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In an extraordinary September 27 speech in Clinton Township, MI, delivered to hundreds of UAW members and other industrial workers, Donald Trump defined a new phase in the battle for the nation. With laser-like precision, he focused on the real enemy:  “a global financial class,” “Wall Street predators,” “financial forces,” and the “blood-sucking globalist(s).” In contrast, Mumbling Joe Biden (who spoke for 90 seconds to about a dozen UAW picketers the day before), the Democrats and the UAW leadership spend their time attacking the “greedy” corporate CEOs and the billionaires. Trump made clear that the fight has a different character—it is a fight between America’s workers, producers and families on the one side, and this globalist financial class on the other.

LaRouchePAC founder Lyndon LaRouche often spoke of the “political mass strike,” a movement which emerges when broad layers of the population rise above narrow and parochial issues and join together in a fight around a higher principle and against a common enemy. Donald Trump demonstrated his understanding of that when he declared, “if you want to save your livelihood and your way of life, you need to send a message and join the ultimate strike against the globalist class by casting your vote for a gentleman known as Donald J Trump.”

He continued, “They represent a deep state bureaucracy, a global financial class, and a political class that have taken control of this country for their own enrichment and self purposes, stealing your wealth and stealing your labor, while shipping off our best and brightest to die in expensive, exotic foreign wars.” 

Two Systems Before the World

The recognition that it is an entire system which has failed and must be replaced by a new system based on different principles, was implicit in Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Now it is explicit and it is striking terror within the ranks of the imperial elite, as they see new waves of  Americans joining the MAGA movement. In this historic speech, Trump focused on two critical elements of the needed new system.

First, and most immediately obvious in the UAW strike, is the need to end the green-agenda- driven forced march into electric vehicles, which UAW President Shawn Fain has called a “race to the bottom.” On Wednesday night, President Trump made clear, “You can be loyal to American workers or environmental lunatics, you can’t be loyal to both.” He stressed that Biden’s EV-mandates “will destroy auto manufacturing and will destroy our country.“ 

Throughout his speech, Trump poked at the Big Three automakers, challenging them to fight against Biden’s mandate, rather than capitulating to it and going broke. He made clear to the striking auto workers that, while higher wages are important, the fundamental question was whether they would still have jobs in two years. “Biden’s EV mandate isn’t a regulation; it's an assassination of your jobs and your industry.”

The second, very powerful element of President Trump’s speech was his assertion of the need to return to protectionism. “We will bring back a very beautiful word, protectionism. Patriotic protectionism… Protecting our workers, protecting our jobs, protecting our industries. .. protecting the great American dream.” As he did in a June speech in Michigan, he described how he used tariffs to defend American jobs and to conduct foreign policy. 

Trump’s call for a return to “patriotic protectionism” and “economic nationalism” is a direct assault on the free trade and “limited government” ideologies that have been used by Wall Street and the City of London to leave the productive sectors of our economy defenseless. Trump is prepared to use our government as our founders intended. “We will wield every lever of government to defend you and to hold accountable those who have profited from the suffering of American factory workers… As your 47th President of the United states, I will be your protector and your advocate and I will be your greatest champion.”

Donald Trump understands the magnitude of the fight, telling his audience, “ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been preparing my entire life for this battle.” And, he also knows that the stakes are high, “Now, I put it all on the line to fight for you. I have to risk it all to defend the working class from the corrupt political class that has spent decades sucking the life and blood out of this country. That is why I am here tonight to lay out a vision for the revival of economic nationalism.”

Jason Miller, a senior Trump advisor, called this speech one of the most important ever delivered. He is right. Donald Trump has reasserted the basic principles, both political and economic, which led to our break with the British Crown and to the creation of the world’s first constitutional republic. That is what must drive our political battle, now and through the 2024 election. And that is the import of President Trump’s challenge to “join the ultimate strike against the globalist class.”