CHICAGO—The Trump administration continues to escalate regional tensions with threats of more tariffs and retaliation against Canada and Mexico. New import taxes have been announced on steel and aluminum while potential levies also loom for chips and pharmaceuticals. The moves by the White House have strained economic relations and risk starting the biggest trade war since the 1930s.
It was under these circumstances that the Communist Party USA Labor Commission held a special meeting on Feb. 20 bringing together workers from the CPUSA, the Partido Popular Socialista de México, and the Communist Party of Canada to analyze the tariff situation, what it means for labor, and how to build international working-class solidarity.
The panelists underscored the interconnected struggles of workers across North America for fair wages, sovereignty, and peace, as the most reactionary forces of capital grow more desperate and escalate economic warfare.
The fate of workers in all three countries are dependent on one another, it was stressed, as the economies are so intertwined. For instance, in the automotive industry, a single product or its parts may cross borders multiple times before completion.
Elizabeth Rowley, leader of the Communist Party of Canada, emphasized the importance of cross-border solidarity in resisting Trump’s trade war. She noted that Canadian workers have already faced disastrous consequences from U.S. trade policy and said Trump’s tariffs “will lead to massive layoffs and plant closures, bankruptcies, widespread and permanent unemployment, and poverty.”
Furthermore, “our economies are so integrated that the impact of the tariffs will trigger a deep recession that will also affect U.S. industries, jobs, and workers,” she explained.
Rowley emphasized “the role of the labor and progressive movements to defeat annexation and war,” saying it is “crucial in the fight for Canadian independence and the people’s sovereignty.”
C.J. Atkins, Managing Editor of People’s World, said, “Although Trump’s tariff offensive and annexation threats are intended to project a powerful and confident U.S. capitalism, the reality is they are an attempt by one section of the ruling class to escape the prolonged capitalist crisis…a crisis which they blame on another section of the class.”
Cuauhtémoc Amezcua Dromundo, a member of the National Directorate and former General Secretary of the Partido Popular Socialista de México, provided a historical perspective on how “free trade” policies have deepened Mexico’s economic subordination to U.S. monopolies.
Tariffs were once a necessary tool for developing countries, as in Mexico from 1917 to 1982, to protect their industries and achieve independence from imperialism. “Now, Trump strangely brandishes them as a weapon of harassment and economic war against the rest of the world, although for himself it would be a double-edged sword,” he said.
Trade wars are never a one-sided affair. Trump, as leader of the most powerful capitalist economy, can impose tariffs and set up trade barriers, but U.S. companies and consumers are not immune. There will be less access to foreign resources, markets, and suppliers, resulting in rising prices and potential product shortages at home.
“There is a political risk for Trump…he’s gambling that other countries will blink first before the impacts of his trade wars really begin to hit his own supporters at home,” Atkins said. “There’s a reason why it’s often been said there are no long-term winners in trade wars.”
Although the tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports have been postponed until March, ostensibly to address “drug smuggling and illegal immigration,” Trump still says he is ready to reimplement them, and his administration also announced plans to raise U.S. tariffs to match other countries’ import tax rates.
Justified as a strategy to address supposed “trade imbalances,” the tariffs placed by the U.S.—and the reciprocal ones levied on its exports—risk igniting a wider economic war with both traditional trading partners and countries that U.S. corporations have designated as rivals. The additional 10% tariffs on Chinese products, already on the tariff list since the first Trump administration, are still in effect.
Ultimately, as economists of various ideological leanings have emphasized, the new tariffs will be paid for by workers and consumers.
Importers, who are in the business of making money and not compelled to lower their profit margin unless competition forces them to, will generally—as much as they’re able—pass along their increased costs to consumers by charging higher prices.
They will not “combat inflation” or bring down the cost of living for working families, as Trump has claimed. In fact, inflation data released last week shows that consumer costs have risen steadily over the course of Trump’s first month in office, putting future interest rate cuts in peril.
“Thousands of workers in auto and steel, and many other industries and workplaces are facing unemployment with Trump’s tariffs and threats,” Rowley said. Yet the same parties in Canada that supported free trade policies are now promising to apply equivalent tariffs on U.S. goods, while “rushing to spend $1 billion on needless additional border security that will be paid for from cuts to socially necessary spending.”
So-called “free trade” is also a strategy employed by capitalists to further dominate the working class. Whether through Trump’s protectionist policies or under neoliberal “free trade,” the end goal for capitalism remains consistent: to enhance profits for a few while exploiting the many.
“The mantra of free trade has always been that it promotes competition, and through that competition, the productive forces advance,” Atkins said. “The nations, companies, and workers who prove themselves insufficient are shaken out […] Once the capitalist system as a whole descends into crisis, however, such principles often go out the window—at least for the capitalists who are losing out in the competition.”
Amezcua highlighted the devastating impact of neoliberal “free trade” policies on the Mexican working class, including by Mexico’s incorporation into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1986 and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. These agreements deepened Mexico’s economic subordination to U.S. monopolies, leading to the collapse of domestic industries, the privatization of state enterprises, and a surge in migration to the U.S.
“Our still insufficient industry almost disappeared due to the bankruptcy of most companies in the industrial sector, which, without tariff protection, could not compete with the large-volume production capacity of American companies,” he said. State companies in Mexico, which were the core pillar enabling national development and ensuring Mexican independence and social progress, he said, were privatized and handed over mainly to foreign capital.
“Our sovereignty is under attack—not by armies, but by economic policies designed to keep us dependent,” he said.
In the U.S. and Canada, the “free trade” agreements also proved to be disastrous for the working class. “In the U.S., expenditures on social welfare declined further, and the number of good-paying, full-time union jobs continued to erode—often due to outsourcing and deindustrialization as corporations sought lower production costs elsewhere in the world,” Atkins said.
This race to the bottom suppressed wages and weakened unions, as workers faced increased pressure to accept lower pay and poorer conditions to compete with more heavily exploited labor abroad. Rural communities were also hit hard, as subsidized U.S. agricultural exports flooded Mexican markets, undermining small farmers there and exacerbating economic inequality.
“The working class increasingly came to rely on debt to maintain living standards, with more people running up their credit cards and taking out second and third mortgages on their homes,” Atkins said.
In Canada, they accelerated the privatization of public services and weakened labor protections, particularly in sectors like manufacturing and resource extraction, Rowley said. Canadian workers faced job losses as companies relocated to the U.S. or Mexico to exploit cheaper labor and weaker regulations. Almost all basic steel in Canada is already owned by U.S. monopoly capital.
The agreements further entrenched U.S. monopoly capital’s power over the region, allowing corporations to challenge labor and environmental laws through investor-state dispute mechanisms, further eroding workers’ rights and national sovereignty.
Trump’s belligerent rhetoric, including his reference to Canada as the “51st state,” reveals a broader agenda: the dismantling of national sovereignty and the consolidation of power for U.S. imperialism.
“Partitioning the world as Lenin described in the days of classical imperialism, they believe, is the only way to truly ensure the dominance of U.S. monopoly,” Atkins said, referring to the section of the capitalist class backing Trump. “They recognize their position is under threat as China and lesser rivals like Russia and other BRICS nations rise.”
Carving up the globe into trade blocs in this fashion, however, risks sparking even more extreme disputes over trade. Marxists have long warned that there is always the danger that such economic warfare could lead to actual warfare.
The First World War is the prime example—“a war for the division of the world, for the partition and repartition of colonies and spheres of influence of finance capital,” as Lenin put it.
The meeting concluded with questions from trade union activists from across the continent and a call to action: Workers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico must stand together against the trade war and the entire capitalist system that fuels it.
“We cannot let trade agreements be dictated by those who exploit us. Workers must take control of our future,” Amezcua said.
Rowley agreed. “[Our governments] must be compelled by mass labor and popular action to stand with the working people, and condemn, oppose, and expose the continental corporate forces that Trump is speaking and acting for.”
“All these things we’ve been talking about, trade wars, tariffs, and free trade agreements—it’s about jobs, it’s about wages, it’s about union rights, but it’s also about peace,” Atkins concluded. “We are also fighting to protect peace and protect workers—their jobs, their wages, and perhaps even their lives.”
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