In this first dossier from Heatwave, we present a series of short articles by comrades from various countries about the local impacts of the second Trump administration's international policies — focusing specifically on the tariffs. Read our tariff dossier editorial here.
The full impacts of the tariffs and the underlying trade war remain to be seen, as well as the direct and indirect effects on Brazilian workers' lives, employment, and livelihood.
The U.S.-Mexico border operates as a laboratory for generalized crisis. Mexico is not on the margins of this crisis: it is one of its active frontiers. On the border, multiple forms of control converge: safe third country agreements, militarization of the National Guard, outsourcing of repressive functions, and cross-border detention networks.
Réalité offers a useful portrait of one of the economic ideologies at work in the Trump administration, and gives us insight into the motives of some fractions of capital that have aligned with Trump and MAGA. But when it comes to sussing out "the implications for the international circuit of capital," they are entirely too credulous.
In this first contribution to Heatwave, Chuang responds to questions about the global impacts of the latest rounds of American tariffs. The full overview of this inquiry, with responses from comrades across several countries, will be printed as a dossier called Madness and Capitalist Civilization: International Perspectives on the MAGA 2.0 Tariffs, and included with Heatwave's second issue.
Properly contextualized, the tariffs' bumbling rollout is another embarrassing episode in the disintegration of the U.S.-led global economy. But their role in this saga goes mostly unremarked in current debates around trade.
The failures of the Democratic administration can be seen not as contingent errors, but rather as the tail end of a long cycle of U.S. and global politics — namely, that of ascendent globalisation, which had already been severely shaken by the crisis of 2008.
This article is part of a collective effort to clarify the dynamics of the new epoch we are entering. Each week, our working group examines and discusses a text tied to current events in order to draw out its theses. What follows is a revised version of the discussion from one such session, devoted to the "Miran Doctrine" and its implications for the international circuit of capital.
Even before "Liberation Day," our social media feeds were awash with the speculation and drama of the second Trump administration. The exigencies of daily life make it difficult if not impossible to stay up-to-date on all the horrors and indignities.
The Australian state is currently caught in a cleft stick, like so many of its Asian neighbours. For us, the intertwined, yet conflicting, economic and political alliances with the US and China comprise the uneasy terrain within which Australia has responded to Trump's recent tariff announcements.