The second age of Trump
A time of monsters
23 February 2025
Trump signs off an executive order.
Karl Marx frequently warned against confusing appearance and reality, concentrating on the foam at the top of the beer while ignoring the chemical reactions occurring beneath the surface. Focusing on the peculiarities of Donald Trump’s character will not explain the dangers of the current moment. It is glaringly obvious that he has been put in place to meet the needs of US imperialism and is meeting almost no resistance.
The Democrats could have locked him up over the past four years, they could have taken mercy on US workers during the Biden years. Even a step back from the genocide in Gaza would have been enough to increase their vote and defeat Trump. Instead, they claimed Trump was a fascist, only to capitulate completely when he was elected.
As for the Republican Congress, they appointed a zoo of hucksters and crooks into the administration and refuse to exercise their role to restrain patently illegal acts by the Trump Musk duo.
So, the agenda of Trump represents the interests of US imperialism.
Nothing could indicate this more clearly than the bait and switch manoeuvre at the Trump inauguration. The petty-bourgeois MAGA base expected to see their triumph, only for their representatives to be pushed to the background by a slew of billionaire oligarchs.
Overall, the decay of US global hegemony and the subsequent increase in debt is the overwhelming issue. The US relies on the role of the dollar as the reserve global currency and its control of the world banking system, backed by the power of the US military, to extract wealth from other nations. It can no longer compete with the Chinese economy, so it plans to use sanctions and the threat of force to intimidate others and suppress their economies, with the immediate targets being their closest allies.
A corresponding attempt to restore profitability at home involves a ferocious attack on social security, health, education, and the basic structure of the US state as a regulator of industry. As is usual in these cases, the state uses racism and anti-migrant sentiment to retain the support of a section of it’s base, the difference in traditional fascism coming from the fact that the repression is organised by the state forces, for example Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE), rather than extra judicial fascist bands. Alongside this runs a policy of imposing evangelical beliefs on the family, on women and gay people, the gutting of educational systems and censorship of libraries.
A third element of the unfolding US approach is a tactical re-groupment internationally. It will no longer assert hegemony everywhere at once, falling back on spheres of influence where it hopes to win regional victories. In relation to Russia there is a vague hope that they may gradually detach that country from China, but the US is not calling for an end to attempts to bleed Russia, rather that the hot war be at least frozen and that the cost of the project now be borne by Europe.
West Asia remains central to their plans, hence the open endorsement of genocide and ethnic cleansing and upgrading of maximum pressure to starve Iran. The US is also reasserting the Monroe Doctrine of domination of Latin America, with threat of force and invasion already present.
Overall, the position of the administration is not a call for global peace. Rather it is China First. China must urgently be brought to heel before the US concentrates in detail on other regions.
An element of the new orientation was the early defunding of USAID. This was decried by liberals because of the collapse of aid projects. It led to cheers among many leftists because of allegations that the organisation had been a front for CIA operations and colour revolutions around the world. This view was supported by the sudden collapse of many political and media outlets proclaiming their support for western democracy. Over 80% of “independent” media campaigns in Ukraine collapsed overnight.
A full understanding of USAID has to be historical. At the end of the Second World War, when the US was the dominant military power, aid was a form of soft power that, parallel with CIA covert operations, helped to embed US sympathetic governments across the globe. As US economic power declined the aid element declined also and colour revolutions took the lead. Now both approaches are discarded to be replaced simply with support for genocide and outright force – a sure sign of imperial decay.
The attempt to realise this agenda involves installing Tump as King and absolute dictator. He declared, in line with a quote wrongly attributed to Napoleon, that:
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
He went on to say that only
he and the Attorney General (the sycophantic Pam Bondi) can determine what
the law is.
The reason for such absolutism
is that he intends to slash public service spending in the US, gutting
workers rights and the federal budget’s legal requirements.
To do so he illegally calls in Musk and his tech bros. The problem is that much of this spending is mandated - that is, legally agreed by Congress, so he has to take advantage of unquestioning Congressional support to nullify the structure of US government and install a dictatorship.
Many argue that this is a blip in US history and that in four years Trump will be gone. He wants to be president for life, but in any case, Biden continued many of his policies and, in relation to geopolitics, there is no longer a debate among the US elites. We are witnessing a sea change in imperialist policy.
However, built into the new situation are many instabilities. Trump is not a functioning president and believes that signing impressive decrees with a sharpie is the stuff of command. His megalomania is growing and he may not prove intellectually or physically stable. The coalition running affairs on his behalf have many differences.
More important are contradictions in overall US strategy.
The major component of the US strategy over decades has been military. Massive expenditure since Vietnam have seen defeat after defeat. Biden advanced military power in Gaza as far as he was able and it proved insufficient. Ukraine has proved a black hole for military expenditure, yet the Ukrainians have essentially lost the war.
The fact that Hamas is still standing after over a year of genocidal bombardment shows that military power is insufficient. The main obstacle to an overall triumph in the region is the inability of the US to invade Iran. Troops numbers are low and the quality of recruits poor.
A major weakness is in the supply of effective armaments. In Ukraine there was an insufficiency in basic supplies such as shells. More advanced missiles were expensive and produced in small amounts.
The main reason for military inefficiency is the military-industrial-congressional system. Weapons design and production is aimed at preserving the profits of the major arms manufacturers and corruption rules both in congress and in the Army command. There seems no easy way to adjust military innovation and supply.
Trump is contemptuous of the military and a firm believer in money power – in the power of sanctions and tariffs.
It is not the case that tariffs cannot be effective as shakedown on weaker economies such as Mexico and Canada. However, there would be blowback on the US economy and the devastation of Canada and Mexico would ripple out to produce global chaos. The contradiction between a western alliance and US proposals to take over Canada, Greenland, Gaza and Panama are too obvious to need explanation.
This contradiction in turn may lead to a larger BRICS alliance and a steeper decline of the dollar.
The sanctions regime against China has been largely ineffective. Their planned economy and strategic planning has seen them become independent of the US in many areas and demonstrate technical superiority in others.
A side effect of the struggle has been the growth of BRICS and a weakening of dollar dominance in the global market.
A much stronger level of sanctions has been applied to Russia, China and Iran, with North Korea completely cut off.
The attempt is being made to combine political and military power to restore dominance. In the past the US was willing to bribe poorer nations and use the UN as a cover for legitimacy. Now it wants to dismantle the institution.
The rise of Trumpism mark 2.0 most likely indicates a further decline of the US. But this is not automatic. We must also access the quality of the opposition. In the US the Democrats have been the graveyard of opposition currents. The majority of leftists remain in the Democrats and the struggle to build an opposition will take time.
The international opposition centres around BRICS. To what extent does this represent a coherent opposition rather than a spontaneous self-defence group? To some extent this rests on Chinese claims to socialism. In our view this is unconvincing. The CCP is very conscious of the working class and has lifted living conditions at an incredible rate, but this is very different to working class rule.
A linked idea is that multipolarity, led by China and Russia, will unconsciously lead to an alternative. This has been largely exploded by the collapse of the Syrian regime and the subsequent collapse of the idea of an “Axis of Resistance” led by Iran and supported by Russia.
The thing is, the working class in the West has held on to traditional leaderships in the unions, in social democracy and in nationalism. Political action has fallen to the leftist groups and the NGOs.
We are now approaching an endgame. The alternative to Trump 2.0, to global austerity and war, is socialism. The starting point for a new socialist movement is a realistic description of capitalism today and an outline of the tasks of the working class.
Not, imperialism reborn, not multipolarity, but socialism and working-class internationalism.