New readers should know that my Substack posts are dedicated to surveillance of matters related to a central premise, and that premise, put at its simplest, is that the collective West, made ever more desperate and ruthless because of its unsustainable debt load, is attempting to beat back the multiple forces of multipolarity. It is currently doing this on three main fronts: against Russia over the proxy excuse of defending Ukraine; against Iran over the proxy excuse of defending Israel; against China over the proxy excuse of defending Taiwan. But there is no limit to the number of fronts that the West will entertain.
Trump Tariffs
Trump has confirmed that tariffs on imported goods from Mexico and Canada are shortly to rise by 25%, and on imported goods from China, 10%. The tariffs are designed among other things to force these countries to make concessions to demands from the US on such matters as their acceptance of deportees, their control over flows of migrants to the US, and their control over flows of drugs to the US. Trump further intends that tariffs will incentivize import substitution in US manufacturing which he sees as a long-term benefit that outweight short-term pain to the economy.
Even the threat of controls itself appears to have had a notable effect on the numbers of illegal crossings into the US, which fell from 250,000 in the single month of December 2023 to 47,500 in December 20024.
Singled out for particular concern are semiconductor chips, pharmaceuticals, steel, aluminum, oil and gas. The tariffs on Canadian crude will be 10% (a reduction, therefore from the rate of 25% that will apply to other Canadian imports): this presumably reflects current US dependency on the heavier kinds of oil that Canada provides to enable the US to enhance the quality of US domestic oil so that it is suitable for gasoline and diesel production. The US depends on Canada for 60% of such imported oil and Mexico provides another 7%.
So much for US oil “self-sufficiency.”
Europe will also be targetted with tariffs soon.
Tariffs are expected to raise the cost of gasoline in the US and to increase inflation. The are likely also mto impact the prices of minerals and timber from Canada and of auto parts from Mexico, with the likelihood of increased prices for cars and the costs of construction in the US. The tariffs may very well lead exporters of goods to the US to impose their own tariffs in retaliation, or to raise existing tariff levels. This could reduce the profitability of US exporters and also negatively impact economic activity in neighboring countries and reduce demand for US goods (especially if these goods can be imported more cheaply from other suppliers like China). An overall decline in trade, both in the USA and in supplier countries could negatively decrease investmet in both.
The imposition of tariffs and their provocation to trade war is known from the 1930s to be deeply deflationary and to be a contributory factor to international tensions and conflicts. It was a principal lesson heavily underlined by history texts and teachers in this author’s own education in Britain from the 1950s onwards.
Trump claims that he can use tariffs as sticks and carrots in new ways that can be of benefit to the US by changing the behavior of both its allies and its adversaries. As a super-power (declining though it may be) it is possibly less vulnerable to either the exercise of retaliatory measures or their impact on the US economy relative to other economies. Tariffs may also incentivize greater investment and innovation in the US economy and kick-start a new manufacturing boom that will be less hampered than in recent decades by regulations intended to control pollution and to fight against climate change.
As in Argentina, the citizens of the US have been corralled into a giant experiment of historically unparalleled dimension, by people who have a poor record of humanitarian concern, empathy for the future of the planet or the human species, deeply flawed in social judgment and personal character, pompous and narcissistic, who are being advised by people no better than they in the service of the interests of a plutocratic class that is certainly no better than they.
In my judgement the chances of the experiment being successful either on its own terms or in any other way, are slim to non-existent.
The (Im)Balance of Power
The tariffs are the first major demonstration of the movement by the Trump administration from a political foundation in neoconservative wet-dreams of a permanent US hegemony (exploiting the US’ very brief ‘unipolar moment” from 1991 to China’s access to the World Trade Organization in 2001), back to the principle of “balance of power,” between supposedly sovereign nations jostling if not for equality then for equilibrium for themselves and their “spheres of interest.” The system is inherently unstable but allows for more players to enjoy more autonomy than they would under a single hegemon. In the Trumpian version, there may be a readier resort to tariffs and other financial tools for the purpose of maintaining an equilibrium that is of grestest benefit to the power that has the most resources to deploy them effectively to its advantage.
In a trend-setting interview with Megyn Kelly, the new US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has laid out the new US “balance of power” approach to the structure of the global order in the sphere of US foreign policy. For Rubiuo, the US ‘unipolar moment” was a historical anomaly. In the course of this interview Rubio indicates that the coming competition, if not conflict between the US and China will be the major US priority in international affairs.
He is much less invested in the NATO proxy war with Russia over Ukraine, and even chastises the former Biden team (Bide, Sullivan, Blinken and Nuland) (1) for deceiving Ukraine into thinking that it could achieve victory over and destroy Russia, and (2) abandoning centuries’ old practices of traditional diplomacy and deciding that there was no requirement on them to actually talk to Russia. He is plainly dismissive of half-cocked solutions that have been aired ceaselessly now for months, even from Trump’s own side, by what the British like to call the “great and the good,” wittering on about such things as buffer zones, conflict freezes, NATO “peace-keeping” forces and all the other deceptive tactics whose guiding idea, once again, is to give Ukraine and the collective West the time they think they need to restore their weapons and resources (which, on the basis of the evidence I reviewed in yesterday’s post, is never going to happen).
Rubio says he is searching for an “enduring solution,” which should be music to Moscow’s ears because it is hinting at Big Idea, Yalta-2 sized thinking about how to establish what is too often and too short-sightedly referred to as a new “European” security architecture, when the world so desperately yearns for is a new Global security architecture, underwritten not by values, not by “rules,” but by law under the aegis of a heavily-reformed and considerably strengthened United Nations. This is what we need if we are to eradicate once and for all both imperialism and neo-imperialism and to hold to account the perpetrators of evil on the global stage.
BRICS, not Europe, now the Arbitrator of Good
In post-war Europe we perhaps witnessed a momentary thunder-bolt of political, social, cultural and moral wisdom that has now been wasted away by inept and unworthy successors to some truly great(er) leaders of that time.
European leaders are chickens without heads as they sense the implosion of their Servant Atlanticism model of survival. Hungary’s Orban persists, in concert with his ally Fico in Slovakia, in calling out the foolishness, even now, of utterly stupid and pointless European attempts to continue “sanctioning” Russia.
This brave minority is now ceding to rumbles of some far greater transforming force, suggested in the win in Croatia of Zoran Milanovic, of Herbert Kickl’s Freedom Party in Austria, of the growing stature of AfD in Germany whose new electoral status will be determined in national elections in three weeks’ time.
Western mainstream media like to call these forces “far right,” but all they really mean by this is that these forces are opposed to the now badly discredited ideology of US-subservient neoconservatism and its poodles scattered across the bureaucratic wasteland of EU agencyworld and which has brought to Europe very negative impacts of badly mismanaged policies of migration, the impoverishment of European peoples, and the deindustrialization of Germany in an utterly senseless war that Europe is losing and cannot win against Russia to protect the Banderite thugs of Kiev at the behest of their imperial overlords in Washington, Brussels and London.
Kiev can read the tea-leaves even more presciently than some of its European sponsors, investigating its Minister of Defense in time to deflect blame for what will soon be exposed of the massive war corruption in Ukraine (and Washington) prompted by uncontrolled Western arms and aid, sending its minions to Slovakia in an attempt to undermine Fico, while USAID and NED money is doubtless being spent - before Trump corks the bottle and shuts off the champagne - on much the same kinds of activity in Georgia and Serbia.
And now even the Danes, presumably under pressure from German industrialists (perhaps of French and Italian as well) ahead of the new pro-business electoral win of Merz’ CDU are inviting Gazprom back to the Baltic Sea to investigate and repair the Nord Stream pipelines, as more and more chatter in the wings of European stagecraft looks for economic salvation in the very thing their leaders have tried to deny them namely cheap Russian oil and gas, via Nord Stream (in place of expensive Russian LNG that they import from whoever can deliver it to them).
Nord Stream might edge its way towards the center of an ultimate peace deal and, with it, the demolition of al; the other self-defeating sanctions that Ursula von der Leyen spends her days trying to add.
West Asia Note
Turkish and US-backed terrorist, al-Jolani, having postponed elections in Syria for another few years has declared himself President. The world did not need yet another blow, following the collective West’s active participation in Israeli genocide, to further smash the entire edifice of the collective West’s bid for credibility as a humanitarian “civilization,” but yes, here it is anyway: the headchopping yet pitiful dictator of an already Western-demolished soveriegn state, his bearded minions already massacring Alawites and harrssing Christians, the leader of a motley hornets’ nest of Western-sponsored regime-changers for the Turkic and Chinese worlds…declared himself President.
The West shrugs.
See also
Israel Escalates West Bank Military Assault, Invading Areas Across the North (West Bank)
Oliver Boyd-Barrett is Professor Emeritus of Bowling Green State University in Ohio and of California State University. His books include The International News Agencies; Le Trafic des Nouvelles (co-authored with Michael Palmer), Contra-Flow in Global News (co-authored with Daya Thussu), The Globalization of News (co-editor with Terhi Rantenan, and contributor), Communications Media, Globalization and Empire (editor and contributor), News Agencies in the Turbulent Era of the Internet (editor and contributor); Hollywood and the CIA (with David Herrera and Jim Baumann); Media Imperialism; Interfax: Breaking into Global News; Western Mainstream Media and the Ukraine Crisis; Media Imperialism: Continuity and Change (with Taneer Mirrlees, eds.); RussiaGate and Propaganda: Disinformation in the Age of Social Media; Conflict Propaganda in Syria: Narrative Battles; RussiaGate Revisited: Aftermath of a Hoax (with Stephen Marmura, editors, and contributors). In preparation for 2025 is Afghanistan: Occupation and its Aftermath (with Sumanth Inukonda and Lara Lengel, editors and contributors) and, for 2026, The Sage Handbook of News Agencies (co-editor with Pedro Aguiar and Christian Vukasovich).
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