Dear friend, I'm writing to you...

This is, more or less, how Trump's letter to von der Leyen starts. In it, the US president announces the imposition of a 30% tariff on European goods imported into the US, in addition to equally heavy tariffs on automobiles, aluminium, and steel.

The letter was expected, but the announced measures went far beyond Brussels’ worst fears, as it had expected a tariff of around 10%. It may be that American arrogance is part of Trump's usual tactic of exaggerating his demands before reaching a "deal" at a lower level, which is still highly problematic for those facing sanctions. However, the fact remains that this attitude is indicative of an acceleration in US imperialism's aggressiveness toward both enemies and "friends." All of this, in turn, shows just how deep the crisis facing US-made capitalism and, more generally, the process of global accumulation, is. This crisis hasn’t just begun today, nor even in 2007/2008 with the sub-prime mortgage cyclone, but dates back over half a century, when, in the early 1970s, the fall in the rate of profit became more obvious and set in motion a series of upheavals and changes in the global economy, with all the consequences we are currently experiencing. Then, as now, the crisis demonstrated — and demonstrates — clearly that in the world of capital, which has been imperialist for over a century, there are no selfless friendships, but only power relations, in which there is no hesitation about trampling on "friends" to defend and impose one's own interests. What the US administration is doing today has the same rapacious logic as the measures taken by previous administrations, but now the context has worsened in several respects.

On 15 August 1971, Nixon more or less confirmed the end of the boom in the post-war cycle of accumulation and the opening of a new historical phase, the current one, dominated precisely by low or at least insufficient profit rates, despite all the measures implemented by the international bourgeoisie over the past fifty years. Then, Washington renounced the Bretton Woods agreements (1944), decoupled the dollar from the gold standard, devalued it, and imposed import duties on foreign goods. The US had "discovered" that its economy had lost its infamous competitiveness compared to that of "friendly" countries (Germany, Japan, Italy, etc.), and so it began to offload its difficulties abroad. Many "friends" and "allies" suddenly found themselves with a lot of devalued dollars and suffering an increase in the price of their goods on the American market. The shock was great, and among the consequences was increased unemployment and inflation. As always, in a crisis, if the bourgeoisie — or some sectors of it — catches a cold (perhaps a severe one), the working class catches pneumonia, because it is exposed, necessarily scantily clad, to the icy winds of the crisis by "its own" bourgeoisie.

We won't dwell on the implications of 15 August 1971, because that would take us too far afield, and in any case, the issue has been extensively covered in our press ever since.⁽¹⁾ Here, we are interested in highlighting the predatory and genetically violent nature of imperialism, that is, capital.

As recently as 1973, after the Yom Kippur War between Israel and Arab countries, the US reached an agreement with Saudi Arabia to raise the price of oil and sell it in dollars⁽²⁾, which had the dual effect of undermining competing "national" capitalisms (once again Japan, Europe...) and strengthening the "exorbitant privilege" of the dollar, the currency used in international trade but printed by the Federal Reserve, with all that this entailed in economic and therefore imperialistic terms.

Despite these measures, the USA’s "real economy” has struggled to regain its post-war momentum. Foreign goods continued to occupy an ever-larger share of the US market. Thus, with the "Plaza Accord" (New York, 1985), Reagan imposed a sharp devaluation of the dollar on the then G5 and Canada — up to 51% against the yen — in an attempt to make American goods more competitive.

Financial and monetary sleights of hand may provide temporary relief to capital's weary lungs, shifting the problems, or rather the underlying issue — the falling rate of profit — in time and space, but they do not solve it; rather, they widen its scope. The abnormal growth of financial speculation and the intensification of labour exploitation in all its forms have not revived the "animal spirits" of the market; if anything, they have powerfully fuelled its most brutal and destructive aspects. In other words, they have sharply accelerated the tendency toward generalised war, the only "solution" to its contradictions that capital has available.

Furthermore, as the possibilities for political management of the crisis have progressively shrunk, especially for reformism and Keynesianism, a political class is emerging that has risen directly from the bourgeois slums. They have always been there, of course, but until recently, relegated to the less presentable ranks of the family, due to their brutality, crudeness, and vulgarity: characters somewhere between the "bar room idiot" and the neighbourhood bully. But, faced with a worsening crisis, good manners don’t count. The Trumps, the Mileis, and their ilk, are the expression of a bourgeoisie that is increasingly struggling to manage its own world.

And Trump doesn't even know where the "good manners" of a Biden or an Obama lay. Both Biden and Obama had already resorted to protectionism and caused major problems for their "allies." Trump’s rudeness and vulgarity has raised eyebrows and concerns even among a segment of the American upper middle class, the very ones who lent a decisive hand to God in making him the chosen one (didn't He save him from an assassination attempt?). His administration, and the Democrat governments that preceded it, are clear that imperialist domination over the world cannot be exercised without the support of a solid and technologically advanced manufacturing base. This base has been greatly weakened since the 1970s, due to offshoring, yet the domination of the dollar and the excessive power of giant hedge funds must be backed by overwhelming military superiority. This, taking us back to the very start of this game of Snakes and Ladders, presupposes an industrial apparatus fit for purpose. Tariffs are supposed to do this: force "friends" and enemies alike to open factories in the US — something that has been happening for years, though not at the pace desired by MAGA — to buy even more weapons, to subscribe to very long-term government bonds, to patiently endure the devaluation of the dollar, to allow, for example, agri-food products full of nasty chemicals into the European market, to eliminate taxes, however modest, on internet giants and, more generally, on American companies. And this is what the G7 did in July, bowing to the "Godfather" who, from the White House, makes the entire world "offers it can't refuse," because he puts on the "negotiating" table not a gun, but B-2 bombers, thousands of nuclear weapons, and a market that is very difficult to ignore. Given the way the capitalist world system has been configured in recent decades, it's doubtful, to say the least, that tariffs, in and of themselves, can revive the industrial America of the 1950s and 1960s. They certainly put a heavy burden on competing capital, which, in turn, exacerbates imperialist conflicts and a clear tendency towards global war.

Meanwhile, the billionaire president, the one who passes himself off as a friend of America's blue-collar workers, has resumed the work begun in his first term — and left essentially untouched by Biden — confirming tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, claiming to believe that the wealth thus saved by millionaires and billionaires will trickle down; something that, of course, has never happened. On the contrary, that wealth is also fuelled by cuts to the meagre existing welfare system — healthcare, food stamps, and the education system — especially in the poorest areas of the country: to the most destitute and oppressed sectors of the proletariat — we're talking tens of millions of people. To them, it "gives," so to speak, a handout, abolishing taxes on tips paid to workers, for example in the restaurant industry, and on overtime. It is effectively a "little handout", not for the working class, but for the bosses, who thus avoid having to squeeze wage increases from their own pockets. A paltry sum, in exchange for the destruction of healthcare, schools, the environment, the prospects of millions of young people, and beyond.

But what is the European bourgeoisie doing? So far, it has been spitting and punching, incapable of overcoming national selfishness or establishing a true state, with all that that would entail. The bourgeoisie's thinkers, starting with Draghi, preach that the EU must overcome paralysing divisions. But while Draghi thinks from the perspective of "European" capital, "national" capital struggles to transcend its narrow horizons. In this climate, various forms of populist nationalism thrive, true Trojan horses for American imperialism, which has always interfered heavily in the affairs of others to influence them, naturally including Italy. While it once resorted to massacring defenceless people through the so-called "rogue" services and their fascist henchmen, today the political descendants of that murderous milieu head governments and hold numerous seats in parliaments. To sabotage the emergence of greater political autonomy from Washington and, ultimately, a truly imperialist European state, there's no need, for now, to bomb trains or allow unwelcome politicians (like Aldo Moro)⁽³⁾ to be killed: right-wing populist and fascist forces are more than sufficient for the task.

What the bourgeoisie does interests us, of course, but less so than what the proletariat does. In this so far asymmetric economic war between the bourgeoisies, it is the wage-earning class that is called upon to foot the bill, both present and future.

Tax cuts for the wealthy have already been mentioned. Regarding the disruption caused by tariffs (and the associated rearmament), the European Trade Union Confederation has estimated that, in the event of "moderate" tariffs, at least 700,000 jobs in Europe would be at risk; for Italy alone, which exports heavily to the US, the figure is between 100,000 and 180,000. But that's not all: if, as the president of Confindustria, among others, has said, the 13% devaluation of the dollar in recent months must be added to the 10% tariffs mooted in early July, the real tariff is 23%. Imagine if higher tariffs were to be imposed on 1 August! Where will the bosses go to find the competitiveness lost due to Washington's friends? It doesn't take a Nobel Prize in (bourgeois) economics; a simple, healthy class instinct is enough to immediately understand that wages, workloads, the pace of work, and job insecurity will be called upon, as much as, and more than ever before, to plug the gaps in domestic profits. By the way, a Reuters article — cited by Corriere della Sera — says that behind the resilience (a much-vaunted and somewhat clichéd word) of the Chinese economy to the Trump’s tariffs "lies a lifetime of wage cuts and double and triple jobs" (Corriere della Sera online review, 16 July 2025). No surprise there.

For decades, our class has failed to respond, or has responded too weakly, to the systematic attack launched by the international bourgeoisie. We have discussed the reasons for this substantial passivity many times, and we know full well that a class revival will not be easy, but there is no alternative. Either the proletariat ceases to be the sleeping giant it is, or it is destined to be crushed even more by the mechanisms of capital, until it finds itself in the meat grinder of imperialist war, as unfortunately is already a reality for segments of the proletariat and the dispossessed masses of the world.

Anyone therefore, who takes up a class point of view, from the perspective of the revolutionary overthrow of this decadent and murderous society, cannot stand by the window, cannot allow capital and its representatives – whether more sleazy or more “honest” – to drag us into their abyss of death and planetary destruction.

Notes:

Translated from the Italian by the CWO

Image: commons.wikimedia.org

(1) See, for example, The End of Bretton Woods: A Contemporary Analysis and 1971-2021: 50 Years Since the USA Reneged on Bretton Woods

(2) For a longer explanation see Oil and the Shifting Sands of Imperialism

(3) Aldo Moro (1916-78) was a member of the Italian Christian Democratic Party and five times Prime Minister of Italy. A promoter of the “Historic Compromise” with the Italian Communist Party, he was kidnapped by the Red Brigades in 1978. The Christian Democrats and Communists refused to negotiate for his release and his body was found 55 days later on 9 May 1978. This was in the “years of lead” when all kinds of dirty operations were to be found in Italian Cold War politics such as the P2 masonic lodge and “Operation Gladio”, a right wing plot to keep the Communist Party from power. As a consequence many theories and conspiracy theories have been aired about “the Moro Affair” ever since.