Michael Roberts: The exceptional economy

by Michael Roberts

Next week US president Joe Biden finishes his term of office, to be replaced by the Donald. Biden would have been extremely popular with the American public and probably would have run and got a second term as president, if US real GDP had increased by 4.5-5.0% in 2024, and if during the whole of his period of office since end 2020, real GDP had risen 23%; and if per American, real GDP had risen 26% over those four years. And he would have been congratulated if the Covid death rate during the 2020-21 pandemic had been one of the lowest in the world, and the economy avoided the pandemic slump in production.

Above all, he would have been feted if the inflation of prices in goods and services after he came into office was just 3.6% in total over four years. That would have meant that, with wages rising at 4-5% a year, real incomes for average American households would have risen significantly. At the same time, strong growth would have allowed the financing of important new infrastructure spending in the US that could have led to an extensive rail network across the country using super fast trains; and with bridges and roads that did not collapse or crumble along with environmental projects to protect people and homes from fires and floods, and the introduction of cheap electric vehicles and renewables. How Biden would have been popular.

And with extra revenue from strong growth, the Biden administration would have been able to balance the government budget and curb or reduce government debt. And with zero to low inflation, interest rates on borrowing would have been near historic lows, enabling households and companies to afford mortgages and finance investment in new technologies.

And what if US companies had sold a record level of exports of goods and services to the rest of the world, running up a sizeable surplus on trade, despite various tariffs and sanctions against American companies from other trading nations. In running trade surpluses, American banks and companies would have been able to build up foreign exchange reserves and invest in projects abroad, strengthening America’s influence in the world in a beneficial way.

Unfortunately, none of these things happened to the US economy in the four years of Biden’s presidency. Instead these were features of China’s economy. In 2024, China’s real GDP rose about 4.5%, while the US was up 2.7% (faster than anywhere else in the top G7 economies, but still only 60% of China’s growth rate). And throughout Biden’s term, China growth rate outstripped the US. 

Moreover, the gap betweeen China and the US on real GDP growth per person was even greater.

US annual inflation has been way higher than in China. Indeed, US prices rose a cumulative 21% since 2020 compared to just 3% in China.

Interest rates set by the US Fed are still at 4.5%, while the People’s Bank of China has a 3% rate. And interest rates on mortgages and corporate debt in the US are well above 5% compared to 1.5% in China. Average real disposable income in the US has been flat since 2019, while it has risen 20% in China. Under Biden, bridges fall down, roads crumble and rail networks hardly exist. Far from running a trade surplus of $1 trillion as China does, the US runs a sizeable trade deficit of $900bn.

While China runs a surplus on payments and receipts with other countries or around 1-2% of GDP a year, the US runs a current account deficit of 3-4% of GDP a year. At the same time, US industry and banks have huge net liabilities with the rest of world at 76% of GDP. Such a net liability would put all other countries vulnerable to a run on their currencies – but the US escapes this because the US dollar remains the world reserve currency. In contrast, China has a net asset position of 18% of GDP.

And yet, despite all this, we are continually told by Western ‘expert’ economists and the media that China is on the brink of financial meltdown (George Magnus); or alternatively going into permanent stagnation like Japan has done over the last three decades (Michael Pettis); and that China is producing too much that it cannot sell ie. it has overcapacity (Brad Setser). And China has a corporate debt crisis that will eventually bring the whole economy down (said by just about everybody). And China will stagnate because of a ‘lack of demand’, even though wage and consumption growth is way faster than in the US.

The Western consensus is that China is mired in huge debt, particularly in local governments and real estate developers. This will eventually lead to bankruptcies and a debt meltdown or, at best, force the central government to squeeze the savings of Chinese households to pay for these losses and thus destroy growth. A debt meltdown seems to be forecast every year by these economists, but there has been no systemic collapse yet in banking or in the non-financial sector. Instead, the state-owned sector has increased investment and the government has expanded infrastructure to compensate for any downturn in the over-indebted property market. If anything, it is America that is more likely to burst a bubble than China.

And as for ‘Japanication’, this is also nonsense. In 1980s Japan, companies used property and land to lever up and buy more commercial property or expand into other economically unviable projects. When the bubble collapsed, the corporates and the banks carried the weight of the downturn. In contrast, the problems In China are in residential property, not in commercial.

Hence, China’s real estate prices never went up as much as during the land speculation frenzy in Japan in the 1980s. Average residential sales prices per square meter have risen 7.3% annually since 2007, well below the increase in annual nominal GDP of about 12% over that same period. In Tokyo, home prices grew 13% annually, well above nominal GDP growth of about 8% in the 1980s.

While Japan’s productive base declined from the 1990s, that is not happening in China. China is now the world’s manufacturing superpower. Its production exceeds that of the nine next largest manufacturers combined. It took the US the better part of a century to rise to the top; China took about 15 or 20 years. In 1995, China had just 3% of world manufacturing exports, By the beginning of Biden’s term, its share had risen to over 30%.

Then there is China’s so-called demographic challenge of a declining workforce and population. But this decline is nowhere as severe as in Japan. China’s birth rate has been comfortably higher than those of Japan and the Asian tigers. China’s population under 20, at 23.3%, is still considerably higher than its Asian counterparts (16-18%) and not so far behind the US (25.3%) and aboce Europe (21.9%). The country’s 65 and older population, at 14.6%, is also lower than that of the developed world (20.5%).

As for so-called overcapacity, this is another myth broadcast by Western experts. China’s export success does not mean that China depends on exports for growth. China is growing mainly because of production for the home economy.

Remember, China’s economy has never suffered a decline in national output since 1949. And as John Ross has pointed out, if the Chinese economy continues to grow 4-5% a year over the next ten years, then it will double its GDP – and with a falling population, raise its GDP per person even more; ie more than two and half times as fast as the US.

Why is China exceptional? It is because it is an economy that is planned and led by state-owned companies, so it can ride most obstacles way better than a privately owned system of capitalist production as in the US. (Compare the US COVID death rate at 3544 deaths per million to China’s 85 (latest figures). China’s most important industries are run by SOEs: finance, energy, infrastructure, mining, telecommunications, transportation, even some strategic manufacturing. The total capital of companies with some level of state ownership in China is 68% of total capital of all firms (40 million). The vast majority of Chinese companies in the Fortune Global 500 list are SOEs. SOEs generate at least 25% of China’s GDP in the most conservative estimates, and other studies have found them to contribute to 30-40+% of GDP.

Donald Trump takes over next week in the US. He wants to make America great again. He wants to make America ‘exceptional’. But that adjective best describes China, not the US. 

Keir Starmer’s support for the Gaza ceasefire is riddled with lies

Johnathan Cook From JonathonCook.net

16 January 2025

Estimates are that it will take 80 years to rebuild Gaza. How is a ‘sovereign and viable Palestinian state’, or a ‘better future’, going to emerge out of ruins on that scale?

There are so many lies, deceptions and misdirections in Sir Keir Starmer’s statement on the ceasefire agreed between Israel and Hamas yesterday that they need to be picked apart line by line.

Starmer: After months of devastating bloodshed and countless lives lost, this is the long-overdue news that the Israeli and Palestinian people have desperately been waiting for. They have borne the brunt of this conflict – triggered by the brutal terrorists of Hamas, who committed the deadliest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust on October 7th, 2023.

Under no reasonable definition can the last 15 months be described as a “conflict”. The slaughter and maiming of hundreds of thousands of civilians, as well as Israel’s programme to starve the rest of the population, should rightly be understood as a genocide, one the International Court of Justice began investigating a year ago, and one that has been attested to by every major international human rights group, as well as a growing number of Holocaust scholars.

Starmer does at least hint at the truth in conceding that the ceasefire is “long overdue”. The genocide in Gaza could have been brought to an end at any point by US pressure. Indeed, the outlines of the current ceasefire were advanced by the Biden administration back in May. It was Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who blocked progress. Israel’s western patrons, including Starmer, rewarded him with weapons, intelligence and diplomatic cover. If the ceasefire is “overdue”, Starmer is fully responsible for that delay.

Further, the “conflict” wasn’t “triggered” by Hamas’ attack of October 7, as Starmer claims. The “conflict” has been going on for more than three-quarters of a century, triggered by Israel’s continuous efforts to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland, with western backing, in an explicitly colonial project. Israel wants us to believe the “conflict” clock started ticking on October 7. Only the ignorant, and contemptible politicians like Starmer, repeat that lie.

The killings on October 7 2023 weren’t “the deadliest massacre of Jewish people” since the Holocaust. That’s another cynical Israeli talking point, repeated by Starmer, whose sole purpose is to rationalise Israel’s genocide. The “deadliest massacre” for Jews since the Holocaust was, in fact, committed by the Argentinian junta, which disappeared and murdered thousands of Jews in the late 1970s. And unlike Hamas, whose victims were killed not because they were Jews but because they were Israelis and viewed as members of an oppressor nation, Argentina’s generals killed Jews specifically for being Jewish. Nonetheless, that massacre – inconvenient to the West – has been carefully memory-holed, including by Starmer.

Starmer: The hostages, who were brutally ripped from their homes on that day and held captive in unimaginable conditions ever since, can now finally return to their families. But we should also use this moment to pay tribute to those who won’t make it home – including the British people who were murdered by Hamas. We will continue to mourn and remember them.

For the innocent Palestinians whose homes turned into a warzone overnight and the many who have lost their lives, this ceasefire must allow for a huge surge in humanitarian aid, which is so desperately needed to end the suffering in Gaza.

Notice Starmer’s sleight of hand here. He blames Hamas for everythingthat has happened over the past 15 months, including the mass slaughter of Palestinians carried out by Israel.

First, he correctly holds Hamas responsible for taking Israelis hostage – though, of course, like everyone else, Starmer fails to make the important legal distinction between the civilians who were taken hostage, a war crime, and occupying Israeli soldiers who were captured, not a war crime. But he then goes on to hold Hamas, not Israel, responsible for the genocide of the people of Gaza.

Presumably for that reason, the Israeli dead need to be “mourned”, “remembered” and paid “tribute”. But according to Starmer’s statement, the Palestinian dead need to be neither mourned nor remembered.

Whatever Starmer claims, Palestinian homes weren’t “turned into a war zone”, with the implication – again echoing a favourite and mendacious Israeli talking point – that Hamas has used Palestinians as human shields, leaving Israel with little choice but to kill them by the tens of thousands. Rather, Palestinian homes were deliberately levelled in an Israeli campaign of bombing far more intense than anything inflicted on Dresden or Hamburg in the Second World War. We know from the Israeli media that the targets of these bombing campaigns were generated automatically by AI programmes that were given the widest possible licence. In most cases, buildings were bombed without reference to any Hamas activity in the vicinity.

Next, Starmer falsely makes a connection between the ceasefire and the ability of international agencies to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza. But it was not fighting that stopped humanitarian aid entering Gaza. It was Israel’s decision to impose a genocidal, Medieval-style aid blockade, with the stated goal of starving the population. A goal, let us never forget, that Starmer explicitly endorsed, stating that Israel had the right to deny the people of Gaza food, water and power. Let us note too that Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, are being sought by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity that relate specifically to the starvation policy Starmer supported.

Starmer: And then our attention must turn to how we secure a permanently better future for the Israeli and Palestinian people – grounded in a two-state solution that will guarantee security and stability for Israel, alongside a sovereign and viable Palestine state.

It is far, far too late, as Starmer knows, to be talking about a “better future” for Gaza now that its homes have been destroyed, its hospitals are in ruins, its schools and universities are levelled, it agricultural land devastated. Estimates are that it will likely take 80 years to rebuild the enclave. How are a “better future” and a “sovereign and viable Palestinian state” going to emerge out of Gaza’s ruins.

Had Starmer been serious about “a two-state solution”, he could have done many things to facilitate it as soon as he entered office. He could have imposed a real arms embargo on Israel, one that would have deprived it of the components it needs to keep its F-35s flying over Gaza, dropping bombs. He could have backed South Africa’s genocide case at the ICJ. He could have recognised a Palestinian state, as several European countries have done but Britain hasn’t. He could have refused to transport weapons to Israel and provide it with aerial intelligence from the UK’s air base in Cyprus. He could have promised to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant should they land in the UK. He could have refused to shelter the Israeli military’s chief of staff, General Herzi Halevi, in London in November by issuing him with special immunity from arrest and prosecution by the ICC. And Starmer’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, could have rejected an invitation to Israel this week to “deepen the partnership” between the UK and Israel in the midst of a genocide.

Starmer: The UK and its allies will continue to be at the forefront of these crucial efforts to break the cycle of violence and secure long-term peace in the Middle East.

All that the UK under Starmer will be at the forefront of doing is continuing to shill for Israel, perpetuating “the cycle of violence” – a colonial cycle of violence that the British initiated in Palestine with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 – and ensuring peace remains unachievable as instability spreads across the Middle East.

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Gaza Genocide Ceasefire Agreed. Can we get our Money Back?

Richard Mellor

As I write, a ceasefire has been agreed to between Israel and Hamas. This was predictable and it will be interesting to see who claims responsibility, butcher Biden or the sexual predator, slumlord and con man US president elect Donald Trump.

One thing workers need to grasp clearly is that Trump, who I am sure will claim responsibility for the deal, is acting primarily on behalf of the Israeli's as the genocide is threatening the Zionist Apartheid state, costing lives, conflict within Israel itself and raising the nation to pariah state internationally. Trump, like most western politicians does not consider Palestinian lives as important as Israeli's. Palestinians can't protect US imperialist's interests in the region. And it's quite possible, the Zionist settler state won't be able to either in the immediate future.

As I think about this human catastrophe that has been made possible by the US, taxpayers that have (against the will of many of us) funded it, it makes me think about how bosses treat workers. The US political system and its functionaries in the Congress are mass murderers. But beyond that, their record, given their supposed job description, has been a miserable failure. 

Afghanistan was a disaster. As Norman Finkelstein pointed out, it took the US trillions of dollars and over 20 years to "Replace the Taliban with the Taliban.".  Iraq has been a disaster as the US taxpayer again was forced to fund an illegal war against a people that never threatened us or harmed us in any way to remove a former ally, Saddam Hussein, who dared to challenge US imperialism's rile book in the Arabian peninsula.

And Vietnam? Three million dead Vietnamese and many children being born deferred today due to the US use of chemical warfare again the people and their food supply (think dead Bison when you consider. this tactic. It's not new) that also killed US troops. Some 67,000 US workers died in yet another war where the US exited in defeat and some dying 4o years later due to the chemical warfare.

If workers were to fail so dismally in our duties as employees in the workplaces we don't control, we would not last too long. And US prisons are filled with hundreds of thousands of workers abandoned by capitalism, not much tolerance in the ruling class when it comes to workers, savaged by the market are forced in to crime. Many of the incarcerated are now fighting fires for $ a day.

Last month, Biden asked Congress for another $8 Billion to fund the genocide. I wonder now if we can get that back and put it to good use here in the US.  Maybe build some more schools and fire stations.

Or it could be used in Gaza to help the victims, as long as the Zionists don't get hold of it.

Gaza: Biden Never Forced Netanyahu to Stop Blocking a Ceasefire Deal

Source

Kevin Ovenden, London UK

1-14-25

 

This is NOT some kind of backhanded endorsement of Donald Trump. 

It is to pose an issue for the likes of progressive journalist Mehdi Hassan and others who tried to leverage mass outrage - especially among Arab- and Muslim-Americans - at the genocide in Gaza to attack anyone refusing to endorse Joe Biden as bringing about something worse. 

The issue is this. It is now becoming clearer by the hour that Trump has insisted on Netanyahu signing up to a ceasefire deal - not dissimilar to one that was close last March - and he will not put up with another attempt by the Israeli government to block one. 

It is probably to allow for Trump to clear the decks of various issues for the start of his second term. Similarly, he is signalling some kind of ceasefire and political process over the Ukraine war. 

It is of course ludicrous to suggest that it is because he is committed to peace. He is totally committed to US imperialism, but with a different policy and his own set of priorities. Highest of them is the shared view with almost all Democrats that China is the fundamental enemy of US capitalism. 

Nevertheless, Trump has demonstrated that for the past 15 months it was perfectly possible for Biden to pick up the phone and tell Netanyahu to stop. He did not - because this genocide is also Biden's genocide as a product of his stewardship of the American Empire. 

That's Biden's legacy - whatever comes to pass with Trump's alternative militarism. 

And ordinary people in politicised circumstances have a habit of remembering things. Those voters in Michigan and Georgia who rejected Biden. Those young progressives moralised at by the likes of Hassan for not enthusiastically backing the Democrats. 

The people scolded that they will be responsible for every bad thing that Trump does. 

Well, c'mon Mehdi and Democrat pals: try to run that hectoring argument now. Right at this moment, when the Israeli and Middle Eastern media are coming out with more and more detail about this ceasefire that is expected to be agreed - at least formally. 

All that those who berated people who were "supposed to vote Democrat" whatever the Democrats did have done, is to undermine themselves and perhaps shift a few of those they bullied so disgracefully towards giving some undeserved credit to Trump. 

What a mess the liberal Democrats have made. They didn't save Biden. But they have strengthened Trump.

Trump 2.O. A Roller Coaster Ride From the Man With No Philosophy

Richard Mellor

1-12-25

“Trump’s approach is bad for America’s friends, the only hope I have is it’s even worse for our enemies.” John Bolton, Former US Ambassador to the UN

 

An interesting interview with John Bolton, Trump’s one-time National Security Advisor.

 

Trump’s recent proclamations about the possibility of taking Greenland by force, annexing Canada, taking back the Panama Canal, should not be taken literally as I have argued with some of my friends and colleagues, some of them fearing the end of the world is nigh. But it's important as workers to recognize that only one in four US Americans voted for Trump (in the world’s greatest democracy apparently) and some 90 million people opted out of the electoral process completely. Trump does not have a mandate electorally.

 

Trump is a buffoon, an accident of history. His election, and popularity among some, is a product of the political crisis of US capitalism reflected in the decline of the two capitalist parties that have dominated US political and economic life for over a century. This has been a long time coming.

 

This is not to say we are not in dangerous times and Bolton makes that very clear arguing that Trump is harmful to the US and its allies. With regards to Greenland, which is a Danish autonomous territory, his comments place the (democratically elected) government of Denmark in a very difficult position, and the same with Panama. Both these states are close allies of the US. 

Trump’s threats of using force to strengthen National Security, are also very harmful Bolton says, as it undermines the US position on Ukraine and also, China can easily claim the same with regards to Taiwan. I think Bolton is correct as well when he says that there are some sections of the US bourgeois that actually believe the US can win a nuclear, war. 

 

It’s not simply with regard to its global competitors that a significant section of the US ruling class is overconfident. There is almost no attention paid to the role of the US working class in the coming period either. Why should there be? There has not been a serious national intervention in affairs since the Civil Rights movement and the CIO before it. There have been so many opportunities within organized labor to open up a real front against capital, but all have been derailed by a powerful combination of the bosses and our own leadership. 

Rumblings within organized labor or in combination with forces outside of it like the WTO protests in Seattle are coopted with the conscious intervention of the labor hierarchy as an agent of the Democratic Party. In addition, the movements in the streets are violently suppressed like the WTO protests that followed, as well as the movements against police violence and the near civil war led by indigenous people against the pipelines. Identity politics and the absence of a class approach plays a huge role. 

 

Trump’s in brain out mouth approach is part of his efforts to distract from the real issues at hand as he’s incapable of analysis or critical thinking. He is not worldly. “I’m not sure Trump could pronounce the word imperialist” Bolton says, he has, “no philosophy, no grand strategy”. That's not a good situation at all.

 

On a final note. I think it is not out of the question that the US/Greenland link could become much more intertwined. With climate change and warmer temperatures, the likelihood of greater access to the raw materials that lie beneath the ice once the land is exposed, is in the sights of US capital. Competition with Russia, and Norway for the Arctic exploration is another issue. And I don’t think It can be ruled out that the Greenland Independence movement, when forced to choose between its colonial past with Denmark or the US could opt with the latter. The EU is pretty much in thrall to US imperialism.

 

Trump has no plan. And I think the commentator, Robert Wright who   I quoted in an earlier post pointed that out exactly:

“The problem is: 1) when a president says stuff this crazy, it's genuine news and merits coverage but 2) for Trump, almost all coverage is positive reinforcement--behavior that gets headlines is behavior he repeats. This dynamic will cause much turbulence over the next 4 years.”

 

Bolton says as much. We’re in for a roller coaster ride indeed. And the only force that can set it straight is the intervention of the working class in the US and globally. 

 

I am always wary of quoting revolutionary figures given the myriad of grouplets and individuals that claim to be the “genuine Marxists” as myself and the organization I was expelled from did. But Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary leader wrote some 75 years ago that the crisis of the working class was one of leadership and that’s as applicable today as it was when he wrote it.

Elon Musk and the tech titans v the rest of Maga

Elon Musk and the tech titans v the rest of Maga – here’s where the big splits could happen

Thomas Gift, UCL

The angry debate over US visas and foreign workers that erupted over the holidays has exposed splits within Donald Trump’s Maga supporters on immigration policy.

The fiery words exchanged between two Trump factions over H-1B visas, which allow immigrants to work in the US based on speciality talents or skills, may just be the opening salvos of a broader war for influence at Trump’s base in Mar-a-Lago.

On the one hand, tech mogul, immigrant, and Trump’s (for now) right-hand man Elon Musk declared his strong support for easing restrictions on these visas, pledging that he’d be willing “go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend”.

On the other hand, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon pilloried the H-1B visa programme as “a total and complete scam from its top to the bottom”.

The controversy isn’t just an ideological clash between right-wing nativists, who view immigrants as threats to US jobs and culture, and big tech titans eager to expand their access to global talent. Instead, it’s a fight for power over the future direction of Trumpism.

“The coalition of the tech right and the nationalist right was bound to be tested,” said writer Ali Breland. The test, it seems, has come even before Trump’s inauguration on January 20.

Maga splits

Just like Democrats are dealing with their own fissures between progressives and moderates following the 2024 election, Maga is trying to settle its civil war over Trump’s signature issue, immigration.

Silicon Valley, as represented by Musk, has made its position clear. It wants to increase the number of skilled-worker visas to bring more tech talent to America’s shores. The policy isn’t new. In 2012, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney promised to “staple a green card to the diploma of someone who gets an advanced degree in America”.

Splits over skilled worker visas.

Yet the very fact that expanding H-1Bs is the “establishment” stance is what has other Maga-ites steaming. Romney isn’t exactly the posterboy for the Trumpist revolution. Moreover, in his first administration, Trump himself pushed for restricting H-1B visas, a position he now seems to have revised.

In 2016, Trump railed against H-1B workers who he claimed “substitut[ed] for American workers at lower pay”. He has now said: “We need smart people coming into our country. We need a lot of people coming in. We’re going to have jobs like we’ve never had before.”

That Trump’s recent statements sound a lot like they were coming from Musk is sparking worries among Trump nationalists that Maga’s immigration policy is being redefined. For those who believe Musk is influence-peddling for what’s best for his corporate bottom line, his proposal on immigration is exhibit A.

The increasing marginalisation of “America first” nativists, and the elevation of Musk, suggests a departure from policies championed during Trump’s first term. Whether that shift extends beyond immigration is worrying plenty of figures accustomed to wielding power in Trump’s base in Mar-a-Lago.

For the hard right, the concern goes beyond Musk, who’s hunkered himself down in a US$2,000 (£1,622) per night room at Trump’s Florida estate. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Apple’s Tim Cook have both visited Trump since November’s election, and are jockeying for position as Trump builds out his cabinet and priorities for this first 100 days in office.

Meta is even changing personnel to align with the new Trump White House. The company recently announced that it would be replacing its head of global policy, Nick Clegg, former deputy prime minister of the UK and former leader of the left-leaning Liberal Democratic party, with Joel Kaplan, who has his roots in the George W. Bush administration.

Tech titans v nationalists

Silicon Valley and Trump anti-immigration nationalists were never natural allies, and any short-lived coalition was already shows signs of fracturing. Yet it’s not inevitable that Musk and the big tech leaders who currently have Trump’s ear, will retain that clout once his presidency starts – or ends.

As many experts have noted, Trump is more transactional than ideological, and is prone to making decisions based more on polls than a firmly grounded set of first principles. The much-discussed “bromance” between Trump and Musk could rupture over personality or policy differences.

On immigration, Trump might seek a compromise between Maga nationalists and big tech chief executives. Reviving the US-Mexico border wall could appease Maga nationalists who want tighter immigration enforcement. At the same time, expanding immigration pathways for foreign workers with degrees from the likes of California Institute of Technology and MIT could also help court big tech leaders.

The real flashpoint, however, may arise over Trump’s broader, populist approach to resisting hyper-globalisation, of which immigration is merely one part of a larger agenda.

Many within the Maga nationalist right are deeply sceptical of unbridled global capitalism, which is most clearly reflected in Trump’s calls for imposing 10-20% tariffs on US imports and 60% tariffs on imports from China. If there’s one policy that could reduce profits, and hence awake the sleeping giants of Palo Alto, it’s walling off the US economy from the rest of the world.

Keeping visa numbers at status quo levels is one thing. Upsetting international supply chains, particularly to Asia, is another.

The debate over H-1B visas, significant as it may now seem, could ultimately pale in comparison to a broader reckoning about whether the US will retreat further into economic protectionism. If Musk will “go to war” over skilled-worker visas, just think what the big tech titans will do when the stakes are even higher.

Thomas Gift, Associate Professor and Director of the Centre on US Politics, UCL

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Gaza Genocide Has Revealed the Real Face of Global Capitalism's Swan Song

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED
1-10-25

I posted this on social media a while ago but want to share it once more. Regretfully, we are beyond the stage where protests are able to reverse the rapid and violent decline of the capitalist system as it races headlong to the abyss taking humanity with it. 

While I do not think we are doomed at this point, and still strongly believe that the working class will be forced to enter the global stage and engage in a momentous struggle to transform society and save humanity;  the setbacks we have suffered over the past decades, the betrayal of our own leaders internationally and the lack of a revolutionary leadership with a clear understanding of what has to be done, all but  guarantee there will be a lot of unnecessary suffering and violence along the way as we find our feet. The US ruling class alone, is a major obstacle to our emancipation and is a most violent opponent indeed. We just have to look at how it treats its own citizens.

War is built in to the capitalist system, integral to it. Protests will not change that; the system has to be changed. Forty million or so demonstrated against the US destruction of Iraq to no avail. The Vietnamese people defeated US imperialism's invasion and drove it out but at the cost of some 4 million lives (plus 67,000 US workers) when we consider those that have died as a response to unexploded armaments and disease due to chemical weapons. 

U.S. imperialism, the main force behind Israel's genocide is the guy with the big stick and any pretences that people may have had that the UN could avert global catastrophe have been shattered. US President Biden has done more to undermine so-called international law than any president in my lifetime. Western nations, former colonial powers are the allies in defending the Zionist Apartheid regime,  the European colonial settler state in Palestine.

I read only yesterday a comment from Allen Dulles, who along with his brother Foster, orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected governments of Guatemala and Iran in the 1950's and participated in many, many more coups, assassinations, and other interferences in the politics of other nations. It was over the support for Hitler and Nazi Germany. Allen firmly believed that they and the corporate law firm they were connected to that had many business connections to Germany had to break ties. His brother Foster strongly disagreed and attacked Roosevelt, Churchill, the New Deal and supported Germany.

“How can you call yourself a Christian and ignore what is happening in Germany?”  Allen said to his brother, “It’s terrible.” *

Allen Dulles’ concern for Christian teachings didn’t stop him from overthrowing regimes around the world and heading the CIA, the prime purveyor of global terrorism. 

Allen Dulles’ comment to his brother questioning his Christian ethics would fit perfectly in today world and the support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and should be addressed to Biden, an ardent supporter of the Israeli genocide along with most of the US Congress, who call themselves Christians. Trump, no doubt a serial sexual predator at best is seen by many Christians as devout, even as a prophet. 

I don’t think we can look to organized religion as a source of basic human decency and solidarity; just the opposite, it is inherently divisive and an obstacle to our emancipation.

* Quoted in, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer p54

Seymour Hersh: KILLING FOR KILLING’S SAKE IN GAZA

Source: Gaza 2023 AP. Image Not for article below.

KILLING FOR KILLING’S SAKE IN GAZA

A radicalized IDF sees all Palestinians as terrorists

SEYMOUR HERSH

JAN 09, 2025

∙ PAID

Gaza has become a killing field—that is the view of a well-informed Israeli veteran who was an enthusiastic supporter of the initial Israeli response to the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. He believes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the mastermind of the all-out retaliatory bombing and ground attack there, is now a contemporary Colonel Kurtz, the psychotic killer of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, the famed Vietnam War movie of 1979 based on Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness.

What began as a retaliatory war by the internationally revered Israel Defense Forces against a disciplined Hamas guerilla force turned into the systematic starvation of a society whose civilian survivors—men, women, and children—are the victims of an Israeli military whose combat units are often led by the second generation of Israeli settlers. These officers, increasingly prominent as the war in Gaza goes on, are religious zealot majors and lieutenant colonels who believe it is their calling to shoot and kill any Palestinian who moves, whether combatant or civilian.

There are more than 120 Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including fifteen in East Jerusalem. There are also more than two hundred illegal outposts that are supplied with weapons by the increasingly radical Israeli government while not officially sanctioned by that government. Violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has grown steadily, including Israeli Air Force bombing missions.

The IDF recruiting pattern explains the growing violence against Palestinian men, women, and children in the war. I was told that 40 to 45 percent of today’s higher officers in the IDF come from settler families in the West Bank who combine “deep religiosity with Netanyahu’s political fervor.’’ The Israeli veteran told me of watching in horror, with colleagues, as Israeli bombings and earth-moving machinery were continuing to, as he put it, “level” north Gaza and turn it into a dead zone. He said that there “have been more and more reports of colonels and even generals issuing orders to kill every Palestinian you see and destroy every building still standing. Israel’s war in Gaza has become fanatical. It’s apocalypse now. Killing for killing’s sake. It is corruption like never before.”

He was referring to a devastating article published in December by Haaretz, the liberal Israeli daily that is under increasing attack by the Netanyahu administration. The article focused on the Netzarim Corridor, once a narrow partially paved road separating north and south Gaza that has since the 10/7 attack been expanded by the IDF into a two-and-a-half-mile wide safe zone that runs the entire four-mile width of the Gaza Strip. Hundreds of nearby buildings, including a hospital, were bulldozed to clear space for the IDF. The zone is commanded by more than a few officers who, Haaretz reported, routinely order IDF soldiers to execute Gazans, including those who come with children in tow, seeking food and safety.

Many have been summarily executed on the order of senior officers who deemed them to be terrorists. IDF soldiers on duty at the corridor told Haaretz that, at best, one in every twenty of those Gazans looking for any kind of help was a “terrorist” but all were routinely gunned down. One commander at the corridor called it “the line of dead bodies,” where, because bodies were not collected, there are “packs of wild dogs who come to eat them.”

It was explained that the area was a “kill zone,” and anyone who entered without permission was to be shot. There was inevitable competition among the various units assigned to guard the corridor, a recently discharged IDF officer told Haaretz. He also said that the kill zone extended as far as a sniper could see. “We’re killing civilians who are then counted as terrorists.” If one perimeter defense unit has 150 kills, “the next unit aims for 200.”

The competition was very familiar to this reporter. I reported often and mercilessly about the competition for body counts among companies in combat during the Vietnam War. There were benefits for killing the most Vietnamese: a weekend far away from the war with an all-you-can-eat barbeque for the winning unit, complete with a constant flow of beer and, on special occasions, a busload of Vietnamese prostitutes brought by bus from a local city. Once grand but decaying armies, whether in Gaza or Vietnam, fall into the same patterns.

There are other voices—moderate but far from radical—to be heard. Momentmagazine, founded in 1975 for the American Jewish community by, among others, the late Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald during World War II, published an interview last month with Israeli General Yair Golan. A paratrooper who retired a decade ago as the IDF’s deputy chief of staff, Golan was then elected to the Knesset, where he served as deputy minister of the economy.

Golan is the leader of the newly formed Israeli Democrats Party, a liberal Zionist group that could capture, the magazine reported, ten seats in a future election. He is a modest man with modest views. He said he believes—the interview took place in November—that a ceasefire with Hamas is feasible but Netanyahu “prefers to keep the war going so as to appease the far-right members of his coalition who want to rebuild settlements in Gaza.” Settlements in north and south Gaza for the religious zealots who support Netanyahu? It’s in the plan.

Golan said that there are at least four different tribes in Israel: ultra-Orthodox Jews, Orthodox Jews, secular Jews, and Arabs. He added: “We need to bridge the gaps in our society between these groups and should foster judicial equality and equality of opportunity for all.”

Asked how to end the war In Gaza and free the remaining 10/7 hostages, Golan said: “Netanyahu knows that all that is needed is a hostage deal to move in a positive direction. But he does not want it. Why? The war in the south provides the opportunity to convince the Israeli people that we are in a time of emergency and only he can save us.”

Asked about strategic issues, Golan said: “We often need to choose between bad and worse. Here we need to choose between good and bad. But this government prefers the bad. This is its main crime. This government ignores the interests of Israel and serves only the personal and political interests of its members. . . . The alternative to Netanyahu must be a unified government coalition.”

Asked how Israel should deal with Donald Trump, he said, “It is very difficult to predict the policy of the new American administration. In any event, to have a regional front against Iran we need the United States. To reach a new peace agreement with the Palestinians, we need the United States with us. A new Memorandum of Understanding with America is required by 2026. This MOU must clearly state that America supports the security of Israel.

“The worst-case scenario for Israel would be if Donald Trump takes office and says something like, ‘It is too hard to deal with you. You are not a good partner.’”

Modest man. Modest ideas. Common sense. If modern history tells us anything, it is: don’t bet on it.