On-Again Off-Again Canada U.S. Mexico
Trade
Agreement
Aggressive Trade Agenda of the U.S. Shakes Existing Arrangements
- K.C. Adams -
The conflicts surrounding the Canada U.S. Mexico Trade
Agreement (CUSMA) reflect the inter-imperialist collusion and
contention of competing sections of the global financial
oligarchy. This collusion and contention posits the very grave
danger of an inter-imperialist world war involving the militaries
of the big powers. Canadians face the social responsibility to
denounce and isolate the pro-war fanatics of the cartel parties
in power in the federal Parliament and make Canada a zone for
peace.
 Fortress North America
under the dictate of U.S. imperialism appears to be having trouble
getting its act together. The contradictions within the ruling elite
arising from competing private interests keep bubbling to the surface,
causing a civil war. Meanwhile the working people are increasingly
coming forward to lay the claims on society which they must and speak
in their own name.
Soon after his election, President Trump announced the
three
countries of North America would have to negotiate a new NAFTA or
the U.S. would unilaterally withdraw from it. Those negotiations
became a daily melodrama filled with competing political
personalities promoting themselves and their careers, which only
recently produced a tentative agreement.
Before the CUSMA could be presented to the respective
legislatures for ratification, the U.S. executive authority
derailed it by imposing tariffs on Canadian and Mexican steel and
aluminum citing reasons of "national security." The U.S. removed
those duties on May 17, without explaining how the threat to U.S.
national security had been resolved but with a proviso that they
could return at a moment's notice.
But once again, before the process of ratification of
CUSMA
even began, President Trump disrupted the process by threatening
tariffs on all Mexican exports to the U.S. unless the Mexican
authorities stopped migrants from approaching and crossing into
the United States.
Then, on June 7, President Trump announced via Twitter
that an agreement had been reached with Mexico to reduce the flow of
migrants to the southwestern U.S. border and therefore the tariffs
scheduled to be imposed on June 10 had been indefinitely suspended.
U.S. Imperialist Agreements Not Worth the Paper They
Are
Printed On
It would seem that broad trade agreements are quickly
becoming passé, as big players of the financial
oligarchy,
especially the U.S. imperialists, want flexibility to act outside
any general arrangement. How else to explain the sudden use of
national security as an excuse for the U.S. to impose steel and
aluminum tariffs on its supposed partners within North America to
derail CUSMA, much less an issue involving immigration.
 All international arrangements
-- including the United Nations,
NATO, the World Trade Organization, European Union and
International Court -- are under attack from their own powerful
members, as being too restrictive of what are called national
interests. Those national interests represent in fact the private
interests of competing financial oligarchs who have global reach
and power.
For example, the requirement of NATO members to purchase
mainly U.S. weaponry is being challenged by NATO member Turkey
with its purchase of a Russian missile defence system, the S-400.
More importantly the restrictions within NATO are being
challenged by members within old Europe. They have formed their
own European military alliance called the Permanent Structured
Cooperation (PESCO) outside NATO and without Britain. The new
European military structure has published what U.S. officials
call "restrictive measures," which amount to rules declaring that
most weapons for PESCO members must be produced and purchased
within Europe. This is a direct challenge to U.S. dominance in
global weapons sales and has predictably infuriated the U.S.
imperialist ruling elite.[1]
CUSMA Is but One Drama of Imperialist Collusion and
Contention Amongst Many Worldwide
The infighting and histrionics regarding CUSMA reflect
the competition amongst members of the financial oligarchy and their
specific global companies seeking to dominate their sectors not only
within North America but in Europe and beyond. For the Trudeau
government and its Foreign Minister and media to repeat over and over
that its one success story is to have defended Canada's interests is
disinformation. It is all about the striving for hegemony by powerful
narrow private interests. The global contention in the technology
sector is a case in point. It has become particularly intense in the
technology sector as U.S.-based dominance is being challenged. Disputes
are also underway in agriculture, vehicle production, oil and natural
gas, steel, aluminum, commercial airplanes and armaments.
These conflicts between specific U.S.-led companies with
competitors centred in China, Russia and Europe are significant,
involving a wide range of competing private interests throughout
the world. These inter-monopoly conflicts also involve the
striving of the imperialist powers to control not only specific
economic sectors but entire regions. The U.S. imperialists, with
their hundreds of military bases and naval armadas throughout the
world, are determined to preserve their dominance throughout the
Americas and Caribbean, Europe, Asia and Africa and push back
against the growing influence of developing global powers such as
China, Russia and others.
The U.S. imperialists have set aflame West Asia and
North
Africa in regime change, war, and destruction of those powers it
cannot control. Elsewhere the U.S. imperialists have put the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea, Cuba and Venezuela under a genocidal
blockade. They have
declared that Latin America remains their exclusive region of
influence following the tradition of the nineteenth century
imperialist Monroe Doctrine, with sovereign nations being treated as
having no right to chart their own course of development.
U.S. Oligarchs Launch Attack on Technology Competitor
Huawei
The U.S., with the apparent conciliation of Canadian
authorities, has banned the Chinese-led technology company Huawei
and its products from the U.S. and from any cooperation with
U.S. companies and threatens all those who continue to do business with
Huawei with severe penalties. This has met resistance throughout the
world as
Huawei products and advanced technology are already widely used
in Europe and elsewhere, including in Britain and Canada. In the
context of the global campaign against the rising competitor
Huawei, the U.S. ordered Canada to arrest Huawei executive Meng
Wanzhou while she was transiting the Vancouver airport heading
for Mexico. She remains detained under the threat of extradition
to the U.S. for allegedly violating the U.S. trade embargo
against Iran.
How quickly these attacks and events can spill over into
other sectors is shown by trade statistics between the U.S. and China.
The decline of Chinese imports of U.S. agricultural products has been
precipitous, falling from an annual amount of $25.7 billion in 2014 to
$21.8 billion in 2017, and, since U.S. imperialism unleashed its most
sustained attacks on competitor Huawei and other Chinese-centred
interests, down to a forecast of just $6.5 billion for 2019. As a
consequence of Canada being an active accomplice of the U.S.
imperialists in this attack on a global competitor, Canadian companies
have also seen a decline in exports to China of mainly agricultural
products, and problems in other joint ventures.
U.S. Imperialism Breaks the 2015 Joint
Comprehensive
Plan of Action with Iran
 In 2018, the
U.S. unilaterally broke the 2015 international nuclear
arrangement with Iran. The U.S. demands all others follow suit
and not have any economic or other relations with Iran. Economic
entities violating the U.S. boycott of Iran are forbidden from
entering the U.S. market or having any dealings with companies
connected with the United States on penalty of punishment under
U.S. law, similar to the persecution of Huawei executive Meng
Wanzhou. The re-imposition of a U.S. boycott of Iran after the dispute
had been resolved has unleashed significant conflicts globally.
U.S. Attacks Competing Russian Natural Gas
The U.S. boycott of Iranian oil and gas has been
extended to a
campaign against Russian gas exported to Europe. The U.S. wants
to derail the new Russia/Europe joint venture, the Nord Stream 2
twin pipeline, to supply Russian natural gas directly to the EU
market through the Baltic Sea, thus evading the territory of
Ukraine.
U.S. oil oligarchs connected with fracking in the U.S.
are now
exporting fracked gas as liquefied natural gas (LNG) worldwide and want
exclusive rights
in Europe without competition from cheaper non-LNG piped Russian
gas. They call U.S. LNG "freedom gas" and insist all must buy it
instead of "repressive gas" from Russia and Iran.
CUSMA Within the Global Contention and Collusion of the
U.S.-Dominated Imperialist System of States
The fashioning of a new NAFTA and ratification of its
replacement,
called CUSMA, is unfolding within the intensifying contention and
collusion of competing sections of the global financial
oligarchy. The U.S. oligarchs in their striving for world
hegemony have come up against the uneven development of the
productive forces under imperialism. New forces in the global
economy, such as China, India and Indonesia, and old players that
have regained their strength, such as Russia and others in Europe
are demanding a position and are increasingly refusing to buckle
under to the once unchallenged U.S. financial oligarchy and its
mercenary and state military power.
 Whether CUSMA is ratified
or not holds less importance for the
U.S. imperialists in this period when international agreements
are routinely ignored according to the demands of particular
private interests. The threat of ever larger wars is increasing
as contention and its companion collusion intensify amongst
powerful sectors of the international financial oligarchy as they,
and the respective states and militaries they control, battle for
positions that favour them.
The modern world of socialized productive forces and
global
trade demands cooperation amongst all humanity and their
sovereign countries. New arrangements must be created based on
mutual benefit, development and cooperation amongst all sovereign
nations without interfering in the right of any nation to build its
future according to its own thought material and social consciousness.
The social responsibility of Canadians is to extricate
the
country from the dominance and control of U.S. imperialism and
its interference and aggression against the world's peoples as it
strives to eliminate all competing forces in its campaign to
retain control of the world. Central within this social
responsibility in a world fraught with the increasing danger of a
world war is to make Canada a zone for peace, isolate the pro-war
fanatics of the cartel parties in Parliament, and build new
social, economic and political institutions in conformity with
the modern conditions that guarantee the well-being, security and
rights of all.
Note
1. The possibility for
Member States of Europe to engage in PESCO -- on a voluntary
basis -- was introduced by article 42(6) of the Lisbon Treaty on
European Union in December 2017, which provides that those Member
States whose military capabilities fulfil higher criteria, and
which have made more binding commitments to one another in this
area, shall establish a permanent structured cooperation within
the EU framework. (From PESCO Website:
https://pesco.europa.eu/)
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number 22 - June 15, 2019
Article Link:
On-Again Off-Again Canada U.S. Mexico
Trade
Agreement: Aggressive Trade Agenda of the U.S. Shakes Existing Arrangements - K.C. Adams
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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