by Partager cet article Let it be said at once: Trump’s victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and territorial inequality in the United States over several decades and the incapacity of successive governments to deal with these. Both the Clinton and the Obama, administrations frequently only went along with the move to liberalisation and sacralisation of the market launched under Reagan, then Bush, father and son; at times they even exacerbated them. The financial and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. The suspicion of proximity with finance and the inability of the Democrats’ politico-media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote sealed the deal. Hillary won the popular vote by a whisker, but the participation of the youngest and the lowest income groups was too low to enable key States to be won. The tragedy is that Trump’s programme will only strengthen the tendency to inequality. He intends to abolish the health insurance laboriously granted to low-paid workers under Obama and to set the country on a headlong course into fiscal dumping, with a reduction from 35% to 15% in the rate of federal tax on corporation profits, whereas to date the United States had resisted this perpetual race against time which came from Europe.
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Partager cet article
Let it be said at once: Trump’s victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and territorial inequality in the United States over several decades and the incapacity of successive governments to deal with these. Both the Clinton and the Obama, administrations frequently only went along with the move to liberalisation and sacralisation of the market launched under Reagan, then Bush, father and son; at times they even exacerbated them. The financial and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. The suspicion of proximity with finance and the inability of the Democrats’ politico-media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote sealed the deal. Hillary won the popular vote by a whisker, but the participation of the youngest and the lowest income groups was too low to enable key States to be won.
The tragedy is that Trump’s programme will only strengthen the tendency to inequality. He intends to abolish the health insurance laboriously granted to low-paid workers under Obama and to set the country on a headlong course into fiscal dumping, with a reduction from 35% to 15% in the rate of federal tax on corporation profits, whereas to date the United States had resisted this perpetual race against time which came from Europe. In addition, the increasing ethnicisation in politics in America does not bode well for the future if new compromises are not found. Here is a country where structurally 60% of the white majority votes for one party while over 70% of the minorities vote for the other and where the majority is on the verge of losing its numerical superiority (70% of the votes cast in 2016, as compared with 80% in 2000 and 50% forecast in 2040).
The main lesson for Europe and the world is clear: as a matter of urgency, globalisation must be fundamentally re-oriented. The main challenges of our times are the rise in inequalities and global warming. We must therefore implement international treaties enabling us to respond to these challenges and to promote a model for fair and sustainable development. Agreements of a new type can, if necessary, include measures aimed at facilitating exchanges in goods and services. But the question of liberalising trade should no longer be the main focus. Trade must once again become what it should never have ceased to be: a means in the service of higher ends. In concrete terms, there must be an end to the signature of international agreements reducing customs duties and other commercial barriers without inclusion in the same treaty, and as from the outset, of quantified and binding measures to combat fiscal and climate dumping. For example, there could be common minimum rates of corporation tax and targets for carbon emissions which can be verified and sanctioned. It is no longer possible to negotiate trade treaties for free trade with nothing in exchange.
From this point of view, the CETA is a treaty which belongs to another age and should be rejected. It is a strictly commercial treaty and contains absolutely no binding measures concerning fiscal or climate issues. On the other hand, it does contain a considerable reference to the ‘protection of investors’ enabling multinationals to sue States under private arbitration courts, bypassing the public tribunals available to one and all. The legal supervision proposed is clearly inadequate, in particular concerning the key question of the remuneration of the arbitrators and will lead to all sorts of abuses. At the very time when American legal imperialism is gaining in strength and imposing its rules and its dues on our companies, this decline in public justice is an aberration. The priority, on the contrary, should be the construction of strong public authorities, with the creation of a European prosecutor and justice system capable of enforcing their decisions.
What sense is there in signing under the Paris Accords a purely theoretical aim of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees (which would, for example, require the oil found in the tar sands in Alberta to be left in the ground, whereas Canada has just started mining there again) then, a few months later, to sign a binding commercial treaty without a single mention of this question? A balanced treaty between Canada and Europe, aimed at promoting a partnership for fair and sustainable development, should begin by specifying the emission targets of each signatory and the practical commitments to achieve these.
In matters of fiscal dumping and minimum rates of taxation on corporation profits, this would obviously mean a complete change in paradigm for Europe which was constructed as a free trade area with no common fiscal policy. This change is however essential. What sense is there in agreeing on a common fiscal policy (which is the one area in which Europe has achieved a little bit of progress for the moment) if each country can then fix a near-zero rate and attract all the major company headquarters? It is time to change the political discourse on globalisation: trade is a good thing, but fair and sustainable development also demands public services, infrastructures, health and education systems. In turn, these themselves demand fair taxation systems, failing which Trumpism will prevail.