askchapo

Never say never, but I do not think there will be a significant increase in deportations. Undocumented labor is critical to the functioning of American capitalism. Significantly cutting the number of undocumented workers would be a major blow to capital. So that’s not gonna happen. The hogs want their deportations but they’re not in charge here.

The point of all of Trump’s talk is to instill fear in immigrants. Fear that if you do anything out of line, you will get deported. Fear ensures that you don’t do things like demand better conditions. Fear means you will want to hide your presence even more, which will keep your wages and social costs low.

Undocumented workers are truly the reserve army of labor in the modern US. You can pull out your of copy of volume 1 of Capital to understand how important it is for capital to have that reserve army of labor, but also to keep it hungry and afraid. That keeps down wages (as well as helps ramp down resistance) for everyone.

As far tariffs go, Trump is a moron. I’m sure his strategy is just use it as a cudgel to get better trading terms but I think he genuinely believes tariffs are just free money for the US. Now if the rest of the world actually got their shit together and refused to play ball, yeah the tariffs would probably completely tank the US economy. But sadly I’m pretty sure every single country is gonna fall in line. Especially the EU, they will impose brutal austerity packages just to hit that 5% military spending target.