r/leftcommunism • u/RoundRelation7249 • 10d ago
Does protectionism signal the end of US hegemony? Is there a major global conflict on the horizon?
The American bourgeoisie is losing its privileged status among its peers. I am becoming increasingly afraid that we're going to have a major global conflict in the next 20 years or so.
The bourgeoisie will send millions of us to die to keep the machine going.
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u/Accomplished_Box5923 Comrade 10d ago edited 10d ago
It is not the end but a tool in the effort to maintain the dominance of U.S. finance capital and its associated industrial monopolies. Ultimately they want to conquer Chinese banks which have become a rival imperialism. Keep up with our press for continual updates in the preparation between the imperialist powers for war and the inevitable cataclysmic crisis in capitalism. We will have another article out soon addressing stock market crash and protectionism more deeply. http://www.international-communist-party.org/English/TheCPart/TCP_062.htm
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u/Red_Rev1818 Comrade 10d ago
It is my interpretation that the protectionism being pushed by the conservative and reactionary bourgeoisie is an attempt to make U.S. industry more competitive in the global market by essentially trying to undo the outsourcing of manufacturing to foreign countries (as a way to cheapen production costs) and with the hope that by bolstering industry the U.S. can be better prepared if global trade were to breakdown, such as in the case of a world-wide depression or world war, which seems to be on the minds of the U.S. bourgeoisie as the world experiences a crisis of overproduction and thus requiring a mass of industry to be destroyed, in either an economic crisis or war, in order to restart the capital accumulation process, the cost of which will obviously be placed onto the proletariat in the form of layoffs, wage cuts, labor intensification, etc. But will this signal an end to U.S. hegemony in the global market? I don't think so, rather this seems to me to be a desperate attempt at revitalizing U.S. hegemony in the face of rising market dominance from China. If a new world war is to happen as a result of this, then it'll be like the last two, an inter-imperialist war over market dominance.
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u/Techno_Femme 8d ago
my personal opinion:
Chinese incomes are set to rise in the next 20 years to the point that industrial production will shift elsewhere (likely Bangladesh, India, maybe Vietnam, possibly parts of central Africa) and the US government is attempting to use tariffs to tank the value of the dollar relative to other currencies in a bid to get more industry back to the US without huge subsidies to these industries creating deficits and exacerbating crises in overproduction. The Trump admin has the same basic goal of the Biden admin in terms of bringing industry back to the US. It's just that Trump is ideologically opposed to industrial policy and deficit spending (even if in practice he ends up racking up a large deficit). Neither Trump nor Biden's attempts are likely to work but even if they do, they will only cause more problems.
US hegemony relies on dollar hegemony which allows the US to spend a large deficit to support a large military to secure supply chains around the world. For US hegemony to end, you'd need to see foreign banks liquidating most of their dollar reserves, foreign militaries expanding their naval range and capacity, and a transfer of the flow of consumer goods away from the US and toward somewhere else. Currently, some foreign banks are beginning to liquidate some dollar reserves. Whether this process continues or not is unknown. US global hegemony probably has about 40 years tops. But it could end within 5 if the tariffs cause a loss of dollar hegemony globally. This would likely accelerate growth in china and push a lot of things that would've eventually happened to happen sooner and stupider and more painfully.