EFF looks to China as antidote to Donald Trump 

The EFF has given up on the Brics+ bloc of countries ever offering a strong challenge to the US’s hegemony over global economic, political and social affairs. 

If anything, the red berets are adamant, it is China that has the potential to topple the US and bring some order to the global balance of forces that have forever been skewed towards the West. 

The EFF’s most recent central command team meeting, the second after the party’s national conference in December 2024, discussed the matter and other pressing issues. 

EFF national spokesperson Sinawo Thambo made the revelation during a wide-ranging conversation with Sunday World Engage this week. 

Thambo said the manner in which some Brics countries bent over backwards when US Presi-dent Donald Trump threatened 100% tariffs on them if they  
carried through their de-dollarisation offensive was proof that the group was hopeless. 

The only country which is part of Brics that has stood its ground against the US, he charged, was China, which has demonstrated it has the stamina and political will to finish what it started by confronting the Washington bullies head-on. 

“Donald Trump is right to say that Brics has capitulated. He says Brics has capitulated on the question of de-dollarisation because he threatened 100% tariffs on all Brics nations if we pursue. de-dollarisation. And you saw India visiting the White House immediately; you saw the US and Russia trying to mend their relations. Trump is now more aggressive towards Ukraine,” said Thambo. 

“South Africa has never had the backbone to do anything as it relates to Brics. China is the only Brics nation that has remained steadfast to the agenda that Brics is pursuing, which is resisting US imperialism. 

“So, I think Brics has become a non-factor, and anyone who still has any faith in Brics being the best unit of resistance to US imperialism and an alternative economy is living an illusion.” 

Thambo said the EFF was not just complaining but was providing political direction as laid out by party leader Julius Malema at the central command team meeting. “And the commander in chief (Malema), in his address to the second central command team, states that the EFF must now strongly align itself with the People’s Republic of China because, through this tariff war, they have exhibited to be the only ones who are not afraid to have allies the US doesn’t like, who are not afraid to stand up to the US and its imperialism. 

“And it is now Donald Trump who is grovelling to try to [negotiate and reach a] settlement with the People’s Republic of China after the US vice-president called the people of China peasants who manufacture for them. This after some stupidity and reckless, illiterate economic practices by Donald Trump as they relate to tariffs, where he was imposing reciprocal tariffs without an understanding of what that even means. He is imposing tariffs on nations that have no tariffs in the US, where there are free trade agreements with the US, such as Australia and Singapore.” 

Thambo went on, arguing that China’s pushback against US’s aggression was going to be the final blow that will KO the White House from its high horse of the globe’s only superpower. 

“I think the approach now should be coalescing with China for mutually beneficial relationships on trade and economic relationships, so that we can isolate the US.  

“They have begun a self-isolation process. And I think the EU and China should not allow them to recover from the blunder that they’ve made because they must live with it. And I think it can radically reconfigure international relations and global trade in a progressive manner. Rome is falling, and I think we should allow it to fall.” 

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Mawande Amashabalala