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Foreign.
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Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives, jobs, incomes, debts, our own and those of our children coming down the road. I'm your host, Rick Richard Wolff. Back in 1965, with much trouble and tension, the United States Congress and president at that time signed the Medicare legislation establishing for the first time in the United States what already existed in most other developed industrial countries, namely, a health care insurance program for the population. But being the United States, it wasn't for the entire population the way it is in most other countries, developed wealthy countries in the world, but it was for the elderly people aged 65 and older. But from the beginning, it did not cover dental, hearing and vision care. Why it didn't is as much a mystery in the long history of the human race as why it only covered people over 65 rather than the population as a whole. Be that as it may, and despite efforts all the time since then, and we're talking half a century here, to get hearing, vision and dental care, it wasn't achieved. Now there's a bill pending in this Congress pushed hard by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and by Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal from the state of Washington in the House of Representatives. They want to remedy this defect in our Medicare program. Conservatives in both parties oppose doing this. The reasoning, if that's indeed the appropriate term I can use, has something to do with not wanting to tax people. And I have to stop here since otherwise I would get upset and say that we already have given huge tax breaks to corporations and huge tax breaks breaks to the wealthy over and over again over the last half centuries, rather than giving them a smaller tax cut and covering vision, dental and hearing for our elderly. And in case you are not familiar with the medical record, the elderly tend to suffer complications if they have difficulties with their hearing, dental or visual medical care. So it's a double burden on them since those kinds of problems spread in their elderly bodies. This is an extraordinary comment on the limits of US Capitalism, but it needs to be talked about. And of course, my hat is off to Senator Sanders and Congresswoman Jayapal for taking the lead here. My second update has to do with a retrospective, a look back. We can now see what the effects of the tariffs that were imposed by President Trump on the Chinese. These were done in 2018 and 2019, while, of course, he was president. At their peak, they covered $370 billion worth of Chinese exports into the United States. That was roughly two thirds of all those goods made in China and shipped to the U.S. since then, these tariffs have been reduced even by the Trump administration in part, but they're still there. But instead of covering roughly 2/3, they now only cover half. Now, let's take a look. What did they accomplish? First of all, they cost us businesses and consumers a great deal of money. President Trump repeatedly said something that a first year student in economics would flunk a course for for saying. He kept saying the Chinese have to pay for the tariffs he imposed on them. That is false. A tariff is a tax. That's all just a special name for a tax. It's a tax paid by the buyer of something, not by the seller of something. It's like a sales tax at the store. When you buy something, they add the that you pay an extra tax. Tariffs are just like that. If you bought something from China for $100 and there was a tariff attached to it, you would now have to pay the hundred dollars to China as you did before, plus the tariff you would have to pay. That goes to Uncle Sam, who imposes the tariff. So the payer of the tariffs imposed by Trump were the United States businesses, who, if they could, of course, would pass the extra cost of the tariff they paid onto the final consumer when they sold to the final consumer whatever they imported from China. This is not all that complicated. So the burden is on the American businesses and the American business consumer. Just a little footnote for the conservatives in my audience. In imposing a massive tariff, Mr. Trump, fancying himself a conservative, was taxing like there's no tomorrow. It was an enormous increase in taxes paid by businesses and the consumer, in the end, upon whom these taxes were passed off. So the notion that Mr. Trump cut taxes is never correct. He cut them for corporations and the rich with his massive tax cut at the end of 2017. But he whacked business and consumers across the board by his tariffs. Did they work? Not even a little. If they were supposed to hurt the Chinese, there's little sign of it. Here's what the Chinese did in response. Number one, they lowered where they could, the price of what they produce. Because that way, the lowered price that the Chinese were able to achieve offset part of the tariff the United States government added to the price. So the impact to the final consumer was less. How did the Chinese manage that? They used their technological prowess. They made production more efficient. They worked doubly hard at extra efficiency, which is now showing up in their gains of productivity relative to the United States. So what we did, in short, was stimulate them to be more productive, which in the medium and long run increase is self defeating for the United States. Second thing that happened, production moved from China to other countries, mostly in Asia, where there weren't tariff supplies. So the producer, who could be an American company, a British company, a Chinese company, it didn't matter, moved their production, say, and I'll pick the major example, from China to Vietnam. That way the goods could continue to come into the United States. They would not have to pay a tariff. People who imported because they were importing from Vietnam, not from China. I might point out that the leadership in Vietnam is the Vietnamese Communist Party, whereas the leadership in China is the Chinese Communist Party. So if all of this was to be rationalized as a punishment for the Communist Party, as Secretary of State Pompeo liked to tell us over and over again, it was a bizarre way of doing that since you were helping and boosting up the Communist Party of Vietnam. Third point, no manufacturing of any significant size came back to the United States. If Mr. Trump said anything, he said his tariffs would bring enterprises back to the United States. Didn't happen. Either they stayed in China, which is what most of them did, or they moved to another part, usually of Asia, often to Vietnam. Either way, cheap goods have kept coming into the United States, preventing the development of alternative production here. The goals of the tariff were not achieved, but there was political theater, and that's what it was about. It was the flailing around of an American president acting as though he could punish the Chinese for whatever it is he accused them of. And we would be the tough guy pushing other folks around. You know, when that happens, it's usually when you can't anymore and you have to have theater to make it look like you could do what you once were able to do. One last thing, the Chinese watched these tariffs. They watched the trade war. They watched the sanctioning of Chinese companies active in the United States. And they drew the perfectly predictable solution. Dealing with the United States is now uncertain in a way it had not been for a long time. The willingness of the United States, and not just Mr. Trump and not just the GOP, but the whole political establishment, with a few exceptions, their willingness to engage in these kinds of activities and rationalize the whole thing with more vintage Cold War anti Communism proved to the Chinese they've got to get away from any and all dependence on the United States. So they're spending even more money to become technologically superior, technologically independent, and they're cutting one deal after another with every other corner of this planet. Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Chinese are busy everywhere and a major reason for it is the behavior of the United States. I could not come up for you, my audience, with a better example of the economic version of shooting yourself in the foot. My last update has to do with a perennial issue that I cover, the costs of profiteering when it comes to our physical and mental health. Now, of course, it's all about COVID So here's some examples of how profit runs the Suddenly, executives of pharmaceutical companies are telling us all about booster shots. What is that about? Hmm. Turns out, in their view, of course, this is purely science. In their view, in order to keep whatever it is we get from the vaccines against Covid, we will need, you guessed it, to pay for booster shots every year. In other words, this is a perpetual income stream to these companies. The scientific community, including the CDC and so on, has not found there to be any merit to this at all. May be true, may not be true, but they're already boosting the booster shot, aren't they? What a wonderful example. If I had more time, I would go into how the vaccines are being sold to folks who can afford them and not to people who can't around the world in a way that violates every morality and ethics any one of us has ever saluted. Something for you to think about profit in the healthcare business is a bad combination. We've come to the end of the first part of today's show. Before we get to the second half, I wanted to let those of you who may not know that we are proudly celebrating the 10th anniversary of economic Update this year. As we celebrate this milestone, I want to extend a very special thank you to all who have supported us and especially to our Patreon community. Your support has made this show and everything else we do possible, and we could not have done it without you. In case you haven't already, Please go to patreon.com economicupdate to learn more about how you can join our growing and deeply appreciated community of supporters. Please be sure to also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and and stay with us. We'll be right back with today's special guest, author and professor Manny Ness. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of today's Economic Update. It is with great pleasure that I welcome to our cameras and to our microphones, an old friend of mine, Professor Manny Ness. He's a professor of political science at Brooklyn College, which is a part of the City University of New York, and he also is a senior researcher at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. He has written prolifically on labor, globalization, migration, the gig economy, and protest movements across the world. His most recent book, and why he's with us today, which is to talk about it, is called Organizing Workers Movements in the Global south, published by Pluto Books. So, first of all, Manny, thank you very much for joining us. Okay. And this. In this new book, let's get right to it, you say something about the Global south, and I want to press you to just define that so we're all on the same page. You say that the workers in the Global south, quote, hold up the world. What do you mean?
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Well, that, of course, is a Greek metaphor. The Greek God Titus, who lost a major battle and as a consequence, had to hold up 90% of the world, including his own world. And so I thought it was a very fitting way of evoking the nature of the global economy and the political structure that exists today, that the majority of the working class in the world who live in parts of the world that produce commodities, that produce food, that produce almost anything that we consume, live in places like India, South Asia, East Asia, of course, China, Africa, and elsewhere. I think it's a crucial point to make that in fact, without the working class, and by this I mean the working class that exists throughout the world, we here in North America, Western Europe, and parts of Northeast Asia would not have the lifestyles that we have. That also includes parts of the working class that are the upper echelons of the working class in this country. When we think about workers solidarity, I think we must recognize those people who hold up the world. They're holding up the incredible force of the society through producing incredible goods, creating pollution in their own countries that are consumed here and polluting here. They're crucial, but yet they are, in fact, important to recognize in terms of changing the world toward socialism, which is something that I think we have to fight for.
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Tell me, you title your book Insurgency. Is it a reasonable inference to draw that you believe, and your research shows that the workers of the Global south whom you've just described are in a state that we can call insurgency. And if you think that, tell us what that really means in terms of what you found, Rick?
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Absolutely. In my view, workers are always in a state of motion, whether it is resisting the boss, whether it is organizing into a union or trying to. Whether it's organizing into a protest and a social movement. Workers are constantly in a process of struggle against their employers and their oppressors. This is not something that is unique to the Global South. It's something that extends to the United states and Europe, etc. Upon doing a lot of research over the last 15, 20 years, more specifically in the south or in countries of Africa, Asia particularly, as well as South America, I have found that workers are always in a state of motion. They're constantly in struggle against their bodies. What is missing? In other words, this idea of insurgency is something that is a constant. I think people don't recognize that. We went through here, the Occupy movement, that's an insurgency. There was the Arab Spring and countless other movements. We now have Black Lives Matter. It's crucial. Without organization, these insurgencies will lead to nothing. By that I mean a working class socialist organization that has a commitment and principled analysis and program for social transformation.
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Well, you know, there are quite a few people who believe that this is the missing link, or the missing element, if you like, everywhere in the world. In other words, that socialism is, at this point in world history, insurgent, perhaps everywhere, but well organized, almost nowhere. And that this contradiction or this dichotomy, is this something. Do you find this as well? Is this part of what you're seeing? Insurgency prolific but organization deficient?
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Precisely, Rick. I absolutely see that. In fact, that's the reason why I went to places where there was organization, where there has been lasting and durable organizations that are revolutionary, that believe in a future of socialism. And let's face it, socialism is something that we have to build. Workers will be fighting for and engaged in struggle, as you very well know, all the time. So will the bosses. We have to have an organization that will be as strong, if not absolutely stronger than the bosses, because the bosses will continue to fight even after socialism. This we learn from Marx. We learn from Marx and Engels and Lenin and many of the leading classical scholars as well as the contemporary ones. And we have to stop this confusion that we have today about taking solace in the fact that people are organizing. They've always been organizing. And I found in places like the Philippines, in places parts of India and South Africa to be the seeds of what we could look for in the future and actually right now. And that's why I go there. That's why I'm in South Africa frequently.
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I wish I had more time, but can I tease out of you, Manny, give us a couple of examples of where you have found the seeds, as you put it, of organization so that the insurgency has gone the next step in some sense.
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Okay. One can look at micro struggles and one can look at macro struggles. There are macro struggles in each of these countries. And the micro Struggles are involving unions themselves. So unions that are highly organized, disciplined, linked to a political party with a socialist ideology, in some ways Marxist, Leninist ideology in places like Philippines, where there is a insurgency and it's organized and it's rooted within the working class. And this is another theme of the book, that the working class and people completely miss. This point in the rural areas is larger today than at any point in human history. We talk about urbanization as something, as a fait accompli, but in the rural areas, there's over 3 billion people, 3.5 billion people. They count for something. And I think it's crucial to recognize that the land in which we live produces the food that we eat. I found highly principled and also really wonderful people in places like the Philippines who are organizing unions. And then there is, on top of that, a party. I think there is a necessity to link a party with a union. I found the same thing taking place in India, where you have workers employed in many steel mills, tens of thousands of workers who have nothing and live in apartment buildings where they have to walk up on a ladder to the second, third, fourth, fifth floor and where they're no higher than four or five feet each room. So I'm saying that these workers are highly oppressed, and yet they have hope for a better world in the future. And that hope does not come from the fact that they know that they can go on strike. It comes from the fact that they have an organization that has their back, so to speak. The same thing in South Africa, where I found the same kind of dynamic. Numsa, to be specific, is a union, the largest union in Africa, led by Irvin Jim. They believe in a revolutionary future for South Africa, which is absolutely necessary if there's going to be comprehensive change. We talk about ending apartheid in Palestine and Israel. There's still a need to end apartheid in some respects in South Africa because the system is divided. There's a higher level of inequality with respect to the Gini coefficient in South Africa than anywhere else in the world, any major place in the world. And so, yes, and they're trying to build a party. That's something that is very important.
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There's an old idea in Western European and North American socialist circles that somehow the global south may show the way forward for those in the global North. In other words, that this moving from insurgency to the more organized and disciplined, which may have once been a theory of the north, has now been more concretely captured by the South.
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Are you.
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What do you think about that?
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Oh, I Absolutely agree with you. I think that's a very important point. You know, I was just ruminating about this over the last year or so that if you look at publications, books, articles, et cetera, films, they are all very critical of the union. They want more democracy in the union and so forth. Every single one is just critical of the union, which I think is perhaps correct. Yet at the same time, I want to find unions that are doing the right thing, that are, in fact engaging the workers, that are, in fact having a social program that believes in transforming or revolutionizing society. And you know, Rick, we have examples in the past of socialism, and they were built through working class organizations in rural and urban areas. You know, I'm talking about the Bolshevik revolution, I'm talking about the Chinese revolution, amongst others. You know, some may have problems with them. And I think we can probably build, learn from those problems that existed and build a society that is rooted in equality, that is rooted in justice, and gives voice to people and doesn't allow people to starve on a daily basis. We're talking about people in India who are making, with respect to purchasing price parity, the equivalent of 50 cents an hour, something like that. So, yeah, I think that there is absolutely something we can learn from the South. They're fighting, and they're fighting only because they've got organizations that are backing them.
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Professor Manny Ness, Brooklyn College, City University of New York. As always, thank you for your time. Thank you for the work you do. And let me remind folks who want to pursue this line of discussion and thought to take a look at Manny's new book, Organizing Insurgency Workers Movements in the Global South. And to my audience, thank you for your attention and I look forward to speaking with you again next week.
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Sam.