Los aranceles de Donald Trump ya son impopulares y han sido declarados ilegales por la Corte Suprema. Ahora, un hombre que afirma haber sido condenado injustamente por asesinato sostiene que la justificación declarada del gobierno para dirigir medidas contra países cómplices del trabajo forzoso es fundamentalmente hipócrita, dado que Estados Unidos depende de lo que él describe como esclavitud literal dentro de su propio sistema penitenciario.

Jeremy Busby, escritor y activista encarcelado en Texas durante casi tres décadas por una condena por asesinato que él dice que fue en defensa propia, planteó ese argumento en un ensayo publicado el domingo en MS NOW. Busby es fundador de la organización sin fines de lucro JoinJeremy.

"The Trump administration's claim that tariffs are needed to punish those 59 countries and the European Union, which it says are too permissive of forced labor" is hypocritical, Busby wrote. "I write this from Texas, a state that has kept me incarcerated for nearly three decades and is one of the country's biggest beneficiaries of forced labor."

La legalidad del trabajo penitenciario obligatorio en Estados Unidos se remonta a la 13.ª Enmienda, que abolió la esclavitud y la servidumbre involuntaria "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." Esa cláusula de excepción, ratificada en 1865, sigue formando parte de la Constitución y sustenta el sistema que describe Busby. Varios estados —entre ellos Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee y Vermont— votaron en 2022 para eliminar un lenguaje similar de sus propias constituciones estatales, lo que señala un movimiento de reforma creciente, aunque aún incipiente.

Busby recurrió a su experiencia directa para describir las condiciones dentro de las prisiones de Estados Unidos. "I have seen guards attack a man for his refusal to chop grass. I have seen countless others pepper sprayed for refusing to perform work details. Some of my college classmates were expelled from religious and educational programs for failing to show up for prison-mandated work," he wrote. "On any given day, nearly 2 million people are behind bars in this country. More than half of them, approximately 1.2 million, are held in state or federal prisons, where work is compulsory."

En su ensayo, Busby sostuvo que el sistema penitenciario esclaviza de hecho a los reclusos para producir bienes y servicios baratos para grandes corporaciones.

"Those assigned to agribusiness operations harvest some of the same crops — like cotton — that enslaved people once did," Busby argued. "They work under an armed guard on horseback, following the ‘same marching orders as their predecessors,’ the Texas Observer reported. In 2022 alone, Texas prisons raked in $58 million from sales of industrial products — such as soap and stainless steel tables — produced through forced labor. That sum was completely separate from the reported $51 million in earnings that same year from agriculture."

Agregó: "Incarcerated workers have a long history of inhumane treatment for any type of work stoppage. In 1908, Frank Pinkard received 39 lashes after refusing to continue digging a ditch in Texas. Other incarcerated workers were killed for disobeying work orders, according to historian Robert Perkinson, author of ‘Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire.’"

Busby enumeró los castigos aplicados a los presos que se niegan a trabajar, entre ellos "long-term placement in solitary confinement, which requires confiscation of all personal property" y la pérdida de "privileges like family visitation, telephone calls or the good-time credits needed for release can be stripped away. Commissary, entertainment and recreational access can be suspended.".

Finalmente concluyó: "If tariffs are an appropriate response to countries looking away from forced labor, then other countries would be justified in placing tariffs on us."

En declaraciones a AlterNet en julio, el economista Dr. Ed Gresser, vicepresidente y director de Comercio y Mercados Globales del centro de estudios de tendencia liberal Progressive Policy Institute, caracterizó los aranceles de Trump como una medida de "big-government" a pesar de su afirmación de ser un presidente de gobierno reducido. El economista Dr. Robert Shapiro, que fue asesor económico principal del presidente Bill Clinton, sostuvo que perjudican a la economía estadounidense al crear "uncertainty. Every investment is based on an assessment of the likely future demand for whatever you're investing in, and how much it's going to cost to produce it."

Añadió: "So there are assumptions about labor costs, material costs and other input costs — and again, about demand. If you have a set of arrangements that give you some confidence about the price of your inputs coming from Mexico or Canada, or about demand for goods in Canada — and don't forget, we have virtually no trade deficit with Canada; we have enormous trade, and it goes in both directions — so it's certainly right, and it's not just about investments based on these probabilities that the trade agreement can help reduce uncertainty about."