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Canadian Auto Isn’t In ‘Crisis’, It’s In Danger Of Extinction

Canadian autoworkers have faced many crises over the years, but the present threat is distinct. Lana Payne, President of Unifor, has warned that “If we don’t push back hard against him [US President Donald Trump] and against these companies, we’re going to lose it all.” So far, the debate over what to do has started and stopped with Trump’s tariffs. But the threats go deeper, both for auto companies and for our ability as workers and citizens to determine democratically what kind of society we want – that is, for Canada’s substantive and not just formal sovereignty.

China Surprised The US: Round One Goes To Beijing

In this episode, KJ Noh joins India & Global Left to break down the real meaning of the recent Xi–Trump talks — beyond the headlines. We explore why China surprised the United States, why “Round One goes to Beijing,” and what leverage each side truly holds in this evolving geopolitical contest. We also look at the deeper strategic competition shaping U.S.–China relations, the power shifts happening underneath the diplomacy, and what this moment means for the future of the Global South as more countries seek autonomy, multipolarity, and alternatives to the Western-led order.

From Tariffs To Tribute: The $350B Price Of ‘Parity’

On October 29, 2025, the carefully scripted pageantry of the US-ROK alliance in Gyeongju and Seoul met an unwelcome counter-narrative from the streets. While US President Donald Trump was being feted with a Silla-era replica gold crown and Korea’s highest honor, thousands of workers, trade unionists, farmers, students, and women’s collectives converged near the APEC venues. They chanted a unified dissent: “No kings!” and “No to APEC for the 1%”. Organizers framed the protest as a demand for the restoration of national dignity against what they saw as an act of economic coercion.

Trump Is Clearly Losing The Trade War With China, Which He Started

Donald Trump is losing the trade war against China, which he himself started. Trump held an important meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping in the South Korean city of Busan on 30 October. There, they came to a new agreement, which amounted to a one-year truce. The US government agreed to lift most of the punitive measures that it had imposed on China since April 2025, essentially bringing the situation back to what it was in January, when Trump entered office for his second term. Although this is not the end of the trade war, China clearly won this battle. The Financial Times (FT) noted that, “Unlike nearly 10 years ago, when Trump’s first trade offensive caught Beijing by surprise, this time a better prepared and economically more powerful China has been able to fight its once far mightier opponent to a standstill”.

United States Scrambles To Put Pressure On Nicaragua

“We were already struggling with 18% tariffs this year, I don't know how we could export our coffee under 100% tariffs,” René Gaitan tells me as we watch the clouds clear out over a breathtaking expanse of Nicaraguan landscape. The view from the El Porvenir worker-owned coffee cooperative stretches from Lake Managua up toward the Honduran border, dominated by the smoking crater of the Telica volcano. Gaitán is the vice president of the 51-family cooperative. The co-op is remote; its members hike eight kilometers to get the bus to the city of León, a three-hour ride away. But the news on 20 October that the U.S. may impose 100% tariffs on the Central American nation reached the co-op with the lightning speed of the internet on Gaitan's smart phone, charged by solar panels.

Canada Needs An Industrial Strategy That Serves Public Goods

Diversifying Canada’s economic strategy is essential in an era of tariff escalation and growing geopolitical volatility. Stellantis’s recent announcement that it’s heading south sent another Arctic chill to concerns over Canada’s industrial future. Billions in public subsidies are flowing to foreign multinational automakers, yet questions remain: Who benefits? What regions are being prioritized? And what kind of innovation are we actually funding? Last week Stellantis, formerly Chrysler, confirmed it would shift planned Jeep Compass production from its Brampton, Ontario plant to Illinois, part of a $13 billion expansion south of the border.

Trump Rattles Markets With New 100 Percent Tariffs On Chinese Goods

US President Donald Trump announced new 100 percent tariffs on Chinese goods on 10 October and threatened to cancel his meeting with President Xi Jinping. Trump said the levies would take effect on 1 November, describing them as “retaliation” for what he called Beijing’s “extraordinarily aggressive” actions. “It is impossible to believe that China would have taken such an action, but they have, and the rest is History,” he wrote on social media. He added that the new measures would target “any and all critical software” exports, accusing China of holding the world “captive” through its dominance of rare earth minerals. “There is no way that China should be allowed to hold the World captive,” he said.

The WTO And The Future Of International Trade

The current upheaval in international trade governance, with Trump’s return to the presidency, does not represent the death of global trade itself. But it does represent the final unraveling of the liberal institutional framework that emerged triumphant in the 1990s. The World Trade Organisation (WTO), as the institutional embodiment of this liberal paradigm, finds itself in a systemic crisis. Although the WTO crisis started before Trump’s two terms of office, what we see now is a critical moment which requires a fundamental reconceptualisation of international economic governance. The 1990s marked the zenith of liberal multilateralism in trade governance. It was characterised by unprecedented coordination among major powers pursuing market liberalisation.

Trump Wages Economic War On US Allies; BRICS Builds Alternative System

The US government has always had a very aggressive foreign policy. The United States has intervened in dozens of countries all around the world. But what is unique about Donald Trump is that many of his aggressive policies not only target US adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba, but also longtime US allies. Trump has imposed high tariffs that have hurt the economies of key US allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Europe. In fact, the details of the agreement that Trump imposed on Japan are quite shocking. This was reported on by the Financial Times, which wrote that “Japan confronts the increased price of US friendship”. Although I would say it’s not so much “friendship”; rather it’s vassalage. Japan has been militarily occupied by the US for 80 years, and we’re now seeing the cost of this imperial relationship.

Elephant And Dragon Choose Dialogue

At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin on September 1, 2025, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met and publicly framed the relationship as “partners, not rivals.” Their readouts stressed dialogue on differences and cooperation on development – language that marks the clearest thaw since the 2020 Ladakh crisis. Two moves gave the reset substance, not just optics. First, India and China re-activated the Special Representatives (SR) dialogue on the boundary question in New Delhi on August 19, 2025, and second, they agreed to restart direct flights and expand people-to-people and business links, after a five-year freeze. These are communications channels that reduce miscalculation and restore some weight to a battered relationship.

Trump’s Tariffs Backfire: India Moves Closer To China

US President Donald Trump is a very contradictory leader. He constantly implements policies that go against his stated goals. The perfect example of this is how Trump has treated BRICS, the Global South-led organization that now represents the majority of the planet. Trump sees BRICS as a major threat to US hegemony, and, in particular, the dominance of the US dollar as the global reserve currency. The US president has openly threatened members of BRICS to try to stop them from seeking alternatives to the dollar. In a press conference at the White House on July 8, Trump complained (emphasis added): BRICS was set up to hurt us. BRICS was set up to degenerate our dollar, and take our dollar as the standard, take it off as the standard.

Tariff Pressure Under Trump: A New Economic Colonialism

The current US administration is determined to abandon multilateral frameworks, favoring instead the resolution of trade disputes through bilateral negotiations, one by one, in pursuit of maximizing US interests. It has openly declared its intention to replace multilateral agreements with bilateral pressure, believing that the US holds stronger leverage in one-on-one negotiations. Under this approach, the US unilaterally launched a global tariff war on what it called “Liberation Day”, using threats of high tariffs as a bargaining chip to force its trade partners into submission. This strategy led to a series of bilateral trade agreements, in which individual economies – including the United Kingdom, Japan, and the European Union – were pressured into making compromises and concessions to the US.

Lula Takes Trump’s Tariffs To World Trade Organization

On Wednesday, August 6, the Brazilian government filed a request for consultation with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against tariffs imposed by the United States on Brazilian products. The decision was made on the same day that the tariff announced by US President Donald Trump came into effect, raising taxes on a series of imports from Brazil to 50%. In a statement, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry said that the request is the first step before opening a panel at the WTO – the organization’s judgment tool. The consultation questions the measures and says that the US “flagrantly violates central commitments made by that country at the WTO, such as the most-favored-nation principle and the tariff ceilings negotiated within that organization,” the document says.

Big Corporations Are Using Trump Trade Chaos To Jack Up Prices

The effects of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs are winding their way through the American economy, and a new piece of analysis claims that corporate America is using them as “cover” to further jack up prices. Progressive advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative issued a new report on Tuesday that uses corporate executives’ own words to show how many firms are taking advantage of the tariff situation by using it as an all-purpose justification for price increases. The report found many of these executives’ admissions through quarterly earnings calls in which they discussed plans to increase costs even if their inputs were not being significantly affected by the tariffs.

United States Government Is Very Afraid Of BRICS And Dedollarization

Western corporate media coverage of the Global South-led organization BRICS is frequently dismissive and condescending. Bloomberg published an article claiming that BRICS is “little more than a meaningless acronym”. It appears that a lot of this criticism, nevertheless, is actually a coping mechanism, because evidence is piling up showing that the US government is very afraid of the rapid growth of BRICS. Donald Trump, in particular, is terrified of the possibility of BRICS challenging the global dominance of the US dollar. BRICS held a successful summit in Brazil in July, featuring for the first time the participation of 10 members and 10 partner countries. Trump responded with furious denunciation, threatening to hit all BRICS countries with 10% tariffs.
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