A-Infos (en) Italy, IFA, UCADI #200 - Between tariffs and sanctions (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

By launching his tariff policy, President Trump is simply following the 
path blazed by his predecessors (starting with Obama), who had no qualms 
about using this tool to defend the United States' competitiveness. It's 
clear that he acts through seemingly impulsive gestures, often aimed at 
directly or indirectly profiting from the market through insider 
trading. Rather than possessing privileged information, he creates it, 
thereby reaping immense profits and speculating. However, it is a fact 
that the country has a total debt of 110 billion dollars, the result of 
significant trade deficits accumulated since roughly 1976, due to high 
imports of oil and consumer goods, as well as the effect of a radical 
and savage decentralization of production that expelled the majority of 
manufacturing activities from the country due to the need to dismantle 
the centers of concentration and therefore of workers' power and to 
defuse social protest and class struggle, in the search for a different 
and more equitable distribution of wealth. and rapid and immediate 
profits, thus triggered a strong process of financialization and 
privatization of the US economy which, while it created the basis for 
technological development, irremediably transformed the social 
composition of the country[J. D. VANCE, American Elegy, Garzanti, Milan, 
2020]. This process of de-industrialization has made the country 
unrecognizable, pushing to the right the political axis that was 
characterized by the presence of a central role of trade unions and 
left-wing elements of society.
This strategy has been adopted by all Western bloc countries, which have 
decentralized production and outsourced production chains, moving 
manufacturing activities to poor and developing countries, where labor 
costs were lower and traditions of worker organization and struggle were 
absent or less deeply rooted. With the decline of public intervention, 
the deterioration of infrastructure has also been particularly 
pronounced, so much so that it is estimated that more than 200 
infrastructure points need to be renovated, and the country's logistics 
are in increasingly degraded condition. It is true that interventions in 
the high-tech sector have increased, but without realizing that these 
businesses are not separate entities but require skilled workers, raw 
materials, and a complex production system to support them.
All this has meant that by 2022, the US economy's largest trade deficits 
are now with China, Mexico, Vietnam, Canada, Germany, Japan, and 
Ireland, and the largest trade surpluses are with the Netherlands, Hong 
Kong, Brazil, Singapore, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Canada is 
the US's largest trading partner, accounting for 15 percent of total 
trade, followed by Mexico (14 percent) and China (13 percent). This data 
explains why the first tariffs were directed at these two countries. 
Today, the United States is losing control of the seas, as evidenced by 
the fact that it launches fewer ships than China, South Korea, and 
Japan. More decisively than his predecessors, Trump is addressing the 
empire's financial crisis by extorting, above all, his vassal subjects, 
and he does so with the same contempt with which the sovereign treats 
his servants, as evidenced by the "negotiation" over duties with Ursula 
Von der Stupid, not coincidentally held between rounds of golf at the 
emperor's private club.

Nor is the payment of the tribute limited to the fee set by the emperor, 
because among the obligations imposed is the contribution to arming the 
army, shouldering the costs of producing weapons and equipping the 
troops, in addition to committing to providing a contribution in men for 
the war. In this sector too, private interests prevail, as evidenced by 
the fact that even rearmament is managed by entrusting decisions to 
companies that decide on the timing and methods of acquiring new weapons 
systems. We reach the paradox that the most advanced nation abandons the 
hypersonic missile project like the Russian Oreshnik in 2024 due to a 
Boeing decision.
Sanctions and their effects. The empire, though moribund and in crisis, 
needs to defend its positions and therefore wages a conflict at its 
borders aimed at containing the emergence of a multipolar world that 
replaces imperial domination with the simultaneous presence of multiple 
actors. Today, there is talk of a rebirth of imperial spaces, reflecting 
the historical, ethnic, economic, geographical, and cultural interests 
that have characterized the planet and the lives of its peoples.
But the empire operates with a double standard and allows itself what it 
does not allow others. This is demonstrated by what is happening in the 
Middle East, where Israel, supported by a powerful, multinational lobby, 
is allowed to appropriate the living space of other peoples, carrying 
out before everyone's eyes one of the most ferocious genocides in 
history. At the same time, Russia's defense of its own living space is 
sanctioned as aggression, demanding that it allow Russia to work with 
impunity for its dissolution as a state, promoting its fragmentation 
into a mosaic of entities,
so as to allow Britain to shatter the formation of a strong and cohesive 
political entity at the continental level.
Thus, faced with Russia's defensive action, the empire and its allies 
have adopted the instrument of sanctions-18 packages so far-which were 
intended to economically crush the Russian economy, causing its crisis. 
Except that the sanctions are being imposed in a world significantly 
changed from the one the empire had imagined, and furthermore, they are 
being enacted at a particular stage in the development of the Russian 
economy, which we will examine.
Over the course of 25 years of relations and negotiations, Russia, 
together with China, India, Brazil, and South Africa, has built the 
BRICS, thus creating an area of trade and exchange relations between 
emerging economies that have gradually adjusted their economic and 
commercial activities, seeking to abandon dollar-denominated 
transactions and favoring the regulation of their economic relations 
through the use of national currencies. Not only that, but the 
sanctions, by closing the Western European energy market from Russia, 
have caused the country to reorient its energy and raw materials exports 
toward China and India, increasing trade with the rest of the world.
By forcing Russia into triangulation to sell oil and gas, a growing 
plethora of countries became involved in the processing and marketing of 
energy and raw materials, reaping enormous profits and, in return, 
providing solidarity and political and economic support to the primary 
supplier: Russia. This also explains the enormous support that Russia's 
intervention in Ukraine received among most states, with the result that 
today Russia is far from isolated in international relations.

A driving force for the growth of the Russian economy

Accidental investments in Russia in the first two decades of the century 
led to the growth and development of a market for goods and services. 
New needs and new demands for goods expanded the country's domestic 
market, initially satisfied by foreign investment and the establishment 
of branches of Western companies in Russia, which supplied the local 
market with the goods required by emerging demand.
The imposition of sanctions led to the withdrawal of investments by 
these companies and the sale of their operations to local entities, 
which took over existing production activities, developing them and 
increasing investments in response to the growing demand for goods and 
services triggered by Western investments. This created a virtuous cycle 
that, combined with the effects of the partial conversion of part of 
Russian industry to a war economy and the achievement of full 
employment, allowed for an increase in per capita income, which in turn 
stimulated demand, producing an unexpected but understandable growth in 
the country's GDP.
Add to this the increased economic availability resulting from the 
bonuses paid to volunteers (approximately EUR50,000), thanks to which 
families who send at least one member to the front become owners of a 
small investment portfolio, as well as recipients of benefits and favors 
deriving from belonging to a family that sent members to the front, and 
you have a clear picture of the overall stimulus that the war is 
providing to the Russian economy. Proof of these considerations is the 
agreement signed between the Russian government and North Korea for the 
supply of 50,000 workers, primarily specialized in construction, and the 
agreement signed with India for the supply of one million skilled 
workers to strengthen and meet the emerging labor needs due to the rapid 
growth of the Russian economy.
Thus, the singular paradox is realized: the sanctions that were supposed 
to undermine the Russian economy have ended up creating the conditions 
for its development, thanks to its developed indigenous potential, as 
well as being able to exploit the country's vast supply of low-cost 
energy, as well as, of course, Russia's practically unlimited abundance 
of raw materials.
The only flaw in what is happening for Russia is that the new economic 
relations it has established are necessarily pushing it to favor a 
symbiotic relationship with China, which dominates it in terms of 
economic power, population, development capacity, and soon, military 
capabilities. But it is quite clear that what is happening is anything 
but an advantage for the interests of the empire, which, not 
coincidentally, seems to have set itself the far-from-achievable goal of 
separating Russia from China.
In this scenario of developing geopolitical relations between the 
various players, the Europeans are the ones who look like idiots, having 
been sacrificed on the altar of self-interest by the United States. The 
United States, with the complicity of Great Britain, severed the vital 
artery that guaranteed the continent low-cost energy, boosting its 
manufacturing activities with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Sanctions 
against Russia, as well as those against China, are accelerating their 
independent growth, even in the most advanced fields such as semiconductors.

The Editorial Staff

https://www.ucadi.org/2025/09/04/tra-dazi-e-sanzioni/
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