Four Steps to Show Trump He’s Not Welcome!

American Warlord-in-Chief Donald Trump should not feel welcome in the Philippines—but he does! We propose the following four steps to turn this situation around:

1. Opposing Trump is not enough. We need to oppose his Filipino enablers, too.

First and foremost, this means opposing President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. He’s rolling out the red carpet for Trump and planning a massive police operation to repress protesters. It means opposing right-wing populists like Baste Duterte and Robin Padilla, who talk big about defending national sovereignty but just “rocked and rolled” with Trump’s ambassador Lee Lipton in Davao. The same goes for pro-U.S. liberals like Leni Robredo and Senator BAM Aquino.

While the Liberals, Tindig Pilipinas and their social-democratic hangers-on in Akbayan Party all criticize corruption and inequality at home, it’s a different question when it comes to BBM’s anti-China, Zionist-friendly foreign policy and his development schemes based on selling the country out to the imperialists, like Pax Silica. The fact is that these “progressives” share the Marcos administration’s pro-U.S. orientation and support to U.S. interests from the South China Sea to Occupied Palestine. (Plus imperialist oppression is the cause of this country’s poverty and backwardness. But the liberals do not support the struggle for national liberation from imperialism, and that makes all their talk of domestic reforms completely hollow.)

Support for pro-American politicians makes Donald Trump feel welcome. So why are leaders of the anti-Trump protest movement backing them? Why is it ok for BMP national president Atty. Luke Espiritu and former Bayan Muna Rep. Teddy Casiño to promote Leni Robredo, who wishes Marcos success and maintains friendly ties to Zionist Israel (which is an important arms supplier of the Philippine military, by the way)? There needs to be a political struggle inside the movement against to expose the U.S. lackeys and their conciliation of imperialist interests. The movement’s leaders must choose: are they with the liberals or are they against U.S. imperialism?

2. Oppose Trump’s Onslaught Against China.

The Trump administration’s main objective is to reverse the rise of China in order to maintain U.S. imperialism’s stranglehold on the world. As a U.S. neo-colony on the front line of this conflict, the Philippines is absolutely strategic to this aim. Yet the Philippine left is buying in to Trump’s anti-China campaign. That support makes Trump feel welcome here.

Equating China and the U.S. is a capitulation to the real imperialist oppressor of this country. It is not China whose tariff wars and shooting wars are devastating our economy. It is not China that has troops and offensive missiles stationed here, threatening to drag the nation to war. Yes, the PRC’s aggression in the South China Sea and its conciliation of brutal despots like Rodrigo Duterte are totally reactionary. But it is being driven by the American offensive, trade wars and military encirclement of China.

The best way to undercut the Communist Party of China’s oppressive and nationalist policies is for us to fight for an anti-imperialist alliance with the Chinese workers and peasant masses. Throwing the U.S. imperialists out of the Philippines is in their interests, too, since their country is America’s main target. We must show the Chinese masses that it is in their interest to support us in this fight. The Chinese masses want to defend the state established by their revolution, that threw the imperialists out of China and allowed for unprecedented economic development. We will never win their support unless we take their side against imperialism.

3. The left must answer Marcos’s economic blackmail. We need a socialist perspective for development!

Marcos says Pax Silica will bring jobs and development. In order to make the population accept the displacement of indigenous people and peasants, environmental devastation and violations of the nation’s sovereignty, he is blackmailing the nation with the argument that it is necessary to bow to the imperialists in order to attract foreign investment and develop the country.

It is a trap for leftists to accept Marcos’s framework. We need a solution that can bring jobs and development while safeguarding the rights of peasants and indigenous people, the environment and national sovereignty. The Philippines has been impoverished and had its development held back by centuries of imperialist plunder.

We do need investment, trade and technology to go forward. But this needs to be on terms that benefit the working people, instead of just creating superprofits for the imperialists and lining the pockets of the oligarchs of PCCI and the Makati Business Club. It is by bringing the masses into the struggle that we can wrest the best possible terms from foreign investors. It’s true that foreign investors may threaten to withdraw their funds if we fight back. But we must not live like slaves. Against the threats of foreign investors, we can appeal to China for investment and technology. Helping us throw off the American yoke will help China’s own economic development and help it to break through U.S. encirclement.

4. Environmental restoration—at the expense of the imperialists and oligarchs, not the working people.

Imperialist plunder has taken a heavy toll on the environment, from climate change to mineral extraction, overfishing and the diversion and exploitation of water, power and resources for the U.S. military-industrial build-up against China. The imperialists and oligarchs who profited from the devastation should be made pay to put things right! The masses must be brought into the struggle to force the exploiters to pay up.

Because they respect capitalist property rights, the environmentalist solutions of the liberals and NGOs inevitably mean that the working people pay the cost of environmental damage, not the oligarchs and not the imperialists. We’ll never be able to bring the toiling masses into the struggle if to comes at their expense. It’s necessary to break our ties to bourgeois environmentalists. It’s only by making this an anti-imperialist, anti-oligarch fight that we can rally the masses and push back the Trump administration’s attacks.

Let’s put the movement’s energy and enthusiasm to good use. There needs to be a political struggle against the pro-American politicians and labor leaders, the conciliation of U.S. imperialist interests and respect for the oligarch’s rule within the movement, so it’s clear to everyone that Trump and his lackeys aren’t welcome in the Philippines.