Tariffs, trade wars, and technofascism: the capitalist core eats itself while the periphery bleeds.

Weaponized Information | April 9, 2025

While the mainstream press is spinning it as “Europe finally standing up to Washington,” let’s be clear: this week’s EU move to impose retaliatory tariffs on U.S.-made electric vehicles (EVs) is not a revolution. It’s a recalibration. A diplomatic slap on the wrist dressed up as economic warfare. And beneath the surface of this apparent pushback lies a deeper truth: the Atlantic alliance is wobbling, but it is not breaking.

According to a new report from Reuters, the European Commission is preparing to approve 30% tariffs on American EVs in direct response to the Trump administration’s “Made in America” tariff barrage against European cars, steel, and green technologies. The symbolism is thick: Europe is retaliating on its own turf—targeting U.S. industrial exports—and in a sector once billed as the future of transatlantic cooperation.

But make no mistake: this is not the EU taking an anti-imperialist stand. It’s a boardroom feud between co-owners of the imperialist global order. And the working class—on both sides of the Atlantic—is being handed the bill.

The Atlantic Divorce That Never Comes

This is not the first time Europe has feigned outrage at U.S. economic belligerence. Remember Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs in 2018? Or Washington’s illegal extraterritorial sanctions on Iran that the EU huffed about, but ultimately enforced? The U.S. treats Europe like a junior partner, and Europe plays its role as the well-dressed, over-educated subordinate.

The EU may raise tariffs on Teslas, but it will not question the dollar-based financial system that underpins U.S. supremacy. It may bark at Washington, but it will still house NATO bases, back U.S. war aims, and subsidize the Ukraine war economy at the expense of its own industries. This is what we call intra-imperialist tension—competition within the empire, but never against it.

The EV Battlefield and the Green Capitalist Mirage

Electric vehicles are not just a new tech trend. They are a new frontier for monopoly capital. Washington’s protectionist pivot under Trump 2.0 is not just about jobs—it’s about ensuring the U.S. dominates the global green transition, locking China and Europe out of key markets while consolidating control over lithium, cobalt, and other strategic resources.

The EU’s response—slapping tariffs on American-made EVs—is an attempt to carve out a sliver of that pie. It is not about ecological transition. It is about green extractionism, the same capitalist engine rebranded with an environmental sheen. There is no “clean capitalism,” only new zones of exploitation, resource wars, and strategic chokepoints—from Congo to Bolivia to Indonesia—dressed up in climate rhetoric.

No One Asked the Workers

Caught in the middle are the workers. U.S. autoworkers, already reeling from years of deindustrialization, now face the prospect of retaliatory tariffs strangling their export markets. European workers—especially in Germany, France, and Italy—will see energy prices rise, supply chains disrupted, and jobs outsourced to Eastern Europe and Asia.

None of these policies were decided democratically. They were decided in backrooms by technocrats and trade negotiators who answer not to parliaments but to corporate lobbies. This is what we at WI call bourgeois economic nationalism—a battle between capitalist states over surplus control, not a fight for sovereignty or justice.

Our Line Is Drawn Elsewhere

We do not cheer for the EU’s retaliation, nor do we mourn U.S. trade dominance. Both are arms of the same global system: capitalist imperialism in the technofascist era. The “trade war” is not ours. Our war is against the system that pits workers against one another, commodifies the planet’s survival, and lets billionaires dictate the rules of so-called international law.

We stand not with Brussels or Washington, but with Detroit’s factory floor and Marseille’s dockworkers. We fight for a world where trade serves people, not profits—and where the working class writes the rules of a new economy.

Let the empire draw its lines. We draw ours in solidarity.