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.

In this first dossier edited by the Heatwave media collective, we present a series of short articles by communists from various countries about the local impacts of the second Trump administration's international policies — focusing specifically on the tariffs.

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.