is that these governments did not mobilize gangs of fascists and lumpenized elements, but rather the army and the police, both Spanish and from African countries.

In May 2021, the PSOE-Podemos government deployed the army against migrants crossing from Morocco trying to reach Spain. It was the first time the army was deployed against refugees. Subsequently, Spain returned hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children to Morocco, in a blatant violation of international law.

In June 2022, PSOE and Podemos pressured NATO to include migration as a “hybrid threat” in NATO’s new political roadmap. This was how the Spanish and European bourgeoisie intended to justify repression against immigrants and military interventions in Africa.

The first practical implication of this “hybrid threat” occurred on June 22, 2022, when the Moroccan gendarmerie and the Spanish Civil Guard attacked 2,000 migrants—from countries such as Chad, Niger, Sudan, and South Sudan—who should have had access to asylum under international law, at the Melilla border crossing. The result was 37 officially dead immigrants, a figure that Amnesty International puts at one hundred, and dozens more seriously injured and missing.

President Sánchez justified the massacre by saying, “It was a violent attack on the borders of our country; they were armed,” and he defended that the Spanish government “has always been proportional in its response to migration crises.” Podemos also excused the massacre and refused to call for any investigation or the resignation of any minister.

In recent years, the PSOE governments—first in coalition with Podemos and now with its split-off, Sumar—have followed the European Union’s directives by advancing the so-called “externalization of borders”: outsourcing the dirty work to countries like Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, or Gambia. These countries repress migration flows at any cost, in exchange for money, military equipment, diplomatic favors, and turning a blind eye to the repression of their own citizens.

Among the practices used is the so-called “desert dump”: arbitrarily detaining migrants, confiscating their belongings, transporting them in buses or police vehicles to desert areas, and abandoning them there without any assistance.

PSOE and its partners maintain over a hundred members of the Spanish Civil Guard deployed in these countries to support, among other tasks, the training of local police forces in repressive techniques—techniques that can later also be used against their own populations.

PSOE, Podemos, and Sumar have adopted policies that historically would have been associated with the far right, now fully aligned with their partnership with NATO imperialism and their support for the Zionist genocide of the Palestinian people and NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine.

To intensify this imperialist and militarist agenda, the PSOE–Sumar government is set to significantly increase its military budget in the coming years, aiming to reach the 5 percent of GDP target committed to by NATO member states. This funding will also be used to escalate repression against immigrants.

The other side of the violence against immigrants and the rise in militarism is the repression of workers in Spain—aimed at deepening their exploitation and preventing any opposition to Spanish imperialism. In the weeks leading up to these fascist attacks, the strike by metalworkers in Cádiz was brutally repressed by the PSOE–Sumar government, which criminalized the Cádiz workers by launching a repressive operation—dubbed “Fuego”—that resulted in 24 arrests on charges of public disorder and assaulting the authorities.

Days later, in Torre Pacheco, only a minimal police presence was deployed, allowing fascist gangs to march through the town and attack workers for several days. In Alcalá, the police allowed a fascist rally to take place despite it being illegal.

PSOE, Podemos, Sumar, and their sister parties across Europe abandoned the working class—both native and immigrant—long ago. They offer nothing but austerity, repression, and imperialist wars. Their policies are increasingly indistinguishable from those of the far right. The fascists take advantage of this to channel social discontent in a reactionary direction, promoting xenophobia and hatred against immigrants in order to divide the working class along national lines.

Trade deal between the EU and US: Another stage in an escalating trade war

Peter Schwarz

The trade deal agreed to on Sunday by US President Donald Trump and European Union (EU) Commission President Ursula von der Leyen marks a further stage in an escalating trade war that is being waged on the backs of the working class and dragging the whole world into the abyss.

A trade dispute has been raging between the US and the EU for months. Trump recently threatened to impose tariffs of 30 percent on imports from the EU worth €380 billion from August 1. The EU had agreed on a list of counter-tariffs on American goods worth €93 billion. To avoid a spiral of escalation, the EU has now made far-reaching concessions.

The US will impose tariffs of 15 percent on most goods from the EU, while imports from the US into the EU will remain duty-free. The existing US tariff of 50 percent on European steel and aluminum will remain in place. Only a few goods will be exempt from the tariffs. According to von der Leyen, these include aircraft and aircraft parts, certain chemicals, generic medicines, agricultural products and critical raw materials.

Exact details are not known, as the text of the agreement has not been published. It is also unclear whether pharmaceutical products, which account for a significant portion of European exports, will be subject to the 15 percent tariff or charged at a higher rate.

The EU has also committed to importing $750 billion worth of energy from the US over the next three years, investing $600 billion in the US, and purchasing several hundred billion dollars worth of American weapons. However, it is unclear how this will be achieved, as the EU has neither the authority nor the means to do so and is dependent on individual member states and private investors.

While Trump praised the agreement as “the biggest deal ever made” and von der Leyen claimed it would bring stability and planning security, European reactions ranged from cautious to angry. 

EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic, who helped negotiate the agreement, described it as “the best deal we could get under very difficult circumstances.” He said it was “better than a trade war with Europe.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz welcomed the agreement, saying it had “succeeded in averting a trade conflict that would have hit the export-oriented German economy hard.” He specifically mentioned the German automotive industry, for which tariffs will fall from the current 27.5 percent to 15 percent. Although this is still six times as much as at the beginning of Trump’s term in office, it will not completely paralyze car exports.

Nevertheless, Merz also admitted that “the German economy will suffer considerable damage as a result of these tariffs.” The consequences would not be limited to Germany and Europe; “the consequences of this trade policy will also be seen in America.”

Against this backdrop, German business associations and media outlets openly criticized the deal. The Federation of German Industry (BDI) described the agreement as an “insufficient compromise” that sends “a fatal signal to the closely intertwined economies on both sides of the Atlantic.” The Chemical Industry Association (VCI) resignedly stated: “Those who expect a hurricane are grateful for a storm.”

The Wirtschaftswoche magazine complained: “Brussels has allowed itself to be blackmailed and has bowed to Donald Trump’s arbitrariness.” It quoted the Greek general Pyrrhus: “Another such victory and I am lost.” The short-term economic consequences of the deal may still be manageable, but “the real costs of this trade appeasement will be felt later.”

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni viewed the agreement positively because it avoids “a trade escalation between Europe and the US with unpredictable and potentially devastating consequences.” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez also supported the trade agreement but “without any enthusiasm.”

In France, on the other hand, all parties from right to left railed against the agreement.

Prime Minister François Bayrou commented on the consequences for the EU on X, saying, “It is a dark day when an alliance of free peoples, who have come together to affirm their values and defend their interests, resigns itself to submission.”

Marine Le Pen of the far-right Rassemblement National described the agreement as a “political, economic and moral fiasco.”

And Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the pseudo-left La France Insoumise wrote: “Everything has been ceded to Trump, along with the right to change the rules of the game that have been established over 75 years of bilateral relations.” The only alternatives available, he said, were “disobedience to the empire” [the US] and “non-alignment.”

Contrary to the hopes of its supporters, the agreement between Trump and von der Leyen will not slow down the trade conflict with the US. This is not only due to Trump’s capriciousness, someone who can change his position at any time, but also to the deep crisis of US and world capitalism. As in the First and Second World Wars, the struggle of the imperialist powers for raw materials, markets and profits is once again taking on increasingly extortionate, destructive and military forms.

Trump is not the cause but the consequence of this development. The rise of the fascist-minded gangster from the real estate and casino industry to the top of the American state is a consequence of the rottenness of US and world capitalism—the unbridgeable gap between the ruling oligarchs and the masses of the population, the subordination of all social needs to the profit interests of a parasitic minority.

Europe is not a victim of the US—on the contrary. The old imperialist powers of Britain and France, as well as Germany, which tried to become the ruler of Europe in two world wars, have never resigned themselves to playing second fiddle to the US. They have supported all the crimes of US imperialism—from the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya to the recent genocide in Gaza and the attack on Iran. They are working hard to regain their military independence.

With the humiliating trade agreement with the US, voices calling for Europe to play a role as a world power are also growing louder. A commentary in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (F.A.Z.) described Europe—quoting former Belgian Prime Minister Mark Eyskens—as an “economic giant, political dwarf, and military worm” and demands that “instead of whining, Europe must finally work on its weaknesses.” Among these weaknesses, the F.A.Z. also counts the failure to understand that prosperity “depends above all on work, not on further increasing the already oppressive national debt”—an undisguised call for more speed-up and social cuts.

One reason why von der Leyen agreed to a deal with Trump, apart from fears of an uncontrollable escalation of the trade war, is the continuation of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine. The fear that Trump could reach an agreement with Putin over their heads in order to focus more on the conflict with China has been haunting the European powers for months.

“Unlike Beijing, a militarily vulnerable Europe that continues to need NATO cannot afford a tough trade conflict with Washington for security reasons,” noted the F.A.Z. The European powers need time to implement the already approved doubling and tripling of the military budget to 5 percent of GDP. 

This issue certainly played a role in the negotiations on the trade agreement. The EU was prepared to swallow high tariffs if Trump remained on its side in the war against Russia. It is probably no coincidence that, one day after the agreement with von der Leyen, Trump increased the pressure on Russia and shortened the time he gave Putin for a negotiated solution to a few days.

The working class on both sides of the Atlantic does not have any interest whatsoever in supporting the ruling class’s policy of war and trade war. It is neither their job to encourage the European bourgeoisie to take a harder line against Trump, nor should they fall for the lie that tariffs protect jobs. The opposite is true: The costs of war and trade war will inevitably be dumped on their shoulders.

Nothing demonstrates the transformation of the trade unions into henchmen of capital more than their support for rearmament and trade war. LFI leader Mélenchon and other pseudo-leftists are also increasingly openly defending the nation and the capitalist state in the face of the intensifying trade war.