Donald Trump’s administration is so erratic and unpredictable that he gives loose cannons a bad name. But the ill-thought out and contradictory swings of policy should not hide the fact that the ascendancy of Trump marks a significant shift in US foreign policy. Future historians will mark this period as one of historic transition, marked by a reversal of ‘globalisation’ and a US turn away from concerns with Europe, towards its rivalry with China.
Trump imposed trade tariffs on a number of countries, then postponed them, re-imposed them again, on almost all countries (an exception being Russia), then postponed them again. His greatest tariffs have been applied on imports from China, although hugely significant exemptions were announced days later, albeit with threats from a member of his economic team, of possible re-imposition. And so it goes on, one U-turn upon another, without apparent coherence or plan. What Trump described as his ‘liberation day’ tariffs on April 2, the Financial Times described as “an astonishing act of self-harm”.
Trump’s unpredictability has generated international disquiet about the consistency and reliability of the mighty US economy, undermining the value of US government bonds and the dollar, pushing up interest rates, and threatening stagflation in the USA economy.
“the US government has no idea what it is doing…”
As one political economist told the New York Times (April 13), “The whole world has decided that the U.S. government has no idea what it’s doing…” Only months after taking office, Trump is fostering discontent and division among Republican politicians and some of the billionaires who formerly backed him. “It’s hard to deal with uncertainty”, said Wilbur Ross, Trump’s Commerce Secretary during his first administration, “Fear of the unknown is the worst for people and we are in a period of extreme fear of the unknown.”
Although there are huge problems with imposing them – the US economy cannot substitute for the imports itself – the main target of Trump’s tariffs is China, which for a number of years has run a huge trade surplus with the USA. The New York Times correspondent even suggested that the central bank of China could be selling US Treasury debt “as a form of retaliation” for the US tariffs. China has the firepower – its consistent trade surpluses over many years have allowed it to amass $3tn in foreign exchange reserves, including $761bn in US Treasury debt.
Economists around the world have commented on the incoherence of Trump’s policies, not least, Marxist economist, Michael Roberts, here and here, for example. Referring to the Trump tariff policy, and its chaotic, backwards-and-forwards implementation, Simon Johnson, a Nobel laureate economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, commented “It seemed like they didn’t know what they were doing and didn’t care. It’s a whole new level of madness.”
A more sober and serious president would do similar things
But it is also important to understand that in a sense there really is ‘method’ in Trump’s ‘madness’. If US capitalism had a more sober and serious leader at its helm, as opposed to an ignorant, narcissistic buffoon, key aspects of foreign policy would remain the same, particularly as regards China, albeit carried out in a more measured fashion.
The Chinese economy has grown in recent decades to become a global manufacturing powerhouse. By making so many consumer goods more cheaply than its US, European and Asian rivals, it sells to the entire world. It not only out-produces other states in basic ‘low-grade’ commodities like steel, but increasingly in high-end products like computer technology and smartphones. Trump had to back down on US tariffs on phones and computer imports from China precisely because these products cannot be made as cheaply, or in such quantities, in the USA.
Nonetheless, it has been US policy for some time to limit the export of AI-capable microchips and other technologies to China, and this is fundamentally because of the fear that China’s burgeoning economic power will inevitably translate, at some point, into greater military power, not only in terms of quantity, but also in terms of quality.
Although the USA is being challenged politically, economically and diplomatically around the world, it still remains, for the moment, the world’s foremost military power. It has more bases and forces deployed overseas than any other state. Its spending on defence is over $900bn, a year, nearly as much as the next ten countries put together.
Chinese naval power in the South China Sea
But in the Pacific, and beginning in its western parts, China is exerting its military power as never before. It has recognition disputes with Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan over various islands in the region. It has long sought to incorporate Taiwan into mainland China, as it was, prior to the end of the civil war in 1948, when it became the haven of the retreating and defeated Kuomintang forces.
As a public expression of its claim to Taiwan, China has increased military overflights and has conducted provocative naval exercises in the Taiwan Strait. In the relatively small area of the South China Sea, China is already the largest naval power.
US military strategists acknowledge the growth of the Chinese military, and the likelihood that at some future point, it will extend its reach into the wider Pacific and beyond. In its 2023 China Military Power Report to Congress, the Pentagon listed the achievements of China in building up its resources. “The PRC”, the report says, “has numerically the largest navy in the world with an overall battle force of over 370 ships and submarines, including more than 140 major surface combatants. The PLAN [People’s Liberation Army Navy] is largely composed of modern multi-mission ships and submarines. In 2022, the PLAN launched its third aircraft carrier, CV-18 Fujian”.
Referring to the commissioning of new naval vessels, the report comments, “In the near-term, the PLAN will have the ability to conduct long-range precision strikes against land targets from its submarine and surface combatants using land-attack cruise missiles…”
Chinese air force “is rapidly catching up to western air forces…”
The Chinese Air Force and Navy combined, “constitute the largest aviation force in the Indo-Pacific region. The PLAAF [People’s Liberation Army Air Force] is rapidly catching up to western air forces. The PLAAF continues to modernize with the delivery of domestically built aircraft and a wide range of UASs [uncrewed aerial systems]”. The report also deals with strategic support, including capability in “space, cyberspace, electronic, information, communications, and psychological warfare”.
What worries the strategists of US imperialism, in a nutshell, is that the economic development of China, including its rapid recent advances in AI, computers and IT generally, are inextricably linked to the development of ultra-modern military hardware, at least as effective as the armaments available to US forces.
In the history of capitalism, the greatest rivalries between imperial powers – between Germany and Britain, between the USA and Japan, for example – turned from economic into military conflict. The imperialist ‘world wars’ of the first half of the twentieth century were not struggles for ‘democracy’ or ‘freedom’ – these were terms politicians only used to fool workers – but were ultimately rivalries of economic interests: for labour, raw materials and above all, for markets.
The growing rivalry between the USA and China is of the same order of magnitude as those earlier rivalries, but with the important difference that today there is a brake on military conflict. The development and proliferation of nuclear weapons means that in a new world war there would be no winners and the whole human species would be the loser, assuming it even survived.
Exactly how this intense and growing rivalry between modern, nuclear-armed superpowers develops remains to be seen. There may be proxy wars with conventional weapons, cyberwarfare, or other expressions of semi-military or technological rivalry. These will play out until such time as socialist ideas and socialist change begins to impact on national and international politics.
Whatever the future holds, when the historians of the next century look back at the Trump years, they will distinguish between the outward appearance and the inner content of his administration. They will note the chaos, confusion and economic convulsions created by the worst president in US history. But they would also see the underlying trends, and see his term in office as an important turning point in the relations between two great rival world powers.
[Feature picture, of presidents Xi and Trump in 2018, is from Wikipedia Commons, here]
