Bulletins and News Discussion from July 22nd to July 28th, 2024 - Fracas in Dhaka - COTW: Bangladesh

Good effortpost, comrade.

comrade, i want to preface this saying your analysis was thought-provoking, and i enjoyed your perspective. i hope this doesn’t come off as aggressive or attacking you.

trump will not fumble US imperialism so much as point it in a different direction. the difference between trump and biden represents a historic tension within the american bourgeoisie. you rightly point out that the factories of old were removed in the interest of finance capital, and true on-shoring would undo that economic trick. however, there are at least two sorts of bourgeois still around that have contrary interests to that. first, members of the military industrial complex and anyone who seriously wants a USamerican hot war wants/ needs industrial production in order to wage war. this is not going very well, as we can see with efforts to bring chip fabs to USamerica and in failures to scale up 155 mm shell production. the economic incentives for these bougies, as newsheads are well aware, encourage massive boondoggle wunderwaffe in order to shore up profit margins, not actually taking on the dirty work of making weapons.

the second group is the still existing national bourgeois of the US. while they don’t necessarily produce 80% of the world’s steel anymore, they are much more likely to be seen and heard in a community. a five person private equity firm can nominally produce most of the world’s seat belts, but local fields and factories provide jobs that feel more real to the common person, even if they don’t make as much money. additionally, the agriculture and manufacturing interests broadly support trump. to give an example local to me, a comrade of mine has been working software at Haas Automation for a few months now. the management and ownership support trump. they cannot produce machine tools that are price and quality competitive with chinese competitors, because of supply chain inefficiencies in southern california, the rising cost of materials, and radical shifts in the immigration and labor arena that mean they can’t pay assemblers minimum wage anymore. trump is offering to fix that, somehow. we know it won’t work, but the pitch is being made to people who really want to hear it.

if the cost of capital inputs in the US goes up in order to encourage offshoring out of the US and brain drain into the US, there are still bougies with an interest against those capital incentives. could the average cattle rancher or drone manufacturer explain this process? no, USamericans lack education and curiosity. while i agree with your analysis that finance capital has a dominant role in the US, it is not irrational for a group of bourgeois who feel they are being left out to try and break in. it’s unlikely they’ll succeed, but the resolution of the contradiction between financial and industrial interests will come to a head in USamerica if we keep playing chicken with china.

to your first point, i think you could more easily explain most of the BRI with china’s repeated commitment to win-win diplomacy and the real issue of producing more stuff than their domestic market can handle. if your nation’s company uses your excess steel to build essential infrastructure that you get to collect partial income from while the country you’re doing it in thanks you for it, then that’s in your self-interest. i will say i’m broadly skeptical of the idea of biden as a savvy operator, but specially how do railroads in laos and ports in kazakhstan build USamerican supply chains? i could be wrong about the numbers here, but i believe the reason 70% of the loans are in dollars is because the serious use of loans denominated in national currencies didn’t start until 2022, and the BRI started in 2013.

to your second point, educated immigrants are the cause of a labor crisis for some bougies. yes, finance capital sees the college educated coders of the worlds and wants them in SF and NYC. for decades, most of the states bordering mexico have in some way or another built parts of the economy on the assumption of cheap, readily available, fairly skilled labor. people expect to be able to hire latinos who are fully qualified, do not complain, and work for less than minimum. it’s a reflection of the deep seated entitlement and white supremacy of our culture. now, the real cause of the decline in this availability was a combination of labor organizing amongst migrants and improving material conditions in mexico. see the above about the education and curiosity of the USamerican people.

to your third point, i think you are completely correct about the actual long term consequences of lowering interest rates. to trump and the average USamerican and the average USbougie, the rest of the world does not exist and they miss cheaper mortgages/ loans for their companies. did biden meaningfully differ from this? i mean i know there’s the veil of ignorance between the fed and the president, but i think the USbougies, finance and otherwise, are legitimately split on whether to lower interest rates or not. the firehose of free money was really nice, even if some naysayers keep saying you can’t have infinite money forever.

to your fourth point, donald trump’s claims of being anti-war are complete bluster. he tore up the intermediate nuke treaty, he tore up the iran deal, he droned more people than obama, and he stopped reporting civilian casualties from drone strikes. yemen, somalia, iraq, and syria experienced no lightening in US imperialism under trump. he moved the USamerican embassy to jerusalem. afghanistan got several years of no change before a half-assed negotiated withdrawal. what trump understands is that the people are tired of war, or at least of this war on terror. they are especially tired of the wars where US soldiers are really officially present, which was just Afghanistan. USamerica is now postured with a dozen little tripwire forces around the world to stir things up, with no major casualty causing commitments. in theory, that’s all so we can better transition towards the pacific. that aligns with a faction of the intelligence and state apparati. biden’s emphasis on nato and israel are commitments unique to him, and people interested in one or the other have aligned themselves with him.

to your fifth point, during obama’ second term, 15.8 gigabarrels of oil reserves began extracting in the US in megaprojects (producing >20k barrels/ day). that’s using the best probable estimates of some of the reserves. this was broadly seen as restarting american oil production. under trump’s term, 440 gigabarrels of reserves began extracting in megaprojects. the amount of crude oil USamerica extracted tripled from 2010-2020. the north dakotan and texan shale fields over bet on oil prices, started overproducing, and accidentally brought the price of oil down. trump happened to be president. in terms of signing off permits for exploiting public land and gutting the EPA, the trend line of evermore oil and gas in the US increased just as stably under trump as obama.

to your sixth point, you claim trump is an incompetent imperialist for trying to force NATO to spend more on the military, but biden is a genius imperialist for aiding the brain drain of europe and the dismantling of its infrastructure. are these not dual processes? increasingly bellicose rhetoric makes europe ratchet up spending, which forces cuts on social services. declining standards of living and the increasing risk of having to make or wield weapons leads to the people who can afford to leave leaving.

i’ll readily agree that trump seems to be less bloodthirsty about russians and eastern europeans. but doesn’t he more than make up for that with how heinous his rhetoric and actions are towards latin americans? in terms of preserving imperial hegemony, it’d be smartest to cut bait on the failed ukrainian experiment. depending on whether you think we need a war with china or not, the next step people within the state and intelligence agencies could want is double checking that the US grip is secure under the incredibly chauvinist monroe doctrine. i do not think trump is the dark horse anti-imperialist-by-way-of-incompetence some claim.

Gonna come back to this when my brain isn't melting out of my ears.

Interesting that the major backers of Trump seem to be Silicon Valley. How does that figure into your analysis?

How will kamala factor in? I feel like she might have a chance

Do you seriously believe that the US is afraid of Russia? Yes, Russia played a key role in supplying energy and raw materials to the EU, but it is the EU-Russia integration that the US is afraid of.

A Eurasian economic integration would make Europe completely independent from the US, an economic powerhouse of its own, and that’s the US worst nightmare. Because what if EU-Russia throw their weight behind China? Do you seriously think the US would stand even the slightest amount of chance when it finally comes to the ultimate clash with China, backed by Europe and Russia?

That’s why the US had to sever Europe-Russia integration immediately. Time is against them. The longer they wait, the less chance of them stopping the unstoppable EU-Russia-China integration train. That’s why Ukraine had to happen.

The sanctions against Russia failed, yes, but the main point is that Europe is now cut off from Russia. European capital is being devoured by the US capital, which will then fuel its imperialistic ambitions against China.