e-Con e-News

Posted byee ink.April 19, 2025Posted inUncategorizedTags:China, economy, politics, tariffs, Trump

blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com

‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News 13-19 April 2025

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‘Countries must put their houses in order

to face a world of uncertainty’ – IMF chief

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‘US trade war poses risks to Sri Lanka’s

creditworthiness, warns Fitch’

The IMF is lying. Fitch is lying. All these economists who are still parroting the old London-Washington ‘export’ sound-bytes are lying. Even if they know not what, or that, they parrot. Yet their diagnostics are awry, their ratings are skewed, and these economists, parading degrees from Oxford & Harvard, etc., simply have no idea that imperialism has no intention to let Sri Lanka escape. Why are they acting as if they did not know their sugar-daddies in the belligerent North Atlantic have been planning such economic hijinks? Why are they acting surprised, and scurrying about like pissu kumbi on meth, screaming, ‘The sky is falling’? Why haven’t their dynamic & strategic forecasts apparently not taken reality, staring them in the face, into account. Then again, Israel’s horror in Gaza seems a surprise to them. The dictums of US President D Trump, too.

     They know not, or assiduously avoid learning about, the history of the English settler states of North Amerika; of their genocidal & enslaving heritage. A heritage which has greatly influenced & strangled our own economy. Worse, they do not know our own story. Then again, no one appears to dare author a true economic history of our country. Except of course our own SBD de Silva, who had to scour world history to begin to fit all the jigged pieces of the underdevelopment puzzle.

     Acting Surprised? If anyone thinks these rumblings are all the doing of one man, think again. The time of Kings (& even then, they were but one head) is long past. The Prince has long become an ‘executive committee of the bourgeoisie’ (or the proletariat, depending on who rules). And if you think it is all Trump’s doing, think again. Bush I. Clinton. Bush II. Obama. Trump l. Biden. Trump II: They have all read from the same scripts and enacted different chapters in this plot. Beware of those who make Trump a lone super-villain, for they are either naïve, ignorant, shallow, partisan or deliberately diversionary. So here it is:

     The latest US government’s economic actions are all laid out in the US Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 paper under Chapter 26, ‘Trade Policy’ (see ee Focus, Brian Bertelic’s New Atlas). The HF is the most expensive thinktank that the corporate US can buy. Under US President R Reagan, HF promoted seemingly opposite policies, which led to the ‘Washington Consensus’ (again, using such silky language, it was less ‘consensus’ & more ‘dictat’ for ‘crisis-wracked developing countries’).

     And as for USAID? Voice of America? This US regime is ‘not eliminating them’, they are simply ‘streamlining these tools, consolidating them under the State Department’. ‘President Trump isn’t making any decisions at all on his own. This is all predetermined policy’. They are preparing for war with China, while dumping their Ukraine conflict (aka, the invasion of Russia) onto Europe.

     All this has less to do with ‘free trade’ or ‘protection’ or a ‘sound plan to re-industrialize USA or to genuinely balance the US ‘trade deficit’.  All this foofaraw aims to maintain: the USA ‘as the world’s dominant superpower’ (‘a direct quote from Chapter 26’). It is straight-out wholesale gangsterism. It is now clearer than ever that many countries, are all US colonies, but in name. The still English colony of Australia, for example, ‘subordinates all Australia’s export industries to US government directives’ (see ee Quotes). The US is trying to force strategic industries in Asia, and in Europe, to move to the USA, as it shuts its borders. They have already demanded the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer TSMC, to also produce chip machines in Arizona, and threaten to destroy their puppet Taiwan and TMSC, rather than allow them to rejoin China. So it is less about making ‘America’ great again. It is about making the Chinese, nay, all of us, ‘coolies’, again… All because they cannot compete with China. They have 400 military bases surrounding China. There are ’10,000s of US forces… closer to Chinese shores than they are to the USA’s own shores’.

     And here is where they plan to use Sri Lanka as a pawn. The US has been preparing to target ‘Chinese maritime shipping worldwide rather than taking on the Chinese military itself along or within its shores & borders’. Meanwhile, the capitalist media is totally quiet about whether Sri Lanka has a bilateral ‘defense partnership’ with the US. And they are equally sotto sotto, certainly the international media, about the nature of the Sri Lanka government’s recently signed ‘defense pact with India, which seeks to entrap us in the US-led Quad’s intrigues’. Only the Communist Party of Sri Lanka (CPSL) has unequivocally exposed the link between the US and India, without somehow trying to blame China as well (See ee Sovereignty, All progressives and anti-imperialists must fight against the security pact signed with India)

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‘The US is preparing to subject its own population as well as those of

 its supposed ‘allies’ to immense long-term economic, social & political pain.

The cost-of-living crisis in the US will only grow worse. The US hopes

that it can endure economic pain & disruption at home & abroad

better than the emerging multipolar world can.

Multipolarism’s survival will depend on proving otherwise.’

 Brian Bertelic (see ee Focus)

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Indeed, all this talk of ‘reciprocal tariffs’ makes no mention of all the US & EU & English & Indian banks & multinationals exploiting Sri Lanka, etc., or their loan sharking through ISBs. Meanwhile, the US government is about to ban all talk of reparations for slavery & colonialism, while our accountants that they ‘charter’ will join in saying it is only we who owe them…

     We should also watch out for so called ‘forgiveness’ of debt. They did that to Ghana in exchange for the forced privatization of water services and the ‘opening up’ of agriculture to foreign companies. A plan, the US Envoy and their agricultural professors have been hinting at as a ‘final solution’ for Sri Lanka. The US also aims to use their economic & military muscle to gut ‘online privacy & big tech anti-monopoly policies’, while undermining ‘food safety, health, & environmental laws’. So, no wonder there are no tariffs on services…

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This ee Focus also reproduces Vijay Prashad’s ‘The New Bandung Spirit is about Industrial Development’. The 4^th most populous country in the world, Indonesia’s entry into the BRICS+ this year marks the 70^th anniversary of the Asian-African Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955. The 1955 Conference gave birth to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), formed in 1961, and United Nations Conference on Trade & Development (UNCTAD), formed in 1964. Indonesia is the world’s largest nickel producer, and their government finally banned the export of raw nickel ore while insisting that it be processed within the country. They should have insisted that all processing of the ore take place through Indonesian firms, with investment in making local machinery, however they apparently lacked the capital, and this is where the BRICS+ countries, particularly China, can offer the necessary knowhow.

     So, while there may be no lack of funded naysayers to pooh-pooh the striving to create another ‘International’ – after all, imperialism has for many years sought to fatten & entrap a so-called middle-class, who exist largely to thwart true independence – true independence can only be sustained not by merchantry but by industrialization.

Prashad concludes that ‘the contradictions of the present’ will ‘generate their own new spirit’. After all, this spirit will be energized by the strivings of over half the world’s people.

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• Crisis. Crisis. Crisis. The word ‘crisis’ appears to outnumber the name ‘Trump’ in the news. Crisis! ‘But what is the crisis?’, ee’s muse SBD de Silva always asked. The loyal Left & Right always cry ‘Crisis’. Some even have called for ‘struggle’. But struggle against what? And yes, what is the crisis? Pity the schooled fools who do not wish to know that we are nation ruled by merchants, merchants of goods & money.  Our captains of commerce are generally involved in cheating and have successfully sabotaged all governments since 1948. A government run by merchants, corruption is thy name, regardless of the politicians.

     So, watch them acting surprised? These economists & the state & corporations & their lip-&- eyeball-grabbing services? Isn’t it tiresome that the Sanderatnes & Wijewardenas & Abeyratnes & Colombages & Coomaraswamys, and their latest little spawn, repeat the same tired blah-blah-blah about exports, discipline, rule of law, populist policies, etc., while promoting the tired old colonial plantation game.

     Is the capitalist class that controls them surprised? Why are the IMFs & World Banks & ADBs, so constantly headlined in the English media, the Fitch’s & the S&Ps & Moodys, etc, supposedly more scientific & sophisticated than the auspicious & inauspicious prognostications of astrologers – with all their sophisticated AI & Blockchain, etc. – why are these ‘experts’ always signaling such definitive ratings, which change all the time. They should at least be gaming each possible scenario, where a supposedly triumphant capitalist system has a menu of possibilities to choose from. Yet they cannot be so honest. They have to hide their immediate tactics and long-term strategies and ambitions. The capitalist media meanwhile trumpet every diversion, and their media-dogs bark in unison. All their number-spluttering minions then quote their forecasts as gospel, and use them to demand commensurate policies.

Are they not aware of the practices of their governments & their ruling classes? Mr Trump would not even attempt such policies, or twit such tweets, if he knew that his backers, both latent and blatant would not abide him. The US government has continued their wars throughout various administrations with varying intensity depending on the level of resistance… We are told that it is not the US opposition in and out of government that controls Presidents but their capitalists, as represented by their bondholders, 1.3% of the US population, who have held, propelled or stayed, essentially guided, the US Presidents’ edict-signing knuckles. But what exactly made Trump retreat? Was it China’s power, and the potential loss of intermediate capital supply value chains?

     The time is long long past when individuals (absolute monarchs & other private dispensables) rule. So the question is not free trade or protectionism, de- or re-industrialization, but how people & nations, long divided by every possible fragmenting funding category, can get some program & accompanying rhythm going to thwart the latest offensives of imperialism.

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     The imperialists have deployed a myriad tactics over 500 years and more to establish Sri Lanka as the colonial import-export plantation merchant-dominated economy it remains to this day. Yet still non-settler, for they have been unable to genocide the majority Sinhala people.

     India’s Vijayanagar tried to divide the country into feudatories. The Portuguese invaded the maritimes. The Dutch grabbed the country trade – the economic intercourse between neighboring countries. And the English sought to command all the waves to set up maritime power across the world, while proclaiming ‘free trade’.  In 1947, just prior to the ‘grant’ of independence, the English imposed a ‘defense agreement’ to retain English bases in the country, apparently to thwart any Indian designs on the country. 10 years later, the SWRD Bandaranaike government removed the English bases, after even having to pay great monetary compensation! The English & the US responded with a bullet, cowboy-salon style, from the hip.

     Then again, the first part of the 1950s saw the USA not just refine their wholesale aerial genocide techniques in Korea, but also their retail ‘regime change’ operations involving early fake ‘rebellions (later revolutions) of color’, coups d’état and assassinations from Iran to Guatemala to the Congo, etc. Meanwhile, the US Federal Reserve set up Sri Lanka’s Central Bank, which helped to promote a culture of conspicuous consumption of imported luxuries. They avoided a culture of production, by recapturing our home market from the likes of Unilever, Nestle, et al. The 1960s saw unsuccessful attempts at coups, successful parliamentary coups, the entry of the loan-sharking World Bank & IMF twins… followed by full-scale wars, south and north, from the 1970s to this day.

     Many believe an alternative economic program for Sri Lanka will simply not be allowed. In Greece, a so-called ‘Leftist’ political party, which came to power promising to overturn the IMF’s strictures, is now led by a former Goldman Sachs trader. In Argentina, a self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist has been rescued, for now, by the IMF. Any country challenging the IMF’s dictats, gets bought or couped. It seems therefore to be a priority for any ‘progressive’ government to reform the police & military, before they can begin to serve the people and their skilled artisans, rather than protect thieving merchants…

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