Paul Craig Roberts: “Indeed, why are there negotiations at all?”
GEOFOR
CENTER FOR GEOPOLITICAL FORECASTS, Moscow — April 8, 2025
Paul Craig Roberts: “Indeed, why are there negotiations at all?”
Shealah Craighead / White House
The GEOFOR editorial board asked Paul Craig Roberts – Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy (USA), a PhD in Economics and US Undersecretary of Treasury in the Reagan administration – with a request to assess the course of negotiations between Russia and the United States, as well as their prospects.
– Despite numerous statements claiming that U.S.-Russia negotiations are progressing well – and the fact that Moscow has even sent its ambassador to Washington – it seems that there has been little real progress on the issue of Ukraine. At least, this is the impression given by the actions and statements of the Ukrainian side, as well as by the way European countries continue – and even attempt to increase – their military support for Kiev. Do you believe this to be the case? And how do you see the prospects for the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict?
The prospect for ending the conflict would be much better if President Putin had kept control of the process. Instead President Putin entered into an unknown process in search of an unspecified agreement. By doing so President Putin has allowed extraneous issues to clutter the process, such as President Trump’s demand for Ukraine’s rare earths as payment for US military and financial aid during the Biden regime. This is now an issue in the negotiations between Trump and Zelensky even thought it has no relevance to ending the conflict. What will be the next issue that will cloud the process?
According to the CIA confession recently published in the New York Times, the conflict in Ukraine from the very beginning was a war between the US and Russia, a war started and conducted by Washington. Ukraine merely provided the war dead. With the intention of initiating a conflict with Russia, the US overthrew the elected Ukrainian government and installed a US puppet. While President Putin attempted to dodge the reality with the Minsk Agreement, the US trained and equipped a large Ukrainian army. President Putin, who was unprepared, was forced to intervene in Donbas when the Biden regime, NATO, and the EU cold-shouldered President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov’s plea for a mutual security agreement, and the Ukraine army was poised to invade Donbas and subdue the two independent republics.
Therefore, as the conflict since its beginning has been between Washington and Russia, why is Zelensky a party to the negotiations? Indeed, why are there negotiations at all? President Putin’s job is to deliver a military victory and impose the terms of peace on the defeated, not to risk negotiating away a Russian victory. Why is Zelensky a party to a peace settlement when his term of office expired months ago? What does it mean for Trump and Putin to sign an agreement with a person who under the Ukraine constitution is not a member of the Ukraine government?
The claim that “negotiations are progressing well” is nonsense. How are negotiations going well when President Trump is treatening Putin with more punishments when it is Putin who is keeping Trump’s agreement and Zelensky? NATO? Washington? who is/are violating it? How does Trump’s outburst against Putin build confidence that the negotiations need?
It does not. So, is Trump serious, or is he just enjoying being a tough guy on the world scene?
The problem with ending the conflict is the way Putin conducted it. It was as if President Putin was afraid of obtaining a victory. To avoid a victory Putin paid a high price in Russian casualties. The war was conducted as if its objective was negotiations. Instead of a Russian victory, Putin seems to want a great party settlement, another Yalta agreement. This is my opinion of why Putin acted as he did. He saw the war as a means of coming to a broader settlement with the West.
The consequence of the never-ending war is that it has taken Putin months longer to remove Ukrainian forces from a few kilometers of Russian territory than it took Stalin’s Red Army to drive the German Wehrmacht out of thousands of miles of Russia, Eastern Europe, and enter the streets of Berlin, and in Ukraine Russian territory is still in Ukraine’s or Washington’s hands.
To the world, the way Putin has conducted the war looks like a failure of Russian arms, and this has been the message of the Western media during the entirety of the conflict. If this is the way Trump also sees it, it is bad news for the Ukraine negotiations. Trump will see himself dealing with a weak opponent who cannot win a war. So why make any concessions? Why not pile on demands? Trump is in a mortal conflict with the American Establishment. A victory over Putin boosts Trump’s status in his domestic conflict.
If Trump wants to end the war in Ukraine, it is a very simple step. All Trump has to do is to say that the war would not have happened if the Democrats had not stolen his 2020 reelection, that he has no stake in the conflict, and is withdrawing America’s participation. That leaves Zelensky facing Putin to resolve the issue. If Putin had quickly won the conflict, it would not be an issue today.
– In addition to the Ukrainian issue, the U.S.-Russia dialogue also includes questions of normalizing relations and restoring mutual trust. In this context, how do you assess the recent visit to Washington by the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, who reportedly held ten hours of high-level talks at the White House on a wide range of issues – from joint development of Russia’s rare earth deposits to restoring air services between our countries? In your opinion, how realistic is constructive dialogue in these areas, especially if the negotiations on Ukraine reach an impasse?
If Kirill Dmitriev is an Atlanticist Integrationist enamored of the West, he will be taken to the cleaners. Wall Street would love to again get their hands on Russia and its assets. The exploitation of Russia would keep Wall Street in plenty for decades. I regard this development as extremely in advance of any evidence that would support at this stage Russia opening its resources to the West. It would be an act of national suicide for Russia.
– As always, I can’t help but ask about domestic politics in the U.S. The Republican majority in Congress is currently quite slim, and according to media reports and pundits, there also appears to be a lack of consensus within the party itself regarding the foreign policy direction of the new administration. To what extent do these factors limit President Trump’s ability to carry out his plans? And does he have the means to overcome them?
In recent articles, www.paulcraigroberts.org, I describe why the Trump regime does not understand all of the forces that are operating on the world. Trump is handicapped by this lack of understanding. He is also handicapped by the fact that the majority of Republicans both in House and Senate are not with him. The Republican Establishment–RINOs–Republicans In Name Only, enjoy life in the existing American Establishment in which their reelection is made secure by campaign donations from the Israel Lobby, the Military/Security complex which always needs an enemy, the pharmaceutical companies, agri-business, financial interests, and energy interests. It is the powerful private interests that rule America, not people voting. The winning political candidates owe their position to those who finance their campaign, not to those who vote for them.
The RINOs will support Trump to a degree, because the advaantage of being the ruling party is that you control the Congressional committees and subcommittees and get the rewards of being the whore for the American Establishment.
President Trump is up against an institutionalized Establishment, sophisticated in political warfare and accustomed to ruling. For Americans, this is the fight that counts, not a fight with Iran for Israel or a fight over Ukraine. But if Trump cannot win his domestic fight, he will have to seek victory abroad. Therefore, Russia, Iran, and China remain potential targets.
The Tariff Issue
The Tariff Issue
Paul Craig Roberts
The tariff controversy is being colored in the most scary ways possible, because the Democrats, media, and ruling establishment want rid of Trump. It is also important to understand that tariffs are not the only way to limit imports. There are other means, such as quotas. Quotas on imports into the US of Japanese cars were part of the US auto producers bailout negotiated in the final year of the Carter administration.
I will attempt to put the issue in a correct perspective. It is not Trump’s intention, at least at the present time, to institutionalize a tariff regime. Trump is using tariffs as a threat to secure agreements that he thinks are in America’s interests. So far 50 countries have, according to reports, agreed to remove their tariffs on US goods. The countries responding aggressively seem to be China and our European allies. I explained yesterday how Trump could better have gone about his task. Nevertheless, as the Commerce Secretary said, Trump’s tariffs are not expected to extend beyond a few weeks or a few months of negotiation.
During this time there could be supply disruptions. Apparently, Trump is aware and has released an 11-page appendix that exempts all sorts of imported items that US producers require to continue their operations. Whatever disruption does occur, should be small compared to the Covid lockdown supply disruption, the basic cause of the current inflation. The Covid disruption was pointless and counterproductive. The tariff disruption, if there is one, is the cost of establishing a fair and uniform trading system.
So, Trump is not being arbitrary or on a rampage to destroy international trade. Tariff negotiations, especially with so many countries and products can go on for years. Trump might think that he only has two years to get anything done before the Democrats steal the midterm elections and bring his renewal of America to a halt.
President Trump has spoken of tariffs in a wider and much more important context. Over most of American history until the First World War, tariff revenues were the source of government revenues. An income tax was unconstitutional and a violation of freedom. The definition of a free person is a person who owns his own labor. A slave does not own his own labor, and a serf only owns part of his labor. A person required to pay an income tax does not own that part of his labor that he must provide to government in order to avoid imprisonment. The difference between a medieval serf and an American taxpayer is the serf paid the tax in kind as hours worked, and the American pays the tax in money as a percentage of his income.
Classical economists, real economists unlike the faux ones of today, understood that factors of production–labor and capital–should not be taxed, because the supply of both to the economy is reduced by taxation. Supply-side economics is based on this principle. Thus, its emphasis on lowering the marginal rates of taxation. Reducing the supply of factors of production, reduces the economic growth rate and the national income. The century that the US economy has labored under income tax has costs us substantially in lost income. The classical economists said that taxation should fall on consumption not on factors of production.
Traditionally, imported items are finished goods–German cars, French wines and perfumes. High priced goods are for the wealthy, so tariffs fall on the rich. The working class does not indulge in Porsche cars and Clicquot champagne. However, for about 30 years much of our imports have consisted of the offshored production of US firms. When Apple, for example, brings its products made in China to the US to be marketed, they come in as imports and worsen the US trade deficit. Instead of beating up on China, Trump should call the US corporations that offshore their production for US markets to a White House conference and point out to them the consequences of their policy: the shrinkage of the American middle class, the loss of tax base, decaying infrastructure, and loss population of America’s former manufacturing cities, the pressure on city and state pension systems, the pressure of lower ratings on municipal bonds. Trump should ask the executives if they went too far in maximizing profits that benefitted a relatively few at the expense of the many, and what they think they should do about it. Capitalism ceases to serve the general interest when it separates Americans from the incomes associated with the production of the goods and services that they consume.
Trump has spoken of returning to tariffs as the source of government revenues and abandoning the income tax. This is consistent with correct economics and with freedom. Such a change would be possibly the most important reform in American history.
It would be a difficult reform to achieve, because ideological, not economic, considerations intervene. Taxing the rich became the agenda of mass democracy. Taxing the rich was not seen as punishing a person for being successful. A successful person was portrayed as having become rich by exploiting labor. As fortunes were “stolen” by exploiting labor or resulted from government preference or legal privilege, income taxation was perceived as an instrument of justice. It is certainly perceived that way today by the liberal/left and the Democrat Party.
As an income tax is emotionally satisfying to the liberal/left, we are stuck with slower economic growth an less national income.
It is disturbing that the liberal/left agenda has made American politics so highly partisan. What we see today is literal hatred of Trump, Republicans, conservatives, and white heterosexuals by the liberal/left. Hatred makes democracy dysfunctional. Politics cannot function as each side is intent on destroying any achievement by the other side. As democracy ceases to function, dictatorship becomes the means of governance. The liberal/left’s agenda to remake America by destroying its roots and recasting it into a different kind of society means the death of democracy and the rise of dictatorship. This is our real problem.
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