Tariffs, trade wars and working class unity

“Capital is an international force. To vanquish it, an international workers alliance is needed” Vladimir Lenin.

 

Donald Trump has temporarily withdrawn the threat of a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico in exchange for some concessions by the Canadian Government. Canada is off the hook because Trudeau agreed to beef up border security and appoint a fentanyl tsar to try and tackle the importation of the drug into the US.

 

Many of these measures had already been introduced - Trudeau announced the beefing up of border security in December. Either way, the agreement still has the effect of scapegoating immigrants and whips up racist rhetoric which is currently being used for draconian attacks on people of colour in the US and Canada alike.

 

The threat of tariffs caused real panic in Canada and caused stock markets to crash internationally.

 

The US is Canada’s largest trading partner and a tariff of that size would likely result in hundreds of thousands of job losses and would push the economy into recession.

 

There was already a response from the Canadian state and certain provinces who enacted retaliatory measures. US made products were removed from the shelves at the LCBO in Ontario and there were threats of tariffs on Canadian energy exports to the US.

 

Workers and the trade war

 

The trade war would only hurt working people on both sides of the border. It is a spat between Trump and the billionaires in Canada who would lose profits if the measures were enacted.

 

Workers in both countries would bear the brunt of this fight. Already provincial governments and the feds were planning to subsidize corporations here to ensure profitability is maintained. 

 

Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford and the other premiers claim that they are protecting Canadian jobs with their retaliatory tariffs. The ‘we are all in this together’ mantra was revived from the days of the Covid pandemic lockdowns. But we don’t need long memories to remember that the Covid measures were used by the bosses to build profits and give dividends to shareholders and bonuses for executives. The slogan is as empty now as it was during Covid when it meant that workers worked through the pandemic with no protection and horrible working conditions while their bosses: grocers, Amazon, etc reaped massive profits.

 

The measures proposed this time would have had the same effect.

 

If we are all in this together then return unemployment benefits to 100% of wages, levy an emergency tax on bank profits to pay for the lost taxes in industries hit by tariffs, suspend rent and mortgage payments for those who lose their jobs.

 

Unfortunately, the trade union leadership in Canada called for unity between workers, the state and the corporations.

 

We need to be very critical of this new call for cross-class unity. We stand with working people on both sides of what is indeed an ‘artificial line’ and not with the corporations and governments that are hostile to working people.

 

Trudeau and Doug Ford in Ontario both put themselves forward as 'Captain Canada' and said they were fighting to protect Canadian jobs.

 

Neither one of them, or the other premiers, has any interest in protecting Canadian workers. In fact their administrations have done all they could to curtail workers’ rights. Trudeau used back to work orders against rail workers, port workers and most recently, postal workers. He is no friend of labour.

 

Ford, likewise has spent most of his time in office attacking workers from delaying the minimum wage increase to bill 124 which capped public sector salaries.

 

Nor should we support calls to ‘buy Canadian’ so we can prop up billionaires like the Weston family, recently convicted of a bread price fixing scheme that further impoverished Canadian workers.

 

Yes, we need to protect Canadian social services like public healthcare, but the biggest threat to our healthcare comes from premiers that are currently gutting the public system while Trudeau sits back and does nothing.

 

Protecting workers means reversing the cuts to public services and regulations to end the price gouging of the grocery oligarchs. None of the premiers, or Trudeau, will come anywhere near these proposals.

 

There is a housing crisis in both Canada and the US. The solution to that crisis is not a retaliatory tariff on lumber that will increase housing costs in the US while American based corporations like Blackrock buy up billions in housing stock in Canada. The way to deal with that crisis is to end the financialization of housing and recognize it as a human right.

 

But the ruling class in Canada and the US has no intention of trying to protect workers in a substantial way. They want to maintain their own profitability. These measures proposed by Ford and Trudeau are about protecting corporate profits not workers.

 

We should not line up with the Rogers corporation, the grocery oligarchs or already profitable manufacturing corporations who were calling for billions in subsidies.

 

Solidarity across borders

 

The workers’ response to tariffs should never be to support counter tariffs. We call for unity of the working class on both sides of the border against the same billionaires that are driving down living standards for profits. We do not support any retaliatory measures from Canada that would hurt workers in Buffalo or Detroit or Seattle.

 

One of the biggest losers in a tariff war will be auto workers on both sides of the border as auto parts move back and forth several times during the production of cars. In a trade war, each crossing would accumulate a new tariff, raising the cost of cars dramatically. How long would Trudeau and Trump last in the face of an auto workers strike against tariffs and counter tariffs by the unions in both countries?

 

Canada is a prison-house of nations. We will never defend a state that grew rich on the genocide of Indigenous people, the destruction of the natural world and the exploitation of the working class.

 

The USA is, likewise, a state built on mass murder, slavery and brutality in the name of capitalism. It is responsible for the killing of tens of millions around the world to maintain its own Imperial dominance. In the words of Martin Luther King, ‘the United States government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today’.

 

We reject any nationalism or chauvinism in support of either state. The only path to liberation is the overthrow of the landlords and the capitalists and the governments that support them on both sides of the border.

 

We need to call for Land Back, Indigenous sovereignty and Socialism. For the unity of First Nations and the working class—against borders and capitalism—for the protection of the natural world and for liberation for all on Turtle Island.

 

Further reading: Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Sovereignty on Turtle Island