Socialist Workers Party

President Donald Trump’s administration imposed stiff tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to the U.S. Feb. 10, claiming the duties will defend jobs for workers in those and related industries and are in the interests of “all Americans.”

In fact, the protectionist measures are a club used by the bosses to grab a bigger share of world markets amid rising competition with allies and rivals alike. They’re accompanied by patriotic propaganda aimed at lining workers and our unions up behind the U.S. ruling class and against fellow workers worldwide.

Trump issued a 25% tariff on all steel entering the U.S., upped tariffs on aluminum imports from 10% to 25%, and jettisoned exemptions on duties granted by former President Joseph Biden. These actions follow a 10% tariff Trump imposed on all goods across the board from China Feb. 4, and the threat to enact yet more duties on any goods imported into the U.S. that come from countries whose governments levy tariffs on exports from the U.S.

Steel imported into the U.S. comes primarily from Brazil, Canada, Germany, Mexico and South Korea. But Chinese capitalists dominate steel and aluminum production and trade worldwide, and they are Washington’s main target.

The tariffs will go into effect March 12. Trump hopes to use the intervening weeks to press Washington’s competitors to accept new trade terms more favorable to U.S. bosses. During his first term in office he levied tariffs, then issued exemptions when governments hit by the measures announced they would limit exports to the U.S.

The tariffs will have the greatest impact in countries with large auto, construction and other industries that depend on steel.

Trump was emboldened to exert Washington’s immense economic weight after the governments of Canada and Mexico conceded to his demands to take steps to reduce immigration and drug trafficking on their borders with the U.S. when Trump threatened tariffs against them earlier this month.

The administration’s moves build on tariffs applied by previous Democratic and Republican administrations against Beijing. Both parties seek to bolster Washington’s weakening place at the top of the imperialist “world order” and to curb Beijing’s rising economic and political clout.

Washington’s moves show Trump’s “unwavering commitment to American workers and national security,” said Peter Navarro, White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing. He claimed the measures will “usher in a new Golden Age of prosperity.”

United Steelworkers International President David McCall backed the tariffs. “Our union welcomes President Donald Trump’s efforts to contain the global overcapacity that has for too long enabled bad actors like China to flood the global market,” he said. McCall also called on Trump to treat Canada less aggressively than China.

The Steelworkers union in Canada is a member of the newly formed Canada-U.S. Trade Council, a protectionist outfit initiated by bosses and government officials to defend Ottawa’s interests in trade conflicts with Washington.

Defenders of Trump’s tariffs say they’re necessary because of productive “overcapacity.” China’s rulers face an economic slowdown and have produced more steel than they can use. Washington complains they’ve “dumped” this on world markets, lowering prices.

When the rulers talk of “overcapacity” they don’t mean too much production to meet human needs, but more than they can sell to make sufficient profits. By echoing the economic nationalism of their own governments, USW officials in the U.S. and Canada are arrayed against each other. This is a blow to building solidarity between workers in the U.S. and Canada, as well as China and worldwide.

The U.S. rulers aim to convince workers that our jobs, living standards and future depend on whether the U.S. bosses come out on top in these trade clashes, just as they try to convince workers to sacrifice and accept worse wages and conditions to make the companies we work for more “competitive.”

Workers are an international class “Workers in the U.S., China and elsewhere have common class interests, not conflicting ones, as the bosses and their governments claim,” Joanne Kuniansky, Socialist Workers Party candidate for New Jersey governor, told the Militant.

“The idea that unions should defend ‘American’ jobs against other workers’ jobs is a dangerous trap,” she said. “Workers have no stake in tying our fate to the rulers’ trade policies. We have everything to gain from international solidarity.

“Workers’ future lies in our common struggles against the bosses, and in breaking with their parties, the Democrats and Republicans. We need to build a party of our own, a party of labor, to lay the basis for workers to wrest political power from the capitalist class.”

Underlying today’s trade conflicts are the intensifying national rivalries between the world’s major capitalist powers for control over markets and resources. The deepening crisis of capitalism drives each national ruling class to fight to maximize its market share and the profits each squeezes from working people. As trade conflicts sharpen, the threat of shooting wars grow.

Government officials in competing steel-producing countries all denounced Washington’s steel and aluminum tariffs. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz joined in threatening retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports.

Decades ago, the EU was established by the competing capitalist governments in Europe as a protectionist trading bloc against Washington. For their part, the U.S. rulers use the massive size of the U.S. domestic market to push back, threatening to restrict access to those who get in their way.

As the capitalist crisis deepens and trade conflicts escalate, the prospect of a third world war over the redivision of the world becomes more likely.

Before then, rising class struggles will create openings for workers to take political power into our own hands. This underlines the need for the labor movement to reject all attempts by the rulers to divide workers along national lines, and instead to strengthen our unity, fighting capacities and international class solidarity.

“The Socialist Workers Party campaign speaks in the interests of working people, as we face unemployment, high prices, a deep social crisis and the threat of more wars,” Eric Simpson, the party’s candidate for mayor of Oakland, California, told supporters after city authorities announced he would be on the ballot in the April 15 special election.

Simpson is a longtime member of the Socialist Workers Party, a machine operator at a chocolate factory and member of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 125. Former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao was ousted in a November recall election.

Simpson is one of a growing slate of SWP candidates that the party is announcing around the country. Everywhere they go, SWP campaigners explain workers need to break with the bosses’ parties, the Democrats and Republicans, and take political power into our own hands. They describe how past working-class struggles show this is both possible and necessary.

Joining workers in struggle is key part of SWP campaign.

“The thing that really appeals to me is Simpson’s focus on supporting unions,” Levi Meir Clancy, who signed on to sponsor Simpson’s campaign, told the Militant.

Clancy cares for adults with disabilities and met the SWP at protests against the murderous Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas pogrom. He welcomes the party’s defense of Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews.

In New Jersey, Joanne Kuniansky and Craig Honts, the Socialist Workers Party candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, found serious interest in the party’s working-class program when they campaigned on workers’ doorsteps in Passaic Jan. 19.

Supreme Stegall told the SWP candidates he’s concerned at the number of “mentally ill who are left on the streets, taking drugs.” Stegall works as a furrier in a union shop in New York.

“You say you’re for the working class, but what about those who aren’t workers, the unemployed?” he asked.

A union-led fight for jobs for all Honts said the unemployed are part of the working class, and employers use competition for jobs to try to deepen divisions among workers. “Bosses say, ‘If you don’t like it here, there are 10 others waiting to take your job.’

What’s needed is a fight for jobs for all, including a government-funded public works program to create millions of jobs at union-scale wages and a shorter workweek with no cut in pay to spread the available work around.”

Kuniansky pointed to the example of union struggles in Minneapolis where SWP members were part of the leadership of the Teamsters union in the 1930s. The union organized the unemployed to join workers’ strike picket lines. It also established an auxiliary for unemployed workers that led the fight for their interests with the backing of the labor movement.

“But if you win, how would you change things today?” Stegall asked. Kuniansky said SWP candidates would continue building solidarity with union battles and other struggles in the interests of the working class. “But the only way to really make a difference is to change which class runs society.”

She pointed to the mighty Black-led working-class movement that tore down Jim Crow segregation, showing the revolutionary potential and capacities of the working class.

“Yes, there may not be lynchings today,” Stegall said, “but the jobs situation is still no better.”

“The profit system of the ruling rich reproduces racism, it’s built in,” Kuniansky replied. She pointed to the example set by the leaders of the socialist revolution in Cuba. After the conquest of power, they organized working people to “get rid of Jim Crow race laws, drew Afro-Cubans into all industries, brought women into jobs they were excluded from, and sent 100,000 youth into the countryside to teach workers and peasants to read and write.”

“This country has been built by immigrants,” Stegall said, but he thought too many were entering the U.S. today. Honts said that the bosses turn immigration on and off to ensure themselves the labor they need and to heighten competition among workers.

“The SWP is not for open borders,” Kuniansky added, “but we fight for the defense of all workers who are here, and we demand amnesty for the more than 11 million undocumented workers. We also build solidarity with workers fighting for better conditions in other countries.”

Kuniansky also addressed the growing threat of imperialist wars. “Washington is the only power to have used nuclear weapons, against the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.”

“How do we get rid of the threat of nuclear war,” Stegall asked, “when the U.S. government claims to be the only government with the ‘right’ to have nuclear weapons?”

“All the peace treaties and disarmament pacts capitalist governments sign today only pave the way for new wars tomorrow,” Kuniansky said. “The only way to stop war is to take power from the warmakers, the capitalist class, including right here in the U.S.”

Stegall took a couple of issues of the Militant and encouraged the SWP candidates to return when he’s had a chance to read them.

Black workers hit hard in L.A. fires

“Three of my family members in Altadena lost their homes in the fire” in Los Angeles, Patton told the SWP campaigners. “I’m worried that the fires will wipe out the Black families’ legacy in Altadena.” Tens of thousands of African Americans moved to Los Angeles during the second great migration from the South between 1940 and 1970, many settling in Altadena.

“The Los Angeles firestorm falls hardest on the working class,” Richter said. “Many can’t afford the high-priced insurance and will not be able to rebuild their homes.”

“Working people need to break with the capitalist parties. We need a party of labor,” Otero said.

“I like the idea of a party of labor, to begin to take on the problems facing working people,” Patton replied. She got a copy of the Militant.

To join in campaigning for SWP candidates, contact the party branch nearest you.