BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
In his January 20 inaugural address, U.S. president William Clinton signaled Washington's intention to press its dominant military and economic weight around the world. "America stands alone as the world's indispensable nation," he declared. "Our economy is the strongest on earth."

Less than three weeks later, Clinton presented his 1998 budget to Congress February 6. In it he lays out a five-year plan to continue the course of chipping away at the social gains of working people. Pushing his theme to "make this the American century," Clinton presented his administration's perspectives for the U.S. capitalist class on domestic and international policy.

Washington's economic drive against its rivals was clear at a recent meeting of the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. There, U.S. trade representative Charlene Barshefsky pressed for an agreement, concluded February 15, that opens up the telecommunications markets of 68 countries for companies based in United States and other imperialist countries.

The pact was supposed to be struck last April, but many governments resisted, fearing their leading companies would be overwhelmed by the telecommunications giants. "The developed countries will get the lion's share of this market," said Neil McMillan, a British official, who chaired the negotiations.

"U.S. companies are the most competitive telecommunications providers in the world; they are in the best position to compete and win under this agreement," Barshefsky bragged. She said Washington had "effectively exported the American values of free competition."

Officials at AT&T, the largest U.S. operator, said the "U.S. negotiating team went above and beyond to ensure the interests of U.S. industry were understood and reflected in this agreement." According to the New York Times, "Barshefsky, many countries complain, used the enormous weapon of access to the United States where - 50 percent of the world's telecommunications market is situated - to squeeze concessions from out of lesser economies."

The governments of Canada, Mexico, and Japan balked at pressure by Washington to permit foreign investors to attain majority shares of companies based inside their borders. The Mexican and Canadian regimes, however, conceded to some of Washington's demands, with the Mexican government increasing its foreign equity limit to 49 percent and Ottawa raising its equity limit to 46.7 percent.

U.S. capitalists vs. imperialist rivals
A February 8 gathering in Berlin of finance ministers and bankers from the so-called Group of Seven (G7) major industrialized countries highlighted the relative economic strength of the U.S. capitalist class against its rivals in Europe and Japan. Finance ministers and central bankers from the G7 countries - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States - issued a statement that the U.S. dollar had risen far enough. Over the last 20 months the dollar rose 33 percent against the Japanese yen and 17 percent against the German D-mark. Many bankers predicted it would continue to climb despite the G7 statement.

A few days before the G7 meeting, big-business dailies across the world reported that unemployment in Germany increased by an unprecedented 500,000 in January to 4.66 million workers, the highest level since the early 1930s. Meanwhile, Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto has warned of impending financial disaster in that country. Tokyo's banking system hit the skids when equity and property prices began collapsing in 1990, leaving the financial institutions with at least $350 billion in bad loans.

With the economies of Washington's imperialist rivals in the doldrums and the relative strengthening of the U.S. economy, capital is flowing into United States at a record pace. Foreign companies invested some $71.8 billion in the first nine months of 1996. Foreign investments in the United States could reach a record $95 billion for the year, according to estimates from Dean Witter Reynolds Inc.

"Stable capital is pouring in from British, German, French, Japanese, and other countries," a February 8 article from the Wall Street Journal reported. This has spurred a record climb in the stock market. The Dow Jones industrial stock average passed the 7,000 mark for the first time February 13.

"The U.S. growth model," crowed New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, "is now in ascendancy." With imperial arrogance, Friedman wrote in his February 9 column, "Every time I come over here to Europe, or visit Japan, I return home itching to invest more in the U.S. market.... Some exuberance seems quite rational."

Friedman's article was a response to remarks in December by U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who cautioned Wall Street sharks to avoid "irrational exuberance" in the financial markets.

While ruling-class mouthpieces like Friedman are gloating about higher stock earnings, the strengthened dollar has alarmed some weaker sectors of capitalists such as the auto barons, whose ability to compete at home and abroad has been hampered by the 7 percent rise in the dollar's exchange rate in the past year. The Big Three U.S. automakers complained that their share of the U.S. market fell 3.7 points in January, to 71.1 percent, while sales of Japanese car companies rose a comparable amount. Barshefsky argued that Tokyo was not living up to an agreement intended to boost U.S. auto parts sales in Japan.

Despite the good cheer of Clinton and other big-business politicians over the U.S. economy, the standard of living for workers continues to decline. A February 24 article in Business Week noted that from 1990 to 1995, nearly 850,000 workers were jettisoned from well-paying jobs at the ten largest "downsizers" - corporations like Boeing, General Dynamics, McDonnell Douglas, and IBM. "It's clear that corporate restructuring and downsizing are still in high gear," the article stated.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers acknowledged at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that a baby born in Shanghai has a better chance of making it to its fifth birthday than one born in New York.

As the U.S. rulers asserted their global economic might, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright embarked on a nine- nation tour of Europe and Asia to flex Washington's military muscles. Her agenda includes pushing for the expansion of NATO into eastern Europe in hopes of overthrowing the workers states there and reinforcing Washington's political and military dominance over its imperialist "allies" in Europe.

Clinton chips away at entitlements
The Clinton administration's 1998 budget proposals lay out the course the president has been pushing for some time: keep chipping away at entitlements, but avoid a frontal assault on the social wage of working people for now. The five-year budget plan he presented to Congress February 6 calls for cuts of $100 billion from Medicare and $22 billion from Medicaid.

The White House issued new rules February 6 that would halt disability benefits for 135,000 poor children and deny benefits for another 45,000 disabled children who would have qualified for assistance in the next five years.

The president's budget offered as a crumb to allocate $21 billion over five years to restore benefits for some legal immigrants and others receiving food stamps who were cut off after he signed the welfare law last summer. There is no indication, however, that the proposed change has a chance of passing Congress.

Clinton's budget proposals drew criticism from many Republicans and others because about 75 percent of the cuts come two years after Clinton will leave the White House. "In my  
 
 
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