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Scoop
15 hours ago
- Politics
- Scoop
Groups Representing Millions Have A Message To Those At UN Climate Talks In Bonn
June 18, 2025 Climate justice and human rights activists gather to condemn the UN climate talk's failure to end the corporate stranglehold over climate action. Climate justice groups, women and gender activists, youth, Indigenous and local community leaders, artivists, and members of the global campaign to Kick Big Polluters Out gather outside conference venue where Big Polluters and Global North governments seek to orchestrate their get out of jail free card and escape accountability for the climate crisis. Today, the climate justice movement, youth from around the world, human rights activists, women and gender groups, and members of the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition joined forces to protest outside of the UN climate talks taking place over these two weeks. The start of the climate talks happening in Bonn were delayed due to an agenda fight where polluting Global North governments like the EU refused to even discuss the need for them to do their fair share of climate action. While the United States– the worlds' largest historical emitter–is notably absent from these talks, their fingerprints of obstruction and undermining are all over these halls, as is the poisonous influence of the fossil fuel industry, industrial agriculture, and other polluting industries. While corporations and governments that are knowingly fueling the climate crisis and directly enabling systemic violence in Palestine, Sudan, and elsewhere act as though it's 'business as usual,' activists rallied to make clear that they refuse to be silenced. Advertisement - scroll to continue reading During the protest, people dressed up in suits as corporate executives were slowly covered in coal, oil, blood, and money–clearly illustrating Big Polluters' deadly profit-at-all-costs agenda. The protest featured visuals by the Artivists Network. 'We implore the UNFCCC to let us know who you really serve. Do you have us come from all corners of the world and all walks of life with little to no resources or support…just to be reminded that when we enter these halls, we are expected, yet again, to play your games?' said Analyah Schlaeger dos Santos of Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light. 'What sort of business are you doing behind closed doors? Our lives are not pawns for you to move around, letting us think that we come here to actualize real solutions, only for you to allow for the ones that have caused these problems to slither silently through the halls.' Civil society and protestors also called out the organizers of the talks specifically for their decades-long failures to address the undue influence of Big Polluters. For three decades, the UNFCCC has done next to nothing to protect these talks from undue influence. Even more, they invite Big Polluters to sponsor and bankroll the climate talks, and to have a heavy hand in the outcomes of the talks. This is a primary reason for the failure of global climate collaboration. According to Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network: 'The UNFCCC must shift its focus away from the false solutions of the fossil fuel industry and towards centering Indigenous Peoples and our solutions. Fossil fuels as well as agribusiness and pharma have no place in these decision-making halls. The UNFCCC must be about people-centered solutions from the world's majority and not a handful of powerful executives.' The activists, who hail from all around the world, are echoing their demands for: An Accountability Framework that ends the ability of Big Polluters to write the rules of climate action. Next steps must include requiring a publicly available conflict-of-interest disclosure for all participants in climate talks, discussion between governments and civil society on how to protect these talks, and agreeing a Roadmap to Accountability that can reinstill faith and integrity of this process by ensuring Big Polluters cannot continue to undermine and obstruct. No more allowing Big Polluters to bankroll the climate talks. End Big Polluter-fueled genocide and systemic violence, including a Global Energy Embargo for Palestine. Center the lived experiences and expertise of communities on the frontlines and reset the capitalist, colonial system so it protects people and the planet. 'We are still here fighting back. We are still here to raise the voices of our communities from back home,' said Pang Delgra, Asian Peoples' Movement on Debt and Development. 'We know that if we do not hold the line, if we do not continue to speak the truth, they are going to lock us into extinction.' Note: Kick Big Polluters Out is a coalition of more than 450 organizations across the globe united in demanding an end to the ability of Big Polluters to write the rules of climate action. We stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine as well as with all those who face systemic injustice and fossil-fueled violence around the world.
Winnipeg Free Press
2 days ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
Cuba, human rights and the greater good
Opinion The invocation of human rights discourse in Cuba is sensitive and often controversial. I vividly remember my first trip to Cuba in the mid-1990s, where we (I was travelling with a group of students from Saint Mary's University in Halifax) visited the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) in Havana. When a question and answer discussion started, I asked about Cuba's human rights record within the country. The room suddenly grew quiet. But, as is often the case, the Cuban representatives attending the session were more than happy to entertain my query. They wanted to make clear to the group that context, historical experience and cultural patterns and values are critical to grappling with such a thorny issue. I want to be very clear myself from the outset that this op-ed piece is not about defending or excoriating Cuba's human rights record. Readers can visit the country, talk to the people, and see for themselves. This piece hopes to foster greater understanding and context and spur debate. As a socialist and revolutionary country, Cuba gives more prominence to social policy challenges — as opposed to Western-style civil and political rights — and thus values economic, social and cultural rights or responsibilities. For them, the emphasis is on the valuing of 'human' life, as became clear during the ICAP discussion, and rests on advancing Cubans' human dignity, taking care of their basic human needs and tending to their overall welfare. Cuban President Fidel Castro, in an October 1979 speech before the UN General Assembly, stated emphatically: 'I speak on behalf of those who have been denied the right to life and human dignity.' Put another way, governmental preference should be given to collective or group rights/interests and not individual civil and political rights. It is also true that Global North free and fair elections are absent in Cuba, as are constitutionally mandated press freedoms and, most important, the right to engage in political dissent. Moreover, the Madrid-based non-governmental organization, Prisoners Defenders, maintains that there were over 1,000 political prisoners in Cuban jails in 2024. On the other hand, the Cuban government gives priority to responsibilities (as advanced by a socialist state that embodies the people) around equality, family, labour and, most significantly, community or group rights. Again, the focus revolves around human dignity, economic sustenance and ensuring that basic needs are met. For instance, the state seeks to keep the cost of housing low, subsidizes housing materials and offers low-cost rental fees. To a large extent (and these days everything is in short supply in Cuba), access to decent health care, education (including at the university level), a job and a small retirement pension are all guaranteed by the Cuban government. Socially speaking, Cuba has legally entrenched same-sex marriage (and adoption rights), prohibits discrimination based on gender, identity and sexual orientation and has recognized transgender people (and made gender affirmation surgery available for free). It has also codified responsibilities for equal family responsibilities for children, a family life free from violence and an inclusive LGBTTQ+ public health and education program. Much work, of course, still remains to be done in these areas. It is instructive to note that Cuba's turbulent and troubled history has been shaped by colonial dominance (by Spain and then the United States) that was characterized by economic exploitation, a sugar plantation economy and violent slavery and political repression. However, during these periods there was no cultural transplanting of any conception of the inalienable political rights of individual human beings. After 1959, socialist Cuba began to place higher priority on modernization/industrialization, counter-dependency, an end to economic subjugation and the fulfilment of basic economic and social rights (given its abject poverty) within the wider community. And it was clearly Spanish and U.S. colonization that reinforced among the Cuban people the notion of group cohesion, oneness and the emergence of a resilient value system. Accordingly, the Cuban state took on the core role of developing the country economically and socially with the purported best interests of its people in mind. Any interest in entrenching individual political rights had to take a back seat to ensuring human dignity for everyone and redistributing the fruits of a state-driven developing economy — as well as guaranteeing freedom from starvation, freedom from exploitation and the satisfaction of basic human needs. Of course, governmental promises and pledges around human rights are not the same thing as actual positive results on the ground — as we have seen in Cuba, the Global South and the industrialized North. Looking forward, though, can the Cuban state fulfil its social and economic responsibilities to the people without embracing free market capitalism? Or, will the manifestations of those rights (e.g., access to health care, education and state entitlements) fall prey to the profit motive and rugged individualism? And will traditional Cuban values of group-mindedness, looking out for the welfare of others and sharing what they have still remain over time? Lots of questions. Very few answers, I'm afraid. Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.
Irish Times
31-05-2025
- General
- Irish Times
How did European identity develop? Three authors take on colonialism, imperialism and witchcraft
Esotericism in Western Culture: Counter-Normativity and Rejected Knowledge Author : Wouter J. Hanegraaff ISBN-13 : 978-1350459694 Publisher : Bloomsbury Academic Guideline Price : £ 21.99 Shamanism: The Timeless Religion Author : Manvir Singh ISBN-13 : 978-0241638415 Publisher : Allen Lane Guideline Price : £25 The Witch Studies Reader Author : Edited by Soma Chaudhuri and Jane Ward ISBN-13 : 978-1478031352 Publisher : Duke University Press Books Guideline Price : £23.99 Our ongoing tendency, based on a long history , in Western culture and the Global North to marginalise knowledge, beliefs and practices that don't serve our dominant power paradigms, gets a stunningly well-researched shakedown with three monumental academic titles whose authority is grounded on expert scholarship, but whose style is for the general reader. These books describe human experiences and understandings that upend the white supremacist, colonialist, patriarchal knowledge regimes – including those driving 'modernisation' and 'globalisation' – that are corralling our world into polycrisis. In Esotericism in Western Culture, Wouter J Hanegraaff notes the two different meanings of the word 'esotericism'. The first describes the dialectics of secrecy concerned with the social regulation of access to specific forms of knowledge. The second – the esotericism that Hanegraaff is concerned with – is a collection of historical traditions, ideas, practices and social formations that are grouped together because they are considered to have certain things in common. An overarching commonality across this large and multifarious collection, which in our times has come to be labelled 'esotericism', is that it has been rejected or marginalised by mainstream European intellectuals and the public they influence. Random examples from Western culture alone include Islam, European shamanism, Renaissance alchemy and 20th-century 'chaos magic'. READ MORE The politics of establishing a European identity required that its 'internal enemies' (in this case heretics, witches, and magicians) would be identified, set apart, demonised and finally exorcised According to Hanegraaff, esotericism has been set apart as the problematic 'Other' against which the dominant religious and intellectual elites defined, and still define, their very identity. It strongly emphasises specific worldviews and epistemologies, as well as associated practices, that are at odds with normative post-Enlightenment culture in the modern West. Hanegraaff writes that to ignore the social and intellectual taboo on these topics means engaging in a critical project that he has baptised 'counter-normativity'. Counter-normativity refuses to accept our normative standards of what is supposed to be taken seriously and what may safely be dismissed out of hand. As such, counter-normativity is a rejection of the rejection of rejected knowledge. Hanegraaff argues that what ultimately came out of the developments of pre-Reformation Christianity, Protestantism and modernity was a 'potent narrative' about the West that remains extremely influential in our societies and educational institutions. 'It is based on systematic patterns of excluding, marginalising, misrepresenting, or discrediting a wide range of ideas and practices that, in actual fact, were always part and parcel of Western culture but did not fit a narrow ideological agenda of what that culture was supposed to be about.' The title of a classic from 1975 by the historian Norman Cohn – Europe's Inner Demons – captures Hanegraaff's point precisely: 'The politics of establishing a European identity required that its 'internal enemies' (in this case heretics, witches, and magicians) would be identified, set apart, demonised and finally exorcised.' This is the 'internal Eurocentric narrative' of Western culture - the culturally dominant story of what we've been told to see as central to the identity of Europe and the West. It is also the story of what we've been instructed, tacitly or explicitly, to dismiss as marginal to that identity. 'We are dealing,' writes Hanegraaff, 'with a grand narrative in the true sense of the word: a foundational myth about 'where we came from,' 'who we are,' and 'where we should be going.' Once we understand its nature and manner of operation, we will understand why 'esotericism' is commonly perceived as a separate field, a domain of otherness and weirdness. It will also become easy to see why intellectual or religious elites have so often depicted it as a subversive and dangerous threat to foundational Western values or, with even greater effect, as a laughable and silly fools' asylum.' Eventually, this polemical narrative became the chief template for 'external-Eurocentric' perceptions of non-Western cultures as 'irrational,' 'immoral,' 'backward,' 'uncivilised,' or otherwise 'inferior': manifestations of Eurocentrism that are basic to colonialist, imperialist and racist politics, and 'typically operate by means of projecting Western heresiological stereotypes such as 'primitive superstition,' 'sinister magic,' or 'the horrors of pagan idolatry'' upon peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America. For the first time in the history of the British census, in 2021, thousands of respondents declared their religion to be 'shamanism', while surveys in the US suggest that hundreds of thousands of Americans consult shamans regularly Insofar as the modern study of esotericism exposes the deep ideological structure of internal Eurocentrism and its effects on a global scale, Hanegraaff sees it as 'a profoundly decolonial project' that seeks to break the power of the dominant narrative on which the claims of Western superiority have historically been built. It does so by restoring all those marginalised, misrepresented, forgotten, excluded and discredited beliefs or practices – and the people who expressed them – to a status of normality and legitimacy in the complex history of Western culture. This allows us to see that the 'foreign Others' are not as 'Other' as we've been led to believe. The historical and theoretical underpinning provided by counter-normative intellectuals like Hanegraaff strengthens the mainstream legitimacy of breakthrough works such as Shamanism: The Timeless Religion and The Witch Studies Reader – portals onto worlds that have often either been suppressed or misrepresented by Eurocentrism, or else relegated to the field of 'amateur' or inadequately resourced research. After years of study – including ethnographic fieldwork with Mentawai communities on Siberut Island, Indonesia, and psychedelic use in the Colombian Amazon – anthropologist Manvir Singh concludes that shamanism as an institution is a near inevitability of human societies: 'a captivating package of practices and beliefs' that appears over and over because of its deep psychological appeal. He defines a shaman as a specialist who, through non-ordinary or altered states – also described as 'trance' or 'ecstasy' - engages with 'unseen realities' and provides services like healing and divination. 'Shamanism characterised the earliest human religions,' writes Singh, 'echoes in industrialised societies today, and will perpetually re-emerge.' Neo-shamanism, he argues, is just as 'real' as more traditional forms, and is rapidly gaining traction in the Global North. For the first time in the history of the British census, in 2021, thousands of respondents declared their religion to be 'shamanism', while surveys in the US suggest that hundreds of thousands of Americans consult shamans regularly. In trying to limit shamanism to far-flung or archaic societies, most commentators have denied the 'universality' of its principles and the intrinsic human need that it addresses: to try to control life's uncertainties. The Ancient Greek Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, Judeo-Christian prophets including Jesus, and multiple miracle-touting US TV personalities, are all shamans under Singh's definition. 'A serious global perspective helps to curb cultural vanity,' he writes, 'showing commonality where people otherwise assume difference and even superiority.' Addressing psychedelic use in shamanism, Singh draws conclusions that burgeoning hordes of psychedelic tourists and growing numbers of users in their own countries won't want to hear: the evidence for psychedelic therapy being a recapitulation of an ancient, worldwide shamanic tradition is scant at best. The Witch Studies Reader highlights how tens of thousands of poor, Indigenous and/or ageing women in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have been murdered for their association, real or imagined, with witchcraft 'This narrative might feel good,' writes Singh, 'but it mangles history in service of ideology. In so doing, it reinforces a distinction between primitive and civilized while projecting images that are Western-centric and attention-grabbing onto the diversity of the world's spiritual practices.' Dedicated 'to witches everywhere', The Witch Studies Reader – edited by Soma Chaudhuri and Jane Ward, professors of sociology and feminist studies respectively – is a beautifully-produced 500-page grimoire of over 30 essays by writers from around the world, with a fore fronting of witches of colour and voices from the Global South. I'm gobsmacked by the breadth, research quality and radicalism of this anthology, which is 'a gathering of the global coven' in 'an intersectional and decolonial approach to writing about witches.' This lens requires that readers in our culture look beyond the fashionable valorisation of witches, and grapple with the reasons that contemporary witch hunts have been omitted from Global North accounts of witches and witchcraft. It also requires that we note 'the ways that colonial, patriarchal, and white supremacist logics enable the exploitation and control of aging women's bodies, labour, and resources in every corner of the globe – with witchcraft accusations being but one method used to exercise this control of women.' Whilst incorporating fascinating insights and research on the kind of witchcraft 'glamour' and political activism we see breaking into the mainstream media in Western culture, The Witch Studies Reader highlights how tens of thousands of poor, Indigenous and/or ageing women in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have been murdered for their association, real or imagined, with witchcraft in the past eighty years. This violence is ongoing. Witch hunts, like colonialism and state-sanctioned slavery, are often presumed to be located at a historical point in time, away from which our society has progressed. In this important book, feminist researchers of contemporary witchcraft-related murders upend that presumption, documenting how the forces of patriarchy, global capitalism and land displacement continue to intersect to make women vulnerable to scapegoating during times of economic crisis. Ushering the esoteric counter-normative into 'academic discourse', with many scholars who are witches themselves, this book opens with a spell: May each word to follow be an offering to the infinite altar that holds our collective brilliance, the place where every witch's heartbreak wail and freedom spell has claimed its little corner, there, waiting, for the next witches to carry on the work Further Reading Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, tr. William Weaver, (Vintage, 2001). This satirical novel by Italian philosopher/writer, first published in 1988, demonstrates that the importance of esotericism to major poets and novelists isn't dependent on whether they endorse its ideas or worldviews. The novel is so full of references to Kabbalah , alchemy and other esoteric subjects that critic/novelist Anthony Burgess suggested it needed an index. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy by Mircea Eliade (Princeton University Press, 2004). Romanian emigrant-scholar Eliade (1907-1986) was one of the founders of the modern study of the history of religion. His study on shamanism, first published in 1951, quickly became the standard. While some of his findings have been eclipsed in the years since, his work is still necessary reading for shamanists. Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic and Power by Pam Grossman (Gallery Books, 2019). Part-memoir part-exploration, Grossman's account of her initiation into witchcraft, the meaning of the 'witch' as a powerful emancipatory archetype, and the expression of witchcraft and magic in the worlds of art, literature and radical politics, is an inspiring and erudite read. See also Grossman's Witch Wave podcast.
The Citizen
21-05-2025
- Business
- The Citizen
Videos: Minister highlights strategic importance of Ramaphosa's meeting with Trump
International Relations and Co-operation Minister Ronald Lamola has emphasised the significance of President Cyril Ramaphosa's visit to the United States (US), saying it is crucial for resetting bilateral trade relations between the two countries. 'It is very important, because America is South Africa's second largest trading partner, and also we are number one trading partner for the US on the [African] continent. So, there is a need to reset bilateral relations that are mutually beneficial between the two countries, so that will be the core of the engagement,' the minister told SAnews in an interview at the South African embassy in Washington D.C. Ramaphosa is due to meet with US President Donald Trump at the White House today. Part of broader foreign policy strategy This engagement marks an important moment in South Africa's broader foreign policy strategy. As a leading voice in the Global South, the country continues to balance relationships with both emerging economies and traditional Western partners. Lamola described the president's visit as highly important. Mutually beneficial partnerships The minister explained that this engagement forms part of the country's broader efforts to establish mutually beneficial partnerships, particularly in areas such as industrialisation, value addition, and the utilisation of South Africa's strategic mineral resources. 'It remains a very important visit. As you are aware, we engage with the Global North as well. This is part of an extension of that engagement, to engage on mutual beneficial relationship, particularly on issues of industrialisation, of value addition, strategic minerals in South Africa, and also on how we can work together in terms of manufacturing to benefit from the Africa Free Trade Area, as South Africa remains an important player and a gateway to the continent. This is a very strategic engagement,' the minister explained. Agoa and trade reset At the top of the agenda is the resetting of the trade relationship – particularly in light of the technical nullification of African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) benefits due to tariffs introduced by Trump's administration. Agoa is a US trade preference programme that benefits eligible sub-Saharan African countries, providing duty-free access to the US market for many products, including vehicles, citrus, wine, and some apparel. The minister said these tariffs have nullified the preferential access previously afforded to South African goods. 'I think the tariffs, as we have already said, have technically nullified Agoa because they impact on what was the preferential treatment of South African products. That's why it is very important that this engagement does take place, to reset those bilateral relations, to redefine the trade parameters between the two countries in a manner that still respects and values the Africa Free Trade Area,' he said. Beyond trade Beyond trade, the meetings are also expected to touch on other pertinent issues, including the country's transformation agenda. 'The most important is the reset of the bilateral trade relations between the two countries in a mutually beneficial way. Obviously, other issues may pop out during the engagements … like the one of the South Africans who were given refugee status in the US,' the minister said. Transformation Addressing concerns around South Africa's constitutional transformation imperatives, the minister emphasised that the transformation agenda is a constitutional mandate and a national imperative designed to benefit all South Africans, ensuring inclusive participation without exclusion. 'We continue to state that this is a very important programme for the people of South Africa to continue on the transformatory path that is beneficial to the whole of society, so that there is no exclusion of anyone and everyone can participate. And it is well known that there is no direct persecution, or any form of persecution of white Afrikaners as a race. 'We cannot avoid issues that can pop out for clarification, and we remain ready as and when they do pop up to respond and to deal with them,' said the minister. As the world watches this high-level engagement unfold, government says it remains focused on leveraging diplomatic platforms to drive inclusive growth and deepen international partnerships. Watch as the president explains his visit: The trade relations between South Africa and the United States will be the focus of my working visit here. We aim to strengthen and consolidate relations between our two countries. — Cyril Ramaphosa 🇿🇦 (@CyrilRamaphosa) May 20, 2025 We will also use the working visit to clarify South Africa's policy positions on a range of pressing geopolitical matters. — Cyril Ramaphosa 🇿🇦 (@CyrilRamaphosa) May 20, 2025 At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
Al Jazeera
18-05-2025
- Business
- Al Jazeera
Trump's tariffs are failing, but the old model won't save us either
On May 12, the United States and China announced that they are putting reciprocal tariffs on pause for 90 days. Some tariffs will be retained while trade negotiations continue, a joint statement said. This is yet another reversal of the sweeping tariffs US President Donald Trump imposed in early April that destabilised the global economy and sent stock markets into freefall. Although he claimed that his measures would make the US economy 'boom', it was clear from the start that they would not work. A trade war cannot improve the lot of American workers, nor bring back manufacturing into the country. Now spooked by corporations slashing profit targets and reports of the US gross domestic product (GDP) shrinking, the Trump administration appears to be walking back on its strategy. But going back to economic liberalism under the guise of 'stability' is not the right course of action. The current global economic system, distorted by policies favouring the rich sustained over decades, has proven itself to be unsustainable. That is why we need a new world economic order that promotes inclusive and sustainable development across both the Global North and South and addresses global socioeconomic challenges. The troubles that economies around the world currently face are the result of policies the elites of the Global North imposed over the past 80 years. In its original Keynesian vision, the economic order put forward by the Allied Powers after World War II aimed to combine trade, labour, and development best practices to foster inclusive growth. However, over the following few decades, corporate opposition in the US and Britain derailed this order, replacing it with a skewed system centred around the Global North's chief economic instruments, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, both created in 1944. In the 1970s, economic elites blamed rising inflation and stagnation not on temporary shocks like the oil crisis but on what they saw as excessive concessions to organised labour: government overspending, strong unions, and heavy regulation. Subsequently, they launched an institutional counter-revolution against the Keynesian model of power sharing and social compromise. This counter-revolution took shape in the 1980s under US President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who aggressively pursued policies to restore corporate profitability. They slashed taxes on the wealthy, liberalised international capital flows that made it easier to relocate production to low-cost economies, deregulated the financial sector, weakened labour unions, and privatised public services. As a result, outsourcing of labour, tax evasion, real estate speculation, financialisation, and credit-fuelled bubbles became US corporations' dominant ways of making profit. In developing countries, the IMF, the World Bank and regional development banks pushed governments to cut public spending, privatise state-owned enterprises, remove trade barriers, and deregulate markets rapidly and with little regard for social consequences. As a result, the 1980s and 90s became lost decades for many countries embracing globalisation through radical liberalisation. These policies triggered massive employment shocks, rising inequalities, skyrocketing debt and persistent financial turbulence from Mexico to Russia. East Asian economies were the exceptions, as they learned to circumvent the straitjacket of liberal globalisation and joined the global economy on their own terms. The biggest beneficiaries of this system were Western economic elites, as corporations profited from low-cost production abroad and domestic deregulation at home. The same cannot be said for Western workers, who faced stagnating real wages, eroded labour protections, and increasing economic insecurity under the pressure of competitiveness, relocation, and automation. For those of us who studied the post-war economic order, it was apparent that without correcting the pitfalls of liberal globalism, a nationalist, illiberal counter-revolution was coming. We saw its signs early on in Europe, where illiberal populists rose to prominence, gaining a foothold first in the periphery and then gradually scaling up to become Europe's most disruptive force. In the countries where they gained power, they pursued policies superficially resembling developmentalism. Yet, instead of achieving genuine structural transformation, they fostered oligarchies dominated by politically connected elites. Instead of development, they delivered rent-seeking and resource extraction without boosting productivity or innovation. Trump's economic policies follow a similar path of economic populism and nationalistic rhetoric. Just like illiberal economic policies failed in Europe, his tariffs were never going to magically reindustrialise the US or end working-class suffering. If anything, tariffs – or now the threat of imposing them – will accelerate China's competitive edge by pushing it to deepen domestic supply chains, foster regional cooperation, and reduce reliance on Western markets. In the US, the illiberal response will drag labour standards down, eroding real wages through inflation and propping up elites with artificial protections. Furthermore, Trump has no real industrial policy, which renders his reactive trade measures completely ineffective. A genuine industrial policy would coordinate public investment, support targeted sectors, enforce labour standards, and channel technological change towards good jobs. His predecessor, President Joe Biden, laid the foundations of such an industrial policy agenda in the Inflation Reduction and CHIPS acts. However, these programmes are now under attack from the Trump administration, and their remaining vestiges will not have a meaningful effect. Without these pillars, workers are left exposed to economic shocks and excluded from the gains of growth, while the rhetoric of reindustrialisation becomes little more than a political performance. While Trump's economic policies are unlikely to work, returning to economic liberalism will not resolve socioeconomic grievances either. Let us remember that past efforts to maintain this deeply flawed system at any cost backfired. Following the 2008 global financial crisis, Western governments rescued big banks and allowed financial markets to return to business as usual. Meaningful reforms of the global economic architecture never materialised. Meanwhile, the living standards of working- and middle-class families from Germany to the US stagnated or declined as wages flatlined, housing prices soared, and economic insecurity deepened. We cannot return to this dysfunction again. We need a new global economic order focused on multilateral governance, ecological sustainability, and human-centric development. Such progressive global multilateralism would mean governments coordinating not only on taxing multinational corporations and curbing tax havens but also on regulating capital flows, setting minimum labour and environmental standards, sharing green technologies, and jointly financing global public goods. In this new economic order, the institutions of global economic governance would make space for developing and emerging countries to implement industrial policies and build stronger ties with public finance bodies to mobilise patient, sustainable capital. This cooperative approach would offer a practical alternative to liberal globalism by promoting accountable public investment and development-focused financial collaboration. Parallel to the eco-social developmentalism in emerging economies, wealthy nations need to embrace a post-growth model gradually. This strategy prioritises wellbeing, ecological stability, and social equity over endless GDP expansion. This means investing in care work, green infrastructure, and public services rather than chasing short-term profits or extractive growth. For mature economies, the goal should be shifting from growing more to distributing better and living within planetary limits. This would also allow more space for low- and middle-income countries to improve their living standards without overexploiting our limited shared natural resources. With stronger cooperation between national and multilateral public finance institutions and better tools to tax and regulate corporations, governments could regain the capacity to create stable, well-paying jobs, strengthen organised labour, and tackle inequalities. This is the only way for American workers to regain the quality of life they aspire to. Such progressive multilateralism would be a powerful long-term antidote against illiberal populism. Achieving this shift, however, requires building robust global and regional political coalitions to challenge entrenched corporate interests and counterbalance the existing liberal, capital-driven global framework. The challenge is clear: not only to critique Trump's destructive policies but to present a bold, coherent vision of industrial renewal, ecological sustainability, and global justice. The coming months will show whether anyone is prepared to lead that transformation. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
