The G7 and the tensions of the capitalist world order
HAVANA – The warning signs, already on alert, soared in the United States after Donald Trump figuratively kicked the negotiating table during the G7 summit in Canada, where this era’s capitalist powers gathered.
The U.S. president’s personality added curiosity to the dispute, and the press made hay with his rudeness, but behind the scene, there are the basic contradictions that were expressed there, related to the relative deterioration of the hegemony of the United States and the enormous domestic problems that this causes in that country.
A capitalist world order emerged after the Second World War that proved extraordinarily beneficial for the United States. Thanks to it, the U.S. economy became the largest in the world and the dollar was placed at the center of global finance. It was then possible to finance a military power without parallel in history and American companies spread throughout the planet influencing even universal culture.
The end of the cold war eliminated the few obstacles that were opposed to this development and the capital was displaced in all its capacity thanks to the growth of transnational corporations and the contributions of new technologies to the movement of financial flows. National borders became increasingly porous and the capitalist powers themselves lost much of the control they once had over their own economies leading to a chaos that no one really knows how to regulate, and which explains the degree of ungovernability that can be seen worldwide.
The U.S. attempts to establish a new global order based on its national interests have been insufficient and neoliberalism ended up affecting important lines of its own economy, which are no longer competitive on an international scale.
Donald Trump came to power representing a sector of the electorate of the white middle class that is known to be displaced by global economic trends. To meet their demands he has resorted to a chauvinist policy based on the imposition of tariffs, the questioning of multilateral free trade agreements, and the adoption of bilateral agreements that restrict the North American market to external competitors.
The problem here happens to be that at the center of these global trends is the U.S. transnational capital itself, which is produced in other countries and limited in its entrance to the North American market placing the president against some of the most powerful interests in the country.
Trump has tried to appease this situation by granting tax breaks and other advantages to these groups, which adds other distortions to the economy, and tends to hike prices in the domestic market and increases domestic, social tensions.
The other problem is that this capital is invested in the main economies of the world, for example Europe or certain Asian countries, particularly China, and therefore puts the United States in a commercial war against itself and in open opposition with its allies in a world that it is supposed to lead. This is what was reflected in the G-7 meeting.
America First is not a viable project because it goes against the interests of the large American capital, and because it is not designed so that all the citizens of that country benefit equally.
Trump is not a populist, if by that we mean the satisfaction of the interests of the general population, but a man animated by very primitive instincts, and unable to understand the complexity of the world before his eyes. In short, his election was another sign of the decline of the United States.
