01. The Changing World Order: Tariffs, Trade War, and More - Stephen Maher & Richard Wolff

Hosted by ‪@gftuet1899‬ as part of Political Economy International School series, Prof. Stephen Maher and Prof. Richard Wolff discussed The Changing World Order (Tariffs, Trade War, and More), chaired by Prof. Clara Mattei.

Below are the blurb from each speaker.

Stephen Maher
Trump’s sweeping tariffs are often seen as a response by capital to US imperial decline. This view might suggest that workers and capitalists have a shared interest in reviving American capitalism – and that doing so is the key to defeating Trump. In reality, MAGA emerged not from economic decay, but from the contradictions produced by the strength of capital and empire. Although globalization has been highly profitable, this was predicated on the defeat of the working class, the devastation of industrial regions, and growing precarity and marginalization. Trump was able to channel the resulting anger into a populist backlash, enabling him to gain power within a state that remains formally democratic. At the same time, the longer-term insulation of the state from popular control has allowed him significant latitude to pursue his agenda. Trump now faces a double bind: he must appear as a rebel against the system while accommodating the strength of capital. To balance these demands, he is attempting to adjust the costs and benefits of empire to both appease business and satisfy his fractured popular base. Yet his actions have exacerbated the environment of uncertainty and crisis that makes MAGA so very dangerous. Confronting this threat requires building the power of the working class – not to restore capitalism, but to fight for a socialist alternative capable of meeting social and ecological needs.

Richard Wolff
Like all previous empires in human history, the US empire displays a birth, an evolution, and eventually a decline. We are living through the decline. It is punctuated by all sorts of discontinuities as enterprises, households, and governments unevenly become aware of the decline and try to navigate the risks of all the changes overdetermining them. Old, established ways of thinking, strategizing, investing, and governing give way to new ones that often shock and destabilize. Tariffs, trade wars, abandoned former allies, and lost military wars are symptoms of empire decline. Indeed, that decline's spill-over effects include deepening contradictions within and among the major centers of western capitalism such as the G7. The rise of western capitalism's first great competitor - China and its BRICS allies - intensfies the former's decline. These developments offer both great dangers but also great opportunities for all who seek to do better than capitalism in terms of economic and social development.