The most important financial development that gained major significance during Wednesday was not related to the stock markets, but to the bond markets: massive sales of US Treasury bonds, leading to a rise in their yields, marked unprecedented mistrust in the security that the United States can provide to financial capital, despite still being its global epicentre. The financial press struggles to identify the sellers: China without a doubt since it is - for how much longer? - the largest holder of US debt securities, Japan, and hedge funds from all countries. And insofar as European imperialisms were in no way deciding to confront Washington, the same global mistrust was affecting them too.

It’s barely discussed, but Washington, or rather Wall Street, has therefore taken an absolutely unprecedented hit to its portfolio and its credibility as a global borrower, which confirms the fundamental nature of the current crisis. The assertion of Trumpist supremacy was beginning to transform into a demonstration of weakness.

The crisis at the top in Washington was growing hour by hour, the visible part being Musk’s outbursts against this policy and against Trump’s guru in commercial matters, a gentle swindler named Peter Navarro. To avoid a premature explosion of the triumvirate Bonapartist structure (Trump/Musk/Vance) which, outside any constitutional framework, forms the current US executive, Trump not only reversed course but also, which is quite natural for him, informed Musk and a phalanx of billionaires in advance about what he was planning, thus ensuring their temporary loyalty through this insider trading of gigantic proportions, resulting in formidable gains on Wednesday evening, in tens of tens of billions of dollars.

In the background, let’s not forget the groundswell rising from below: according to the Federal Unionist Network, which has kept count, there were 5.1 million protesters in the United States on Saturday 5 April, and they are discussing doing it again.

However, the trade war is centralising against China, with tariff rates which are, to date, 125% on the American side and 84% on the Chinese side. The plan is to isolate China, to cut it off from European imperialisms with which it had established contact, and from Southeast Asia where Vietnam, Indonesia and other states in the region are begging for negotiations with the Washington ogre. ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) seems to be capitulating, lets see how that develops...

The situation is difficult for the Chinese state, where Xi Jinping has not appeared in public for several days. But this polarisation against China contradicts the American strategy aimed at separating Russia and China by delivering Ukraine to Putin. The publicity given, at just this moment, by the Ukrainian government, about the presence of Chinese soldiers in the Russian army - which is floundering - in Donbass - probably Chinese recruited in Siberia - comes at just the right time...

The day after the “turnaround”, the stock markets rebounded, but are far from having recovered the losses of the last ten days. All indices of instability and fear are at maximum. The rise in US Treasury bond yields, a sign of their massive sale, has not reversed. And the resumption at Wall Street at 3:30 pm, Paris time, began with a decline.

Nothing has been resolved, the dislocation of the world market and the accentuation of all inter-imperialist contradictions will not rewind but will continue with various convulsions and back-and-forth movements.

In these few days, one thing has become very clear: the inability of European imperialisms to unite and counter-attack. Even the increase in military spending officially motivated by American abandonment is in fact just as much, if not more, an obedience to the injunction to increase these expenses by buying US weapons...

From the perspective of peoples and democracy, the fact that a single man, a fool, can cause such convulsions is a sign of a barbarism that must be abolished. The Trump/Putin Axis produces and will produce a mass uprising against it, that of the peoples. This is the future.

Aplutsoc