“Keep out of Trump’s tariff wars” warn Communists

Workers and consumers in Britain have nothing to gain from joining US-EU and anti-China tariff wars, the Communist Party has warned.

“Higher tariffs on our exports and imports would jeopardise investment, jobs and living standards”, General Secretary Robert Griffiths told the Party’s Political Committee last week, “especially given Britain’s trade deficit and a relatively small industrial sector dominated by private-sector and foreign ownership and blighted by chronic under-investment in high-tech, labour skills, education and training”.

He also warned that a “TTIP-style” US-UK free trade agreement would favour privatisation and slash labour and consumer standards, while a single market-style agreement with the EU could result in the same “disastrous deindustrialisation” experienced by Britain after joining the Common Market in 1973.

“President Trump’s tariff wars aim to enrich his corporate supporters in the energy, real estate, manufacturing – especially armaments – and infotech sectors whatever the cost to workers, consumers and the poor at home and abroad”, the CP leader suggested.

“To that end, Trump and his far-right and proto-fascist allies are prepared to rip up all the rules, trample over people’s rights and the US Constitution and sacrifice the future of the planet”. “The most reactionary circles of US monopoly capital are desperate to rescue profitability from the growing challenge posed by People’s China and its BRICS allies”, he insisted, “and they mistakenly see tariffs, big business tax cuts and slashing social and welfare programmes as the solution”.

He contrasted Trump’s reindustrialisation promises to China’s phenomenal growth based on massive public investment in hi-tech, Green energy, education and training; state planning; and selective public ownership in key industries such as banking, construction and transport.

“The Labour government should take a leaf out of China’s red book and invest in productive industry and Green energy, funded from taxes on City speculation and the super-rich, while also renationalising the steel industry and directing the movement of capital”, Mr Griffiths proposed.

Welcoming the hundreds of anti-Trump demonstrations across the US last weekend, he said that country’s labour unions could play a major part in building a mass people’s movement to block the road to authoritarian rule. “Already the cracks are opening up in Trump’s alliance of Republican Party opportunists, big business chiefs, tech moguls and top public officials”, the CP General Secretary pointed out. Britain’s Communists agreed to send messages of solidarity to the Communists parties of the USA and Canada.

The Political Committee also supported the international call for an independent inquiry into the massacre of Palestinian aid workers on the outskirts of Rafah and demanded that UK citizens be brought to account for participating in Israel’s war crimes in occupied Palestine.

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You can find out more about the Party’s Political Committee here.

For further information or to arrange an interview contact Johnnie Hunter, Communications Director, johnniehunter@communistparty.org.uk.