A rebellion of losers

HAVANA – The trade deficit is one of Donald Trump’s obsessions. According to his sense of logic, this deficit is the result of the abusive practices of many countries against the United States and of the inability of his predecessors to impose the country’s interests first in negotiations.

In order to resolve this problem, Trump has canceled important commercial agreements and imposed tariffs as punishment on the imports of certain products. This has given rise to a commercial war that has affected the capitalist world system and complicated U.S. relations with many of its main partners.

This attitude supposedly responds to a nationalist mentality in defense of American businessmen and workers placed at a disadvantage compared to foreign competitors. “America First” is one of many slogans under Make America Great Again that, to a large extent, brought Trump to the presidency and sustains his popularity in a segment of the American population.

Indeed, the increasing globalization of the world economy has had negative consequences for the U.S. manufacturing sector. In the past, one of the main sources of employment in the U.S.

This has affected a good part of the so-called white working class, which reached a relatively high standard of living without needing much education. Trump represents the bidding of these people to recover the lost status, or the fear of losing it, shaping a very retrograde social movement that exacerbates the conflicts of American society.

It covers approximately one third of the voting public and is composed mainly of white Republican men of relatively low cultural and educational level. These persons participate in elections, and are quite vociferous in the national debate, which helps strengthen the current U.S. president in the country’s political scale.

This movement has the support of some extreme right-wing millionaires who have become the patrons of many ultraconservative politicians thanks to the current electoral system, as well as sectors of Zionist capital and important branches of the evangelical churches. It also has a powerful communications infrastructure capable of influencing the whole fabric of society.

This sector’s discontent poses a dilemma for the stability of the regime, as they are part of the social nucleus that, until now, has served to support the ‘American Way of Life.’

It also reflects a contradiction in the exercise of U.S. hegemony, given that although the loss of competitiveness of manufacturing production is appreciable, the same is not true for all U.S. capital, which is very well positioned in the financial world in areas such as technology, specialized services and transnational investments.

It is very likely that when a product from another country displaces a U.S. competitor from the national or international market, other sectors of U.S. capital benefit as investors in those foreign companies finance their operations, or through legal services, insurance, and/or the marketing of these products, among other possibilities.

Most convenient for this large transnational capital is the existence of a global market completely free of government interference. This system is called “neoliberalism,” and protecting it at all costs, even through the use of weapons, has been the main objective of U.S. governments after the end of the Cold War, when U.S. hegemony seemed definitively consolidated.

The current international economic order, in other words the international financial organizations, the international trade regulatory institutions, and most of the established free trade agreements, were designed according to the interests of this great American transnational capital.

Trump speaks of “Americanism against globalism”, but that alternative does not exist. Globalization, at least as we know it today, is a “Made in the USA” product, although many of its own citizens are victimized by its implantation.

Within the transnational logic, the domestic market of the United States is only a component of the world market. The trade deficit does not matter if the end result is to boost profits.

Nor can it be argued that it is a negative option for most Americans. Thanks to globalization, consumers in the U.S. can purchase cheaper mass consumption products, which serves to reduce internal political tensions, and facilitates the smooth development of more lucrative items of the economy, such as finance, real estate, entertainment and services of various types.

Packaged within religious ideals, social prejudices and rigid rules of conduct, what the ultraconservative movement in the United States really aspires to is alter the natural logic of capitalism, which seeks the maximum possible profit, regardless of the collateral casualties.

Many demagogues do politics at the expense of the aspirations of these people, not caring to blow flames in a dry meadow, since this movement is animated by very primitive chauvinistic feelings, shows a high degree of intolerance, and is prone to very violent reactions against other segments of American society.

The rest of the world also faces great dangers, because by way of this ultraconservative domestic movement, very aggressive figures of neoconservatism in foreign policy, who are promoters of wars anywhere and everywhere, have been put in place to impose a doctrine of domination that ensures the attainment of what they call “the American century.”

Although conservatism has been a dominant trend in the American political scene, and there have been moments of intolerance and repression more intense than the current one, it is worrisome that from the White House itself, a close to fascist current is being stimulated. It is the kind of movement that spread throughout Europe in the first half of the 20th century and today is being revitalized in North America and Latin America — often with the sympathy and support of the Trump administration.

Whether this tendency strengthens or not will be decided in the upcoming U.S. elections for president. At the other end of the political spectrum there appears to be a streghthening movement of the left, which is unusual. In some cases they’ve defined themselves as socialists, and polar opposites, from another perspective, to the excesses of neoliberal globalization.

Both cases represent a rebellion of losers. They are nothing more than a reflection of the contradictions of contemporary capitalism in the United States. It also explains the tremendous polarization seen in American society today, and the enormous difficulties to find a consensus in national politics. That is why, at this point, anyone can win the election in 2020.