Last week, in a major change in economic policy, Trump enacted a new comprehensive tariff policy, imposing a 10% tariff on all imports into the United States. He enacted higher tariffs on certain goods, like 25% tariffs on auto imports, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. This move created an immediate shock in the global economy, with stock markets plunging all over the world.

A tariff is a fee like tax that’s put on goods imported from other countries into the U.S. This is a tool of capitalist competition that will have the effect of overall raising prices. In his announcement, Trump explicitly stated his intention to impose higher tariffs on major trade partners such as China, Vietnam, Japan, and the European Union.

This is a very significant change in U.S. policy. What the impact of this will be—here and around the world—is still unknown. Here are four basic points to understand what is happening, what we can say for now about why and what is in the interests of humanity.

1) These tariffs are an expression of the Trumpian-fascist principle that, as Bob Avakian said last week, "raw destructive power is what must rule in the international arena, without even the pretense of adherence to international law or concern about the sovereignty, or even the right to exist, of less powerful peoples and countries..." (from @BobAvakianOfficial social media message REVOLUTION #114: Defeating Trump/MAGA fascism: Looking to some future elections... or working now to mobilize millions around this powerful unifying demand: The Trump fascist regime must go!)

These tariffs are not senseless or idiotic blundering—they are part of an outlook and strategy aiming to radically reorder the whole world economically, politically and militarily, to the advantage of the U.S. 

This whole strategy is extremely explosive—with many commentators talking about this as a “war-like” move.

2) Trump is lying about the U.S. having been "taken advantage of" by other countries. The U.S. is the number one exploiter and oppressor in the world for decades, using countries like China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh. Millions and millions, including 150 million children, sweat out their lives to produce cheap goods for U.S. companies like Apple, Nike, Walmart, H&M, keeping prices down in the U.S. while funneling super-profits to billionaires in the U.S.

In opposing these tariffs, many are focusing on the harm that this will do to American people. Yes, these tariffs will cause real harm to many people in this country already struggling to make ends meet. But the far greater harm will be done to the countries that America has looted and exploited for the past 70 years—the Vietnams, Bangladeshes, Nigerias, Guatemalas and all the others whose resources and people they have sucked on like vampires. These tariffs are a tool to intensify that parasitic relationship.

3) Whatever hardship this will visit on people in this country will not, in and of itself, cause the regime to fall. The economic impact these tariffs will have on people in this country could be part of what drives people into the streets and could move some among the outer layers of Trump voters—they will not, by themselves, cause Trump's social base to be broken away from fascism. The America First chauvinism, the anti-immigrant hysteria, the white supremacy and scapegoating of women and LGBT people may even be strengthened by economic hardship. 

Speaking of the millions of fascists, in his social media message Revolution #114, Bob Avakian says: 

...it is not just their economic position but also their social position that they are worked up about. For the ranks of the MAGA fascists, even beyond their economic situation, a powerful, perverse motivating factor is their insistence on white supremacy and male supremacy, hatred of LGBT people and of immigrants (especially immigrants from “shithole countries,” in Trump’s disgusting racist terms). This is what these fascists mean by “Make America Great Again.” And all this is wrapped up with and driven by blatant lies, anti-scientific lunacy and crazed conspiracy theories—with vulnerable groups made into targets of hatred and persecution, like immigrants denounced as “dangerous criminals” and trans people treated as perverted predators.

All the more urgently, there needs to be a force exposing the nature of this fascist regime, acting together in mass protest, raising the demand: The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go! Acting in every corner of society to create a political crisis such that Trump cannot govern and implement his fascist rule. In combination with the intensified jolt and radical shift these tariffs may cause, this has a real chance to succeed if we act to defeat this fascism—before it's too late.

4) Whether the imperialists in power pursue a policy of "free trade" or of extreme tariffs, these are both variations on a system of cruel international exploitation, one that crushes the spirits and mangles the lives of billions of people, day in and day out. 

Bob Avakian, in his series on exploitation (EXPLOITATION: WHAT IT IS, HOW TO PUT AN END TO IT and PUTTING AN END TO EXPLOITATION, AND ALL OPPRESSION), lays out why this capitalist-imperialist system must do that—and how a socialist system could begin the process of getting beyond exploitation and all antagonistic divisions between people. 

These kinds of radical shocks can, again, in the words of Bob Avakian:

shake people’s belief that ‘the way things have always been’ is the only way things can be. It can make people more open to questioning—in a real sense it can force people to question—the way things have been, and whether they have to stay that way. And this is all the more likely to happen if the revolutionary forces are out among the people shining a light on the deeper reality of what is happening, and why, and bringing out that there IS an alternative to living this way.