by Socialist Action, March 20, 2025
Workers, women, youth, and allies – Take Direct Action to Stop the Trade War!
American President Donald Trump fosters chaos. His aim is to enrich himself and his corporate cronies, even turning against America’s erstwhile capitalist allies. The working class and low-income folks are sure to suffer the most in Trump’s infernal tariff war. What is to be done?
Start by rejecting nationalist demagogy. The Canadian ruling elite is imperialist in its own right, commanding some of the biggest corporations in the world, particularly prominent in the fields of banking, mining, energy resources, forestry, retail and manufacturing. Unsurprisingly, American Capital covets that wealth as Washington’s share of global production and military dominion declines relative to other powers. That is the background to threats issued by U.S. President Donald Trump to “annex by force” Greenland and the Panama Canal, and to absorb by “economic pressure” the Canadian state and its riches.
Trump targets Canada’s and Mexico’s natural resources, and pretends that the high tariffs he threatens will force American companies to move their north- and south-of-the-border production facilities back into the US, under the illusion of reducing the current trade deficits with its neighbours. A major menace is the 25 per cent tariff Trump imposed on imports to the USA from Canada, Mexico and (10 per cent from) China, albeit with a bewildering array of exemptions that seems to change daily. A wide range of economists have warned that the disastrous experiences of the 1890 McKinley Tariff Act and the 1930 Smoot–Hawley Act clearly show that tariffs — like the ones favoured by Trump — are highly counterproductive, and in both cases strongly contributed to severe economic downturns.
Trump’s demands to curb ‘illegal’ migration and the passage of illicit drugs at border points, along with insisting that Ottawa spend more on its military and its charter membership in NATO, have little to do with the current trade war. Moreover, how a deep recession across North America would induce corporations to relocate in the USA is, to say the least, unclear.
In terms of social conditions, how attractive to potential recruits is America’s collapsing public health care, its floundering education and transportation systems, its growing inequality, its surging house-less population, its looming climate crisis, and its forever wars, not to mention its complicity with Zionist genocide?
North and south of the long border, and globally, there is intensifying inter-imperialist rivalry. As the capitalist rulers sharpen their knives, at the risk of fomenting greater global instability and prompting deep dislocation (as was the case with toxic protectionism in the 1890s and 1930s), Ottawa and mainstream politicians promote a “Team-Canada” approach. But as every worker knows, there are two Canadas – one for the rich, another for everyone else. Likewise is the class divide in Mexico and the USA.
A trade war hurts workers on all sides. Protectionism is the enemy of the impoverished and powerless. Team Canada is camouflage for social robbery. The alternative is Team Working Class, whose goal should be public ownership, money for jobs and justice, not for warfare and NATO. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum was right to tell Trump to stop American arms manufacturers sending vast amounts of weapons that are used by drug lords in her country.
The Canadian Labour Congress and its affiliated New Democratic Party should be actively building an alliance with unions and popular movements in the USA and Mexico to resist trade war protectionism.
Appeals to bourgeois nationalism are poisonous, just like Trump’s MAGA propaganda. The foundation for social progress is internationalism, not the so-called self-determination of (colonial-setter) oppressor states.
Socialists in Canada, Mexico and the USA say: Stand up for popular sovereignty. Reject annexation on the terms of the ruling rich. U.S. Hands Off Panama and Greenland. End the Embargo of Cuba and Venezuela. Cut all military expenditures. Trillions of dollars for human needs: Not one penny for war. Abolish NATO.
Bolster the income of workers impacted by the trade war. Make Employment Insurance more accessible and generous. Raise the minimum wage to Cdn$25/hour and US$17/hour. In Mexico, labor unions and mass organizations should force the government to implement a schedule to increase wages in order to reduce the enormous gap with their working sisters and brothers in Canada and the US.
Tax the rich. Open the corporate books. Nationalize under workers’ control large firms that close due to tariffs. Re-tool for production to meet human needs, such as low rent geared-to-income decent housing, good schools, hospitals, and mass public transit.
The capitalist rulers have, for the moment, convinced many workers that there is no choice but to answer Trump with countervailing tariffs, including on energy exports to the USA. We contend that working class unity in action is the correct answer. Massive, coordinated strikes by Mexican, American and Canadian workers against the bosses, against the big food, retail and financial monopolies, and against the giant war industries are the way forward. Stop the price gougers. Replace the trade warriors with a Workers’ Government.
Can there be broad working class cooperation and unity across the western hemisphere? Yes. But how? It will surely involve a radical transformation of the labour leadership, which must be rebuilt from the bottom up.
In Canada there is a mass social democratic party linked to the labour movement. The mirage of sustainable capitalism promoted by its leaders may be shattered by the coming recession. In the US, workers are, for the most part, politically disengaged and/or captives of the twin parties of Wall Street and the Pentagon. The construction of an independent fighting labour party is essential. In Mexico, illusions of left nationalism must be supplanted by socialist anti-imperialism. A determined grassroots fight against the bosses of the trade wars will greatly advance all of these goals. Together, we shall overcome.
In solidarity,
Socialist Action / Ligue pour l’Action socialiste, in the Canadian state
www.socialistaction.ca
Socialist Unity League / Liga de Unidad Socialista, Mexico
Socialist Action, USA socialistaction.org