Trump's trade war with Canada and Mexico is gonna hurt U.S Empire

The Trump administration has gone forward and decided to impose tariffs on its two largest trading partners, Canada and Mexico. Despite many people (including myself) thinking it was unlikely to happen, it is going forward. Recently I wrote briefly about the contents of U.S Canada trade for those interested in some more details. Both Canada and Mexico will be seeing a 25% tariff on all imports from Canada and Mexico, except Canadian oil and energy products, which will only face 10%. Imports from China, however, will face only a 10% tariff.

Trump has stated the tariffs are “because of the major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs killing our Citizens, including fentanyl”. He also cited that America’s deficits with Canada and Mexico are another reason. In practice, no one knows exactly why he’s going this. It may just be a more extreme version of what he’s always done, which is put pressure to gain concessions. But it’s too early to tell, and we’ll know more when the tariffs take effect on Tuesday February 4th.

Despite acknowledging that the tariffs might lead to disruption, he also stated “The tariffs are going to make us very rich, and very strong”. But is Trump, right? Does it make sense what he’s doing? Or is he hurting U.S empire? This question is something I want to discuss this week in a longer piece outlining some of the fundamental elements of the U.S post-war empire.

My short answer is no, I think this is going to hurt U.S empire. There are a lot of people, even on the left, who seem to think that the U.S rules through brute forces. If you’re not a predominantly white nation, that’s true in a lot of ways. But this misses the nature of capitalist imperialism in the post-war period. The informal U.S empire is powerful precisely because it is not a formal territorial rule. It is rather the extension of capitalist institutions, rules, laws rights, and practices across the globe, and these are protected and promoted by the U.S state. It’s not merely the brute imposition of U.S power, unless you are outside the imperial circle and resisting it. For its allies, the U.S has, from the Marshall Plan onwards, worked to achieve relative shared prosperity, even if sometimes it flexes its muscles to get what it wants.

But Trump seems not to care about that, and he’s biting the hands that quite literally feed U.S capitalism. U.S firms reap the majority of global profits and are still the most advanced in terms of the technological capacity. American legal practices dominate global trade, and the U.S dollar is the unit of account for most global trade. Trump’s rejection of what he sees hindering U.S power shows his lack of understanding of it. If things continue at this rate, he’s going to destroy the form of global capitalism that the U.S has been building over the past 60 years.

What’s the situation for Canada? Well, it can’t win this trade war, not only for the obvious reasons that they’re against the global hegemon. But it’s simply because there is no winning. We are going to bend the knee eventually, simply because there’s no domestic forces willing to organize against U.S power.

What’s my prediction? How is this going to continue? I see two broad avenues. The first is that Trump is going to get concessions from the U.S and Canada and that will be his big win. He will potentially start with tariffs, maybe even keep them for up to a month, but I doubt he’s going to continue.

Why? Because the business communities will start to bleed. Trump does have a lot of autonomy from specific capitalists, so it’s not right to just chalk him out as a puppet. But I doubt that he’ll continue with the tariffs because this could lead to crisis levels of chaos across the global economy. In terms of people, I don’t think they care that much. Sure, people will be pissed, but these institutions are so insulated from popular pressure, there’s another four years of the administration, and there’s no mass organizations that can push him. It would be spontaneous uprisings, but these are unlikely to happen over simply this issue.

Here’s the second possibility, maybe he is just that crazy. Maybe, despite the fact that this will most definitely hurt U.S power in immediate and long-term ways, maybe he will continue and go harder. Maybe he does just want to invade Canada, not just for our northern trade routes but for all of it. He clearly doesn’t care about other allies and is likely going to invade Greenland along with Panama (which is basically a done deal).

It’s hard to tell at this point, honestly, Trump has gotten old, and I don’t know if it’s the change in himself or that he’s got worse people backing him. Nonetheless, it’s hard to see what’s going to be Trumps new global order. The reason the post-war system worked so well is that institutionally there was the strong property for the imperial ruling classes For the rest, it was the continuation of Western hegemony, a system that creates a second class of nations and citizens subject to the political whims of the imperial state and its vassals.

What hope is there then for us? Well, the enemies always have weaknesses, and Trumps are the same. He is a fickle person and doesn’t care much about the details. He has no ability to actually deal with these crises as they would, as theorist of American Empire Sam Gindin argues, require him to discipline business to give larger concessions to workers. That won’t happen. I highly suggest checking out this interview of Gindin from today for more details on the state of U.S empire and its relation to Canada.

Furthermore, in Canada all of the political and economic rulers don’t are about Canadian nationalism, they want a return to normal. They will claim an easy victory the moment it’s beneficial for them to do so. That is likely to happen when Trump forces some concessions.

There’s some hope. In both cases of the U.S and Canda the opportunity for radical forces to organize the masses is high. In a time of over saturation of media, there is more need than ever to create content which actually seeks to explain the world to people. More importantly however, there’s a need to be on the ground within communities, mapping out allies and beginning to build social forces that can challenge the repressive state forces in real life. The right is already organized, and once they get the internet down, any ‘resistance’ from the radical left will disappear over night.

The only thing that can bring stability to people in the U.S and Canada is the end of global capitalism Canada cannot delink to the U.S in any reasonable sense without the end of U.S empire itself. Any attempt by Canada to become more autonomous will be seen as a threat to all future U.S administration. They will quash it. Instead, organizing radical forces that seek to actually change the world is the prime task at hand.