Immigrants, Tariffs and the Fear of Foreigners
On May Day, reject xenophobia
May 1 -- May Day -- is celebrated around the world as International Workers Day. That wording for the name of the holiday suggests that working-class people who are citizens of the nearly two hundred different nation-states around the world have something in common, something which transcends their citizenship status or national origin. In its strongest version, the phrase "international working class" suggests that, in a very profound sense, working people have no nations.
Granted, many people will have difficulty fully buying in to that concept. Should they not do so, however, they are susceptible to infection with the political virus of xenophobia, the fear of foreigners.
On this May Day, let's consider two different aspects of the relationship of Americans to people of other nationalities.
Trump Attacks on Immigrants
In an early January post on Political Economy Watch, I discussed Trump's plans to begin mass deportations of immigrant workers on Day 1 of his administration. I argued that Trump's planned executive orders would not, in general, entail changes in the state of laws governing who can be or work in the U.S. The purpose of those executive orders would be two-fold. They would "create fear among immigrant families and households, which often contain people who have valid legal status in the country and people who do not." And they would serve to build xenophobia "by establish[ing] deportations as a 'normal' part of everyday life in America."
I further argued that this ethical dilemmas for U.S. citizens who might not see themselves as the target of Trump's anti-immigrant policies. What, for example, would you do if the Immigration police were to show up at the doors of your children's public school?
What I described in January with respect to undocumented immigrants is coming to pass. According to CBS News, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) "said it arrested nearly 1,200 people on Monday [April 28] alone, up from previous days and from the Biden administration, which averaged 312 arrests per day last year." However, I did not anticipate the scope of Trump administration's attacks on documented immigrants, that is, non-citizens with legal status in the U.S. These attacks have included:
Arrests of non-citizen college students who have exercised their First Amendment right of free speech to oppose the U.S.'s blank check for Israel's war on the Palestinians.
Dumping people arrested by ICE in prisons in El Salvador.
Deportations of U.S.-born children whose mothers were immigrants arrested by ICE.
Trump's Trade Wars and U.S.-China Relations
Notwithstanding the fact that the name of this blog is Political Economy Watch, I haven't made much of an effort to discuss Trump's tariff policies here in the past month. That's because their erratic design and implementation have been amply critiqued in the mainstream media.1 The rapid decline of the stock market has led Trump to backtrack on some of his tariffs, but certain things are now evident:
Trump's back-and-forth behavior on tariffs has generated so much uncertainty that U.S. capitalists are holding off on investment spending. That's a contractionary force acting on the U.S. economy, with unemployment likely to increase. Shipments of goods from China to the U.S. have already begun to fall off.
That same behavior is likely to be inflationary. U.S. businesses with market pricing power will try to pass the cost of tariffs through to consumers, just as those same businesses did during the recovery from the COVID epidemic in 2021 and 2022.
U.S. businesses which are dependent on imports from China, whether as inputs to U.S.-based production or as final sales, but which lack market pricing power are likely to close down entire business lines.
While many countries may feel that they have no choice but to negotiate unfavorable trade deals with Trump, China, on whose exports Trump is imposing 145% tariffs, is in a position to stand firm. Though Trump clearly fired the first shots in this trade war, he will undoubtedly try to blame China and to stir up anti-Chinese xenophobia among the U.S. population.
Take Five to Examine Your Political Conscience
This May Day, pause for a few minutes to examine your own thoughts and feelings. Ask yourself if you harbor anti-immigrant attitudes. If you do, try to figure out where those anti-immigrant attitudes come from -- and which among them you can begin to shed.
Similarly, ask yourself if Trump's trade war is leading you to adopt anti-Chinese attitudes. What can you do to resist xenophobic propaganda?
For May Day rallies in your area, see May Day Strong.
I welcome your feedback in the Comments section below. However, I also recognize that many people are reluctant to publish such comments on a blog, whether under their own name or an alias. If you would like to send feedback privately, you can now send me email at politicaleconomywatch at gmail dot com (replacing at and dot appropriately).
For a sophisticated political economy critique of Trump's tariff policies, see J.W. Mason's "These tariffs offer no alternative to free trade" (April 29 2025).