IMF cuts growth forecasts for major economies

Yeah, but if it was full on socialism, it wouldn't be protectionism so much as self sufficiency (which won't work unless you are the united States and annex Canada lol)

Isn't self-suffiency exactly what Trump wants to do? I mean the US is in the comfortable position to have almost every necessary natural resource on their territory, including the ability to feed themselves, annexing Canada or not. I mean, socialists use different rethoric but in the end it's the same narrative: Countries with no labor protection and horrible wages outcompete you because of the higher standards. That's why capitalist countries can outcompete socialist countries as long as they are the majority, because they have more brutal tools at hand.

I guess things gonna turn sour once protectionists realize that when you cut off 2rd and 3rd world labor you gotta have this sort of sweatshops on your own ground.

No

Underrated post

How do we combat this ideology familys? These jobs are fucking trash and porky just keeps asking for more but people seem to have either given up hope or to have be trapped in unfounded ideological optimism thanks to capitalism. I'll admit I'm a fucking sperg and I don't know how to connect to people, but it seems most workers are so alienated from each other and their class as a whole, how do we bridge that gap?

That's some deep seated ideology right there.

I've encountered similar sentiments from coworkers. Much of the time that sort of rhetoric seems to have its roots in a conservative background, or the absorption of conservative propaganda–you know, the whole "people get what they deserve" and "if you don't like it just work harder" sort of fantasies. I haven't really found a good way to deal with this sort of shit because it's not like they're concerned with the facts or logic of their situation, so just pointing out how she's wrong about the minimum wage and "improving your skills" doesn't really do any good.

Tbh most workers in the US don't really seem to get even that they're part of a class much less that they should have solidarity with it. The "if you have your own home and car then you're middle-class" mythology is extremely prevalent, and people seem to scorn even the imaginary drop in status from "middle" to "working class." Especially in this culture of wealth-worshiping moralism where only bad/lazy/foolish/stupid people are poor or "lower class," they're even less likely to consider the idea.

I think the word you're looking for is autarky, my credulous nazbol friend.

Now, places with poor labour protections can indeed outcompete domestic industry by being able to offer lower prices for the same goods through saving on slave labour, but if you're a protectionist going for autarky, this doesn't matter, since you can just keep foreign goods out of domestic markets using tariffs.

You wouldn't necessarily need sweatshops on your own ground in order to keep things as they were before. Prices will rise, yes, but you can get around that through any number of tools in the statesman's kit, including taxation, subsidies, statutory minimum wages, and so on. And if you seize the means of production and put it under direct worker control, you'll be even better off, even moreso if you abolish production for profit.

But no, I don't think Trump is serious about protectionism nor do I think he'd have the stones to go against the establishment in order to implement it without actually fucking working people over. He's a populist and an opportunist, and that's the end of it.

He'll probably do some shadow protectionist shit (which the US has a long history of) like devaluing the currency to boost exports and to keep imports from killing domestic industry.

Hudson lays out a pretty good case in his book ``Super-Imperialism`` that America's ability to devalue its currency without initiating a beggar-thy-neighbor currency war from its "allies" is a fundamental pillar of US imperialist strategy and its rise to world dominance.

It also takes advantage of spooky beliefs and moralism about debt permeates global society to pursue its own advantage where it can as a creditor but when it comes to its own debt it basically pulls a Stirner and says the whole concept of debt is spooky and declares the loot from its financial profligacy "my property"

Makes sense. I read a similar argument in David Graeber's book Debt, where he claims that American global hegemony is based around the Americans being able to force everyone else to pay their denbts via the threat of bombing while at the same going "my bad bro I lost your money" when anyone else tries to cash out. It's an argument that makes a lot of sense but I don't see how Trump can really push it any further without seeing any pushback.

Is Super-Imperialism any good?

Ya its really good I think all leftists esp American leftists should read it:gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=008354ED8715CFCC344611526B8D9822.

A criticism I have of the book is he probably underrates the private drives of US imperialism by focusing on its state-capitalist mode of monetary exploitation. But its not like the two are unrelated so I can't criticism him too much; much of the text was written in the early 70s anyway.

Well the pound is devaluing and so is the Euro, naturally any American president is going to want to keep the dollar well-below that of the Euro and the pound given their history. The US has printed trillions of dollars this past couple years and no one really did anything about it (except China but that's another story).

My fear is that Europe is too caught up in the "free world" meme to challenge American monetary imperialism. Responding to it does pose some challenges cause you'd have to either quit accepting dollars period or you'd have to devalue your own currency or put up very high tariff walls. The latter are two practices that the IMF, World Bank, and EU are designed to stop.

Most of the world's ruling classes, especially the European ruling classes, favor deflationary monetary policies as it coincides with their pro-creditor worldview inherited from feudalism or early mercantilism. If your a German or British banker the last thing you want to do is devalue your money which effectively devalues your assets and makes denbt payments less in real value.

The US government (and credit has to go largely to FDR) was the first capitalist state to understand the power that debtors held as a group and how inflationary monetary policy could aid industrial capital and put it into practice. During the 1930s Europeans were stunned when FDR devalued the currency by a factor of four when the US had so much of the world's gold it was effectively the world creditor. FDR did it to relax the burden put on US workers and farmers by heavy debt loans and rents and to grow industrial exports artificially. It went against traditional thinking that saw things from the perspective of the creditor.

Hudson makes a good argument that the European bourgeoisie in the 20th century was so spooked out about preserving the sanctity of its property and domestic class relations that it didn't raise any challenges to US policy as it would've involved challenging those spooky concepts on the international level.

Why doesn't America stop supporting the petrodollar system and let the dollar devalue.
It would make things a lot better for everyone I think.

US leaders see the dollar as being in a kind of goldilocks position in the world market. It's low enough that it can compete with or outcompete other rich countries in terms of industrial exports (us has relatively high labor costs) but high enough that it can benefit from the cheap imports of developing countries. At the same time the dollar's value is not so high that it is not completely swamped by imports from the Third World or other rich countries.

The US need the petrodollar system not only to keep the value of the dollar up (this isn't the primary goal) but mainly to keep people using the dollar worldwide. The dollar signifies US government debt and if there is realistically very little return on it either in the form of treasury bonds or hard currency like gold then it makes very little business to accept it unless your doing business locally in the US. It's unlikely the US will ever offer up collateral on its debts like other neoliberal states do unless it decides to go full accelerationist. Having a never ending printing press does solve problems of national to international exchange that all capitalist states struggle to achieve a favorable equilibrium with.

An argument can be made that the inflationary effect of the petrodollar system is preferable to the deflationary nature of the gold standard. But honestly just spending the money into existence via the state rather then creating debt would be the optimal monetary solution imo.

The problem there is spooky ideas about money going back to mercantilism and the rise of private banks.

Natsoc states are going to be pretty fucking protectionist, mind you.

If the petrodollar stops and devalues the entire US market is going to make the entire global economy crash and burn in a way that makes the Great Depression look like a joke.