After announcing ridiculously high tariff hikes for every country in the world, Trump has declared a three-month pause... except for China. Commentators everywhere are trying to guess what his strategy is. But does Trump himself know what he wants to do?

The trade war is nothing new. It is inseparable from capitalism. And the world's biggest economic power has taken it upon itself to kick trade tensions up a notch.

The yo-yoing of the world's stock markets shows just how sick the economy is. Christine Lagarde herself, head of the European Central Bank, admits she cannot see through the almost total economic fog. And it's not just finance that's being hit. Since Trump's announcements, 70% of Chinese exports to the US have been halted or cancelled. And the world's major shipowners are debating whether or not to cancel calls to China. The trade war threatens to turn into an economic crisis and a drop in production.

Governments everywhere are trying to react to the American measures, each on behalf of their own capitalists. They’re all taking part in the escalating trade war, which they know could degenerate into armed confrontation. And their first instinct is to make their own people pay!

The French government wants to find 40 billion euros – of course in workers’ pockets! They are the first to be targeted, through new taxes and, yet again, attacks on the budgets of vital public services. That's what the government means when it says it will suppress a number of “tax niches”, or when the Minister of Public Accounts, Amélie de Montchalin, says she wants to “eliminate what's useless”.

Who will benefit from the billions collected by the state? Not local bakers or craftsmen. Small businesses, like wage-earners, are being strangled by taxes and banks, and going bankrupt in greater numbers every month.

The 40 billion that the state wants to grab by strangling the working classes will be used to support corporations in the arms industry (like Thales and Dassault), the automotive industry (like Stellantis and Renault), the luxury goods industry (like LVMH and Hermès)... and the big banks. If international markets shrink, the state will itself place orders with these large firms, or subsidize their exports to offset the customs duties to be paid. And within each company, bosses will find ways to further lower wages and intensify exploitation, in the name of competitiveness.

The government's “defense of French industry” is not a defense of workers' jobs but of capitalist profits. And all parties, from the Rassemblement National to the left, are complicit in this lie.

The Minister of the Economy has appealed to the “patriotism of employers”. This is a maneuver to make workers believe that they are not the only ones to pay. In reality, big business will do what it wants and invest wherever it pleases. Bernard Arnault, the luxury goods billionaire and boss of LVMH, has openly said that, if the economic agreements between the European Union and the United States do not satisfy him, he will invest in the United States. The bosses of European pharmaceutical companies, including Sanofi in France, have threatened to do the same if public health services don't pay more for their medical products.

To defend their right to a decent job and pay, workers can only count on themselves, i.e. on their collective struggles, on the class struggle against the bourgeoisie. And this struggle can only guarantee them a decent life if they continue until the capitalist class is overthrown.

The progress of science and technology never stops. The means of production are greater than ever. Never has mankind had so many technical means to satisfy everyone's needs. But there's nothing left to expect from the capitalist class that owns them.

Trump's methods, his unpredictable policies and his zig-zagging show just how incapable the bourgeoisie is of controlling its own economy. Only the workers of the world can open up a prospect – by overthrowing their exploiters and expropriating them, by organizing the economy and planning production according to mankind’s needs.

Nathalie Arthaud