Nick Beams is a major figure in contemporary Marxism in Australia. A founding member of the Socialist Labour League in Australia (now the Socialist Equality Party – SEP), which he led for three decades, he is internationally recognized as a theorist of Marxist political economy. Since the 1990s, he has also been a key contributor to the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), where he regularly publishes analyses on financial crises, globalization, and imperialist tensions.
During the WSWS International May Day 2025 rally, Nick Beams delivered a major speech, which we are publishing here, fully translated into French by Hadrien Bortot. In it, he analyzes the historical implications of the trade war initiated by Donald Trump, which he views as a symptom of the collapse of global capitalism.
" On this May 1st, the attention of the international working class must turn to the historical implications of the trade war.
On April 2, 2025, supposedly "Liberation Day," U.S. President Trump launched his economic war against the rest of the world. Tariffs against China, the main target, were raised to 145%. This amounts to an economic blockade, ending all trade between the world's first and second largest economies.
This is essentially an act of war. “Reciprocal tariffs,” reaching nearly 50%, were imposed on various countries. Southeast Asian nations, which have close economic ties with China, were a particular target. A 10% tariff was imposed on other countries.
There is now a 90-day pause on these “reciprocal tariffs,” ostensibly to allow for negotiations. The international commercial order established after the Second World War, founded on the lowering of tariffs and other restrictions, has been overturned.Nothing like Trump’s tariff measures has ever been adopted before.
They far exceed even the Smoot-Hawley tariffs imposed by the United States in the 1930s.These tariffs, based on virulent nationalism, were economic folly. They led to economic depression, social devastation, and the Second World War.
The tariffs imposed today by Trump, which push economic absurdity to new heights, entail an even greater risk of global conflagration. Today, every product, from the simplest to the most advanced, is the result of a complex international division of labour.No product is “made in America” or, for that matter, in any other country.
Thus, an SUV stamped “American” can comprise up to 1,500 internationally manufactured parts and components.Every final product sold anywhere in the world emerges from a global value chain.
But Trump’s tariff policy, however insane, has a logic. Its objective is to “reshape” essential American industries, with a view to preparing the national economy for war.In his executive order on “reciprocal tariffs,” Trump declared that the American trade deficit had “hollowed out” the American industrial base and “made our nation dependent on other countries to meet our primary security needs.”
In a very real sense, a global military war led by the United States is already underway – against Russia in Ukraine, through the authorisation of the Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and the continuous threats against Iran.However, China constitutes the central target as the United States seeks to maintain its position of global hegemony.
The spectacular growth of China – from a backward country 40 years ago to the world’s second largest economy today – poses an existential threat to American dominance. All factions of the American political and military establishment agree that it must be crushed. While economic measures cannot achieve this, war increasingly appears as the only viable option.
Trump’s tariff war and the resulting market turbulence have revealed a long-standing crisis in the finances of the American imperialist state. Its financial structure is riddled with debt and parasitism. This translates into a mountain of public debt, accumulated notably by the continuous bailout of corporations and banks, as well as by the increase in military spending.
The debt now amounts to $36 trillion and continues to rise, with an annual interest bill of $1 trillion. Any other country in this situation would have been declared bankrupt. But the United States has continued due to the supremacy of the dollar.
Today, this supremacy is being challenged. During previous financial turbulences, investors would turn to American financial assets as safe havens. Today, the dollar is falling, and the universal call on financial markets is: “Sell America!”
This is a crisis of the entire global capitalist system. This crisis is not Trump’s creation. Trump is merely the personification of the agony of capitalism..
Workers have no interest in consolidating their own national capitalist class. They will impose on the working class the costs necessary to offset the impact of the tariffs.
The interests of workers are to unite with their class brothers and sisters in China and across the world. The task awaiting the working class, more urgent than ever, is to end capitalism in the struggle for the only viable programme, that of world socialist revolution. Thank you.
Image d’illustration : « May Day – Workers of the World Unite May Day March in Melbourne. Workers of the World Unite », photographie du 6 mai 2012 par Johan Fantenberg (CC BY-SA 2.0)
English (UK) 
Français