[Music] you're now watching Around the Horn the weekly internationalist news update with author and historian Gerald Horn Dr Horn as we go around the horn first I want to ask you about the US trade war against China According to an article published in The Atlantic on Monday April 14th 2025 entitled "Trump's trade war handed China a strategic advantage," the president signaled that the US doesn't care about its allies and trading partners including Taiwan And also on Monday April 14th 2025 interesting engineering.com published an article with the headline "China could sink entire US carrier fleet in 20 minutes," Pentagon chief warns Hegs said that the US loses to China in every war game run by the Pentagon Dr Horn what is your analysis of the US trade war against China and these two articles published this past Monday well first of all welcome to our audience on this Wednesday April 16 2025 Our theme for this evening will be I'm afraid to say dispiriting to some uplifting to others and profound In any case the dual theme is this poly crisis faced by US imperialism as reflected in those two articles just flashed on the screen Those articles reflect a wider trend which is the rise of the people's republic of China and the decline of US imperialism and this is coming as a shock to many in the United States who were convinced after December 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union that that meant the collapse of communist parties and the collapse of the struggle for socialism Obviously uh that was a misinterpretation Likewise the rise of China signals that the era of European domination and domination by Euro descendants in the Americas in particular is coming to a shuddering close And in some ways this represents the culmination of about a thousand-year struggle going back to the man we refer to as Gangghask Khan who with his thundering herd stormed out of Mongolia and reached the gates of Hungary And of course you can still see the earmarks if not more of that particular interaction on the faces of many Hungarians today The second aspect of the poly crisis is really much more dispiriting and distressing at least for those who live in the United States and that is to say that we are in the foothills of fascism We'll talk about that more directly and pointedly subsequently but suffice it to say for now that the signal raised by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a dissenting opinion suggesting that not only can undocumented workers be shipped to a hellhole of a prison in El Salvador but Mr Trump himself confirmed this past week that what he called quote homegrowns unquote meaning US citizens can be treated similarly If that is not a signal for fascism I'm not sure what is But in any case with regard to this trade war which has ignited and accelerated this poly crisis we saw another aspect of this reflected in a rather illuminating article appearing in foreign affairs That's the journal of the Elite Council on Foreign Relations on the Upper East Side of Manhattan where the author suggested that China has escalatory dominance with regard to a trade war If that phrase sounds familiar it should because the former US President Barack Obama used that same phrase escalatory dominance in explaining why he did not want to go allin with regard to confronting Russia in Ukraine Of course his successor Joseph R Biden uh deepixed that advice and I think by escalatory dominance we see that unfolding as we speak That is to say that China has just turned thumbs down on receiving more Boeing airplanes Boeing as you know is in a kind of death spiral because of the crashes of his various planes and the resulting lawsuits particularly the devastating uh crash that took place in East Africa a few years ago And in any case uh China is on the process of developing its own jumbo jets I'm speaking of Comarmac and it can in the interim buy jumbo jets from Airbus of Europe principally France and that will exacerbate pre-existing tensions between the European Union and the United States of America China's also turned thumbs down on receiving more Hollywood films Obviously they can get films from France from Spain from Nigeria which produces more films than Hollywood itself and not to mention its own domestic market which is growing by leaps and bounds With regard to food stuffs agricultural products they've already begun to substitute the Brazilian soy beans for US soybeans and Argentine beef for US beef And in any case uh the fact is that this uh crisis this poly crisis as I call it is something that's not going away anytime soon Uh we see the roots of it and we've talked about it many times before And let's reiterate that point which is that it was inaugurated 50 years ago with the Kissinger Nixon overtures to China on an anti-siet basis reference here the overdetermination of Moscow which has led or accelerated this poly crisis that led to massive foreign direct investment in China which has now created this juggernaut We should also mention something else that uh even the mainstream press has been touting which is that when Mr Trump did his U-turn a few days ago and called for a pause in this so-called trade war and tariff war It was motivated in no small measure by developments in the bond market That is to say the United States basically sells pieces of paper for money IUS and that's how they fund everything from the Pentagon to the post office But this market in treasury bills as they're called has repercussions and ramifications for the cost of housing mortgages for the cost the interest paid on car loans And what was happening is that the interest rates were reaching ever higher And that's what Mr Trump called being yippy That is to say what he should have said is that subsequent reports have suggested that the earthwall ally that is Japan and their representatives are in Washington as we speak trying to negotiate with the Trump team began to dump Treasury bills They're the largest purchaser as we know of Treasury bills uh it is not suggested thus far that China was dumping treasury bills but that's uh ace in the whole that they can retain as this crisis deepens The problem is as we will talk about momentarily when we get to being in the footholds foothills of fascism is that uh unlike the Cold War I with the Soviet Union where the Soviets were supporting national liberation movements all over planet Earth and that put pressure on the United States to retreat from the more egregious aspects of Jim Crow Uh with Cold War II we see an allout attack on DEI diversity equity and inclusion We have some who we have thought were our friends such as Senator Bernie Sanders and the publishers of estimable journals like The Nation and Jacoban who have joined the bandwagon against DEI because they say that it complicates the class question However uh this turning on DEI will be a sad legacy of Cold War 2 and in fact will only exacerbate the present crisis that is reflected in our being in the foothills of fascism horn As we go around the horn we also want to ask you a related question about Chinese President Xi Jinping's trip to Southeast Asia This past Monday April 14th 2025 President Xi began his tour with a visit to Vietnam and he will also travel to Malaysia and Cambodia It is anticipated that China hopes to use this high-profile tour in an effort to strengthen its ties with neighboring countries amid US's escalating trade war Dr Juan how important do you think President Xi's tour is of Southeast Asia do you think China can contrast itself from Washington and if so how well this trip particularly to Vietnam was of utmost significance Recall that it was in the late 1970s after the United States was booted out of Vietnam ignaminiously with the conclusion April 1975 of the genocidal conflict in that Southeast Asian nation And a few years later we witnessed the spectacle of China actually attacking Vietnam militarily This helped to convince US imperialism that China was a reliable ally Recall that shortly thereafter or actually during that entire period the paramount Chinese leader Dung Shaoping actually visited a number of US citizens the hawkish national security adviser and President Jimmy Carter and that uh opened the floodgates allowing US manufacturing plants to shift across the Pacific to China which is now as noted created this juggernaut And so bookending that period is the current trip or the recent trip of President Xi Jinping to Vietnam Dozens of packs were signed You saw Mr Trump in the Oval Office said that the Vietnamese and the Chinese were putting their heads together so they could better quote screw unquote the United States That's his verb not mine And this also raises another point because Mr Xihinping is also visiting uh Malaysia Uh this is part of his tour of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations where Malaysia plays a critical and a key role and the ACSEAN nations the Association of Southeast Asian Nations actually occupy a more sizable portion of the Chinese economy in terms of export trade than the United States does So when the United States basically decouples from China uh they're only inflicting a blow upon 3% of the Chinese economy that's dependent on trade with the United States And as noted the United States will suffer more You saw what happened in the stock market today with Nvidia which is now encountering stumbling blocks in terms of getting licenses to send this high-speed chips to China uh suffered staggering blows along with a number of other Silicon Valley giants And this trip to Southeast Asia raises another question that is oftenimes lost sight of That is to say that when the Chinese economy began to rise a few decades ago it was not only because of what I've mentioned that is to say the flooding into China of foreign direct investment from the United States and its allies the North Atlantic countries for example But the audience may already know that the elite the economic and financial elite of most of the Southeast Asian nations including Malaysia and Indonesia in particular are dominated by members of the Chinese diaspora And therefore you can also expect the Chinese diaspora to rise as a result of the rise of China in the 21st century Now the possible spanner in the works is what we saw in 1965 when the United States played a violent anti-China card and toppling the regime of founding father of Indonesia's carno Perhaps 500,000 people were massacred including a disproportionate number of Chinese letters to say Chinese Indonesians and we're going to have to keep a watch upon the attempt to replicate that sort of devilish scheme uh going forward in the 21st century And I should also mention another point with regard to Chinese Vietnamese relations uh when they came to blows in the late 1970s one of the reasons was that China which was consistent with the socialist principles was moving to circumscribe the privileges of the economic elite The problem was the economic elite was disproportionately of Chinese origin which was then somehow transmuted in Beijing into Vietnam unleashing a kind of terror campaign as they saw it against the Chinese diaspora in Vietnam Uh in fact it was really a class project that the Vietnamese were pursuing But I'm sure that with the pomp and circumstance that greeted Mr Xiinping when he landed in Vietnam just the other day that both nations have decided to let bygones be bygones because they recognize there's a bigger fish to fry which is something that we all should be concerned about i.e the ultimate and impending decline and demise of US imperialism Horn as we go around the horn We also want to ask you about El Salvador President Naib Bukle's trip to Washington this past Monday April 14th 2025 President Buille told reporters during a meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office that he wouldn't return Kilmar Argo Garcia who the US Justice Department said that it had mistakenly deported to El Salvador Meanwhile on Sunday April 13th 2025 the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that another 10 people have been disappeared to the mega prison in El Salvador and President Trump has doubled down on his plans to deport US citizens to El Salvador Dr Horn what is your reaction to all of this news and how concerned should we be oh we should be quite concerned As I have suggested previously if there is any indication that we may be in the foothills of fascism we should look no further than this hairrained idea that US nationals in addition to undocumented workers will increasingly be shipped to a hellhole of a prison in San Salvador El Salvador Uh thinking about this it also makes me reflect on the fact that perhaps we could have avoided El Salvador playing this devilish role because you may recall that under US President Ronald Wilson Reagan there was a bloody war that was conducted in El Salvador A number of US nationals were slain including a number of US nuns This was an attempt to keep a communist-led popular movement from surging to power And voila we see the ultimate result in 2025 with Mr Bouetle the self-proclaimed coolest dictator in the world And the fact that his own regime despite his claim to be fighting gangsterism is in many ways a gangster-like regime As a matter of fact we need our investigative journalists to look into the fact that both Mr Bouetle and Mr Trump or aficionados of the crypto regime Uh you have ATMs in El Salvador that dispenses crypto believe it or not and we all know about how Mr Trump supposedly has made billions with his crypto schemes of late uh a journalist really needs to look into this But more than this I should say that with regard to being in the foothills of fascism if we emerge on the other side at the pinnacle of fascism needless to say this will have devastating impact on virtually every ethnic and racial group in the United States bar none likely across class lines For the Latino population we know that historically that population particularly the population of Mex Mexican descent during times of repression like the 1930s and the 1950s you've had Mexican-Americans that is say US nationals and Mexican ancestry deported oftentimes illegally With regard to Asian-Americans we recall that the last time the United States was in a conflict with a major Asian power speaking in Japan in the 1940s Japanese Americans were denuted of their property were sent to concentration camps oftentimes suffered even after being released from those camps in uh mid 1945 Uh we know that with regard to the black population a central base of the Trump regime rests in Dixie where there's still fury and anger about the fact that their human property was seized without compensation in 1865 And they have not forgotten that to this very day not least because many families were plunged into poverty from which they had yet to emerge Even with regard to the population of European descent we know historically that that population which has expressed sympathy for the affforementioned victims of bigotry Uh that population too has been lynched For example if you look at the cover of my book The Counterrevolution of 1836 Texas slavery and Jim Crow and the roots of US Fascism the cover depicts Euroamericans being lynched because they were seen as quote inward lovers unquote Native Americans of course will continue to suffer because they are an emblem of the fact that the creation of the United States was not a great leap forward for humanity And so for therefore they need to be pulverized and punished for all time Now obviously uh it does not take an an acute historian to recognize that part of the problem is that the left in the United States has engaged in a kind of ideological disarmament Have not fully understood settler colonialism and the class collaboration that undergurs it Have misinterpreted 1776 And if they have not misinterpreted it you need to ask those folk how is it that on the one hand you argue out of one side of your mouth that 1776 created this vaunted constitution and this sturdy republic with the rule of law On the other hand we're seriously discussing in 2025 the prospect of US nationals being deported Now of course we also know and there was an article by Jamal Buouie in the New York Times just today about this that if you look at how black people were treated in the United States in the 19th century you may get a glimpse of how many of us will be treated in the 21st century that is to say uh deprived of due process of law oftentimes kidnapped and sent to the four corners of the planet or for that matter how black people in general were often times kidnapped off the streets of say Kingston Jamaica That is to say it's not only the US nationals who will be suffering as a result of this fascist regime And of course the remedy obviously is to globalize our struggle A lesson that has been lost in recent years but a lesson I hope we can reclaim as early as September 2025 when the African Union has a summit with the Caribbean community including Jamaica Trinidad and Tobago Barbados with reparations being on the agenda with some of us suggesting that black Americans show up in force and force onto the agenda the question of sanctions against the bloody and rape rap repacious Trump regime horn As we go around the horn we also want to ask you about the fact that US Vice President Jiddy Vance referred to Chinese people as peasants on Fox News earlier this month Considering the fact that in the matter of a few decades that China has lifted nearly 800 million people out of poverty whereas the US is headed in the opposite direction Dr Horn what is your reaction to the US vice president and former author of Pilboy reference to Chinese people as peasants well on its face it was not intended as an insult But if you listen to the actual comment that Vice President Vance made he was intending it as an insult in context And I think that going forward in the 21st century policy makers in Washington and their comrades on Wall Street need to recognize that there is sensitivity in China with regard to the depradations inflicted upon their nation particularly during the century of humiliation from the 1840s to the Chinese revolution of 1949 Uh that kind of humiliation was an emblem of the west coast of the United States of America of San Francisco of California of Seattle of Oregon not to mention Chinatown and New York City And so hopefully these policy makers can learn a lesson from this recent episode but somehow I tend to doubt it or as we go around the horn We also want to talk to you about the growing trend across the globe to demericanify or to demericanize It seems that the US trade war and tariff campaign is accelerating many countries across the globe even so-called US allies to begin or increase the deamericanization of their economies Dr Horn how do you see deamemericanization unfolding in real time and how serious of an issue do you think it will be for the US it's an ultra serious issue for US imperialism because I think that historians of the future will be puzzling for some years to come as to why Mr Trump on April 2nd did not enlist the European Union not to mention the rest of the world in a campaign against China as opposed to declaring a trade war on every nation on planet Earth including the powerful European Union which has a market of 400 million plus larger than the market of the United States of America I mentioned before the book by Anu Bradford AU Bradford of Kman University Law School the Brussels effect where she suggests that the European Union is essential with regard to forming standards that the world has to then follow Just like California being the major power in the United States of America formulates measures with regard to auto emissions for example that causes Detroit to surrender and capitulate rather than make one car for the California market and another car for the US market in general And the EU plays a similar role which is why Mr Trump has a particular animosity towards the European Union That is to say per his former national security adviser John Bolton arguing that the EU was invented once again to use his favorite verb screw unquote the United States of America which is obviously inaccurate United States back the formation post 1945 of the European Union because they thought it would help to solidify Western Europe against the Soviet Union And so I think that the European Union if they play their cards right can emerge from this US poly crisis in an advantageous position just like Airbus the European airplane manufacturer will be able to scoop up contracts from China now that China's turn thumbs down on Boeing The problem for the European Union is that they're obsessed with Moscow They have this cockami idea that somehow they're going to replace the United States as the major funer for the Ukraine war which is obviously not going anywhere anytime soon And that will prevent the European Union from spreading its wings And it probably helps to ensure further that the 21st century will be a century where China surges to the front where it is already The horn as we go around the horn We also want to talk to you about the news from Monday April 14th that the Trump administration will freeze $2 billion after Harvard refused Trump's absurd demands US officials said they would freeze the money after Harvard announced that it would not submit to requests to overhaul hiring and report international students who break Trump's rules Dr Horn how significant is this news that Harvard unlike Columbia University refuses to comply with Trump's demands thus losing out on $2 billion well Harvard as is well known was in existence before the United States was in existence it came into being in 1636 as the richest university uh perhaps in the world certainly in the United States with an endowment of 50 billion plus If there was one institution that could afford not to bend the knee to Mr Trump it was Harvard University Uh having said that uh my sources in Cambridge Massachusetts tell me that there's only a 50-50 chance that Harvard will prevail with regard to its battle uh with the Trump regime just like you saw law firms that began to raid the Manhattanbased Paul Weiss for their top lawyers and their clients once Paul Weiss was attacked by the Trump team uh you should not necessarily expect its peers in the Ivy League nor in the major state flagship universities to necessarily come to Harvard's defense They may seek to benefit from the pain inflicted upon Harvard I should also say that this conflict with Harvard also reflects a very disturbing trend which is the weaponizing of anti-semitism Because supposedly the bill of indictment against Harvard makes the claim that Harvard was lethargic in helping to suppress alleged purported supposed harassment against Jewish students and pro-Zionist students in the wake of October 2023 and the Hamas conflict with Israel I think that that's poppycock a deeper examination would go into this long-term trend of how Jewish migrants in the United States many of them have been inducted into the hollowed halls of whiteness And I should also say that uh many of the radicals in the United States who supported the formation of the state of Israel uh in 1947 1948 may want to rethink that particular idea At the same time they're rethinking for example as already noted the alleged benefits of 1776 But with that I think we've come to the end of the road We state these facts only to let you know that those of us who are revolutionary pan-Africanist is not because we love revolution It is historically determined and we have no alternative but to follow history and to use history for the benefit of our people Power to the people Power to the people Free political prisoners Free political prisoners All political prisoners All political prisoners