As we look on and brace ourselves for the repercussions that will result from rising tariffs, trade wars, and “negotiations” between imperialist powers, it’s easy to get lost in economic jargon and political theater. But, behind all the talk from U.S. president Donald J. Trump of “protecting domestic industries” and “leveling the playing field,” lies the deepening crisis of a world economy built on colonial violence and the parasitic exploitation of African labor and resources.
Let’s break it down.
What are tariffs?
Tariffs are taxes that a government places on imported goods. If the U.S. places a 145 percent tariff on imports from China, it means companies importing goods from China have to pay 145 percent more just to bring it in. The idea is to make foreign goods more expensive, supposedly encouraging people and companies to buy from domestic producers.
However, in reality, tariffs often raise prices for consumers and workers, spark retaliation from other countries and can trigger broader economic instability.
This is the essence of a trade war. When countries keep slapping tariffs on each other’s goods, it disrupts global supply in the pursuit of nationalist economic interests.
The first trade war was the trade in African bodies
Centuries before today’s tariff battles, European powers were already fighting bloody economic wars over African bodies. These were the first real “trade wars”—conflicts over who would dominate the capture, shipment and sale of African people.
Portugal, Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands waged naval battles, brokered treaties and destabilized African societies in order to secure control over human cargo. These wars were not about freedom or diplomacy, they were about profits.
The rise of capitalism itself, as Chairman Omali Yeshitela has said, “was born not as an extension of feudalism, but as a parasitic system that fed on the enslavement of African people and the theft of our resources.”
Colonial economic arrangements most certainly incorporate plunder and deliberate sabotage.
Tariff wars follow the same colonial logic that forced Haiti to pay France over $21 billion in today’s dollars for freeing itself from colonial slavery, using unequal trade arrangements and predatory loans from French and U.S. banks. It was a penalty to punish resistance and maintain dominance.
The uneasy equilibrium: the U.S. in economic crisis
What we are seeing now with the current tariff war—whether it’s between the U.S. and China or with the rest of the world—is a symptom of what Chairman Omali Yeshitela calls the “uneasy equilibrium.” This is a term used to describe the balance between the oppressor and the oppressed that uphold the entire colonial economy.
That balance is now crumbling.
The U.S. economy is in a deep crisis. Inflation is high, wages are stagnant and debt, currently at $36.2 trillion, is exploding. The power it once exerted through cheap credit, military intimidation, and control over international trade is waning. The ruling class has turned to tariffs and trade barriers as short-term strategies to rescue their own profits, even as they undermine the very system they built.
But let’s be clear: there is no “fair trade” in a system built on colonial theft. African countries don’t get to compete on equal footing when their economies are still shackled by IMF loans, capitalist corporations and neocolonialism.
W.O. Maloba, professor of history at the University of Delaware, notes that the “existence of these economic networks of exploitation and domination invalidates any claim toward the ‘shared benefits of their exchanges,’ or even the ‘mutuality of their interest.’”
African labor still subsidizes the colonial mode of production
Today, cobalt for smartphones, cocoa for chocolate and rutile for steel are extracted through African labor at prices that don’t reflect their true value. Today’s capitalist economy still runs on the same old theft originating from the attack on Africa. And when the global economy stumbles, it is colonized people who suffer first and worst.
As trade wars escalate and global supply chains rupture, the imperialist countries retreat into protectionism while continuing to extract wealth from African and oppressed peoples. Tariffs are just another weapon of economic warfare, but the frontline hasn’t changed. It’s still in the Congo, in Haiti, in Ghana, in African communities in the U.S., where the cost of this crisis is passed on to those already struggling under the weight of colonial domination.
What does this mean for us?
African Internationalism teaches us that the key contradiction in the world is the oppression of Africa and African people. Every so-called “economic crisis” is really a crisis of imperialism fighting to maintain dominance as the oppressed begin to rise.
African people are the basis of the global economy, and we must organize to reclaim control over our own labor and the means of production.
As Chairman Omali Yeshitela says, “We are not struggling for a bigger piece of the pie; we are struggling to own the bakery.”
Tariff wars reflect desperation
Tariff wars are desperate maneuvers by a dying imperialism built on the blood and backs of African people. But African people are not a defeated people. We are organizing through the Uhuru Movement to build liberated territory and economic self-determination.
Turn every trade war into a people’s war for liberation!
Join the Fight for African Self-Determination!
APSPUhuru.org/join
