This logic, that follows directly from Blue Labour's arguments in relation to Scunthorpe, to the need to “protect” and “preserve” “British” strategic industries, is precisely what Trump, and his idiotic advisors, such as Peter Navarro (aka Ron Vara) are promoting in the US. In the US, its own huge national economy, and the hegemonic status of the US, make it slightly less utopian than in the case of Britain, whose economy is a tenth the size of the US, but, it is still idiotic, even in the case of the US. Trump promised all of the same things in his first term, but they inevitably failed to materialise. As many others have pointed out, even if old manufacturing industries, and extractive industries were to return to the US, it would take at least five to seven years for the plants, mines and so on to be created. But, no firm is going to commit to that, under the current chaotic conditions, created by Trump's trade wars, just as the chaos of Brexit led to an exodus of businesses, not a renaissance.
If those old labour intensive businesses were to be relocated back in the US, and the same applies to Brexit Britain, they would not only be grossly uncompetitive with their foreign equivalents in China and so on, but they would take advantage of Trump's protectionism to raise their own prices, the consequence of that would be that US workers would see a large rise in their cost of living, as has happened with workers in Brexit Britain, and as workers in Germany found when the German government, under pressure from NATO, boycotted cheap Russian energy supplies. As I have set out before, in current conditions of labour shortages, which would grow more acute in the US, if all these labour intensive industries did return, workers would be likely to demand higher wages to compensate, which would cut US profits. The Federal Reserve would then increase liquidity, to further devalue the Dollar and enable US firms to raise prices to protect their paper profits, which means that its economy would enter a period of spiralling inflation led by rising prices, followed by rising wages. It would create conditions, if allowed to continue, like those in Weimar Germany in the 1920's.
But, Blue Labour's proposals to pursue such a course, is even more idiotic, given the tiny size of the UK economy. The other objection to Trump's proposals to bring back those industries, and US jobs, is that, the only way in which those industries could return would be if they did so on the basis of the latest technology, use of AI and so on. But, on that basis, the idea that it would result in workers jobs returning to the US is a delusion. The work would be done by AI driven robots, with only a handful of workers being required. The US could potentially do that, because the size of the US market, especially if it incorporates Canada and Mexico within it, is large enough to justify production on such a scale, which, in turn, is required to justify that degree of new technology and investment. But Britain, outside the EU, has no such large domestic market, and so no basis for such large-scale, technologically driven production.
The reality hit, again, at the end of last week, when, having imposed his 150% tariffs on Chinese exports to the US, he found that the consequence was going to be that Chinese imports of things like Apple iPhones, 90% of which are made in China, of personal computers, and other electronic goods, including computer chips, would cease, because, with that level of tariff there would be no buyers for them in the US. Wal-Mart gets around 60% of the stuff on its shelves from China. Around 60% of the computer chips imported to the US come from China. So, the reality that all of these Chinese products would quickly not be available, was recognised, even by the moronic Trump, or more likely by someone with a brain with the ability to get it over to him, as being catastrophic. So like all of his previous capitulations, Trump had to give exemptions to all of these Chinese electronic products from his tariffs, just as, faced with catastrophe for US farmers as they faced the loss of Canadian imports of fertiliser, he had to give an exemption for that too.
On the news of those exemptions, the markets rose again, but, as Trump hates it to be pointed out that he does not have a clue what he is doing, and that he has again capitulated, he soon returned to say that the exemptions were only temporary and that, he would be back with their return in the near future, at which point, the markets will have to accept reality once more, meaning that they will crater once again. Of course, it is now being suggested that, the Trump regime is guilty of stock market front-running, and insider trading, with huge amounts being gained by insiders buying shares just before his previous announcement about the pause on tariffs, and subsequent surge in share prices. Undoubtedly there is justification in such views, as Trump's regime is characterised by such rent-seeking, and personal corruption, on an even greater scale than seen under Biden, or with the examples of freebies and so on with politicians in Brexit Britain.
The answer to all of that is for workers themselves to have control of their collective property, rather than shareholders, and to use the profits they create by their labour to invest in real capital accumulation, and not to line the pockets of parasitic shareholders, and the corrupt politicians that represent them. But, to do that, we need a real revolutionary socialist workers party, at the very least to change those unjust laws that deny workers that control over their property, and at best to overthrow the whole rotten capitalist system.
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