Translated "Avante!"article by Luís Carapinha, Member of the International Department

The USA trade war against China is currently a reality and nobody knows its outcome. Upon months of aggressive rhetoric, the White House ignored the outlined compromise principles during three rounds of bilateral conversations, and implemented aggravated taxes of 34 thousand million dollars value, on Chinese commodities’ imports, since Friday last. A new page opens and Trump threatens to raise the tariffs stakes up to 500 thousand million dollars, in case of China’s retaliation. Beijing insists to underline it was not the first to shoot, before carrying out response proportional measures of immediate application. A trade war spiral between the two greatest world economies is susceptible to affect the industrial production chains at global level, with deep lookouts on international trade and world economy.

For the North-American elite, a disturbing reality has been unveiled. As a Bloomberg journalist states, the “ economic and military rivalry escalade” between the two countries , in its essence, represents a “chock between two divergent systems” with “ markedly divergent visions on the world and national aspirations”. In the core of China’s political contention reinforcement, that more and more unites the USA dominant class, despite assailed method and tactics differences, the North-American imperialism uneasiness begins to gleam , before the staggering growth of China’s economic and technologic capacity and the country’s possibility, under the CCP direction, to jeopardize the USA domain in key-sectors regarding its hegemony, in the future. Washington’s trade war specific target is the Chinese high technology emergent sector and the strategic state plan “ Made in China 2025”, that endows the country with cutting-edge industrial capacity, concerning 10 great areas, from renewed energies and new materials, from biotechnology unto robotics. The USA intend to agitate China’s influence within the world economy, by opposing the Yuan rising and support the dollar dominant role, by betting on home erosion factors, in a critical moment for China’s change of pattern development. Trump demagogically, alludes to the high trade deficit with China. But besides the imperialist stagnation process inherent structural causes, there are numbers that prove that the whole of the USA exports to China and the North-American companies’ sales in this country, still holds a favourable global balance. This is a nerve raking war, that all ought to become losers, and the question is which will decidedly be in a worse situation. Considering China, currently the exports’ position is smaller, as the home market and consumption assume importance within its growth. A Chinese high-officer, underlined the “ greatest resilience of a socialist market economy ”, concerning the current iron-arm. And the CCP, reaffirming the economic opening bet, carries out the XIX Congress guidelines, with the accent on the party construction and the Marxist ideology identity affirmation.

Trump whirls winds, never sparing rival-allies( as Germany, the EU and Japan). He desires not only to change “ the game rules”, but turn the tide. The WTO is of no more importance concerning the world force correlation changes. Volatility and incertitude grow, whilst capitalism structural dilemmas increase, from productivity stagnation unto the intoreble profitability debt. Capitalist crisis announces new tempests.