Why U.S. Imperialism Needs Trumpism

Ever since returning to office, Trump has been on a tear: nonstop executive orders, hostile economic measures, wild territorial claims and much more. He ordered the Pentagon to launch airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthis and develop plans for a military takeover of the Panama Canal. He has attacked vulnerable sections of the population, such as trans people, immigrants and women, and directed Elon Musk’s DOGE to take a buzz saw to the federal workforce.

Clearly, the Trump administration has put the imperial presidency on steroids. But it is important to understand why, as there is an underlying method to the madness. And that has nothing really to do with Trump himself, but rather everything to do with his mission: to break apart the liberal status quo, which has become excess baggage for the ruling class, and establish in its place a new, more openly reactionary order better suited to bolstering U.S. world dominance today.

Trump’s style is vile, boorish and dictionary-definition bullying; he doesn’t care for the diplomatic niceties of the liberals. It’s easy to get caught up with Trump the person, but it is necessary to look at the political trend that he represents and his actual objectives, rather than the form by which he pursues them.

Today, the U.S. ruling class is faced with rearming for Great Power conflict and possible war with China, and it must reorient society toward that goal. This reorientation is to take place expeditiously, and normal democratic channels and institutions allow too much time and room for noncompliance. Every corner of society—the federal bureaucracy, the courts, the universities, manufacturers, the working class—has to fall in line.

Under these conditions, the ruling class is less willing and able to tolerate dissent. Even the most unexceptional expressions of opposition are to be stomped out. This includes those in ruling-class circles who have stood in Trump’s way, from Democrats and Republican outliers like Liz Cheney to elements within the state machinery who previously targeted him and his allies. The widening dragnet against pro-Palestinian international students, well after the largely Democratic-orchestrated crushing of the campus encampments, sends a clear message: Even tepid protest against U.S. imperialism’s strategic interests will be met with the iron fist.

Some on the left brand Trump a fascist. One cannot discount the possibility that he has a copy of Mein Kampf on his bedside. However, he now sits on the throne of world capitalism. If Trump was a fascist, it would not be a matter of debate or trying to divine his thoughts. There would be fascist thugs breaking up union meetings and lynching black people. We would be organizing armed workers militias in defense of working people and the oppressed.

Trumpism is not fundamentally about the personal characteristics of its leading figure, but rather the broader goals of the U.S. ruling class as a whole. As Trotsky said of the different forms of bourgeois governments—fascism, Bonapartism (Trumpism) and parliamentary democracy:

The era of globalization hollowed out the U.S. industrial base and propelled China’s rise. From its high perch above all others after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the U.S. has fallen several pegs and now reached the point where the ruling class recognizes that decisive action is required to prevent further tumbling and the loss of its perch altogether.

The U.S. economy must be reindustrialized to meet the moment. Trump is trying to restore U.S. manufacturing like auto and steel. Both these, as well as high-tech industry, are crucial to ensuring the U.S. can supply itself in wartime. The usual diplomatic maneuvers, the gentle persuasion of regulatory action, the mild manipulation of market forces—none of these, even in combination, will get the job done on a suitable time scale, if ever. Only a far more aggressive approach could conceivably bring about such a thoroughgoing transformation. The ruling class has one force at its disposal for just such a task: the central government.

Hence the increased integration of the state with monopoly capital under Trump, with billionaires like Elon Musk at the center of it all. Under the government’s firm hand and cracking whip, all the resources of society can be marshaled for this monumental task, and any who refuse or resist can be forced into submission. This includes individual figures within the ruling class itself who might lose some of their business or personal fortune as a result of the economic upheaval. These capitalists are to be reminded that much more is at stake for their class. If the U.S. economy is not readied for a showdown with its rivals, then the door would be open to a much greater loss in standing.

Of course, success in this endeavor depends upon keeping workers’ noses to the grindstone. The state is required to take an increasingly forward role in disciplining the class struggle—not only to call to order wayward capitalists, but above all to impose “labor peace” on the working class. Sometimes this will involve the carrot, like the wage bribe of ILA longshoremen to prevent a resumption of their strike, sealed with a warm embrace between Trump and the union leadership. More often than not, though, it will involve the stick, like stripping federal workers of their collective bargaining rights and conducting workplace raids against immigrants. Greater state intervention into the economy necessitates greater state intervention into the affairs of the unions. Thus far, union bureaucrats like the UAW’s Shawn Fain have been playing right along, in many cases seamlessly transferring allegiance from liberal Democrats to Trump in a move that will prove just as disastrous to workers.

Trump’s “Liberation” Is Upon Us

From the beginning, Trump has made no secret of his preferred weapon: tariffs. With tariffs and trade restrictions, the U.S. imperialists intend to solve their problems at the expense of friends and foes alike. In place of liberal values as the mechanism to assert U.S. dominance, the ruling class has turned to more naked power plays. In a similar vein, Trump openly strong-armed Zelensky at the White House, resetting the terms of the alliance with Ukraine. In doing so, Trump aims to pull Russia away from China, while finding an exit from the losing war in Ukraine that is costing the U.S. imperialists a hefty sum.

Trump’s earlier testing of the tariff waters provoked not only howls and threats of retaliation from other heads of state, but also domestic stock market volatility and spiking prices of food and other basic necessities. On the international stage, Trump’s tariffs are an instrument to coerce governments into doing U.S. imperialism’s bidding and, in places like Europe, paying more for their military defense. Now, he has adopted “permanent” tariffs on his much-touted “Liberation Day.” Acknowledging that his actions might cause turbulence, the Trump administration baldly declared that a recession would be “worth it,” and Trump himself offered that he “couldn’t care less” about higher car prices. In other words, naysayers should shut up and get with the program.

The kind of shock therapy that Trump is applying to the economy does not mesh well with liberal democracy. In the case of the U.S., the intervention of the state as the general contractor of the capitalist class to reconstruct the economy is never a progressive development, and even less so when the goal is to further the ability of the most reactionary force on the planet to wreak even greater havoc across the globe. The trappings of liberal democracy just get in the way of this process. Why waste time debating the formal constitutionality of a policy, abiding by the order of a recalcitrant judge or entertaining opponents in the press or the streets? These things are to be treated as the unnecessary obstacles that they are from the standpoint of the ruling class.

Liberalism is the policy followed by the capitalists when their status is assured and they can afford the overhead—when it’s no skin off their teeth. But when they sense their back is going up against the wall, all bets are off. The tendency is for those democratic trappings to fall by the wayside, and an authoritarian state with a strongman at its center to emerge. Trump, the would-be dictator, is in the White House now not by some accident of history, but rather as a result of U.S. imperialism’s need to right itself.

The Trump administration has sold tariffs as the solution to U.S. imperialism’s slide. But his protectionist policies are an admission of weakness that will provoke retaliation by other countries against better-performing U.S. industries. Even more of a living hell is in store for working people in the U.S. and around the world, as the productive forces decline and the cost of goods jumps.

Trumpism is thus both an outgrowth and a catalyst of imperialist decay. Faced with mounting external and internal contradictions—e.g., between dependency on trade with China and the threat posed by its development—the U.S. ruling class has turned to the state to rise above class antagonisms in order to reorganize the nation’s resources to better confront its foreign rivals. This impulse, although assuming a very different form, was also at the core of Bidenomics. The CHIPS Act, which Trump denounced as “horrible” in his recent speech to Congress, is an example of Democratic-initiated state intervention to prepare the economy for a showdown with China. Trump shares its goal of reviving U.S. semiconductor production, only he wants to twist the arms of overseas manufacturers to relocate, rather than print money to fund it directly.

Bernie Sanders and AOC have been barnstorming the country on a “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. Of course, they are not about smashing the oligarchy but elevating their faction to run it. The New Deal and its social programs, which they hail, were not some great leap for the working class, but rather sustained state intervention to salvage American capitalism and ready it for the war on the horizon. Trump has started to more strongly merge the monopolies and the government. It would be a natural fit for the Democrats to pursue the same end down the road, only with more social-democratic coloration.

The Progressive Way Out

Capitalism in this country is pointed toward less democracy, greater militarization of labor and, eventually, more war—and will be no matter whether the Republicans or the Democrats are in charge. An aggressive defense on the part of workers in the U.S. against the attacks of the bosses and the ravages of tariffs would give them a fighting chance to beat back the worst of it. Such a defense would also create more space for the struggles of Mexican, Québécois and Canadian workers, who are majorly on the receiving end of Trump’s aggression. Whatever blows they can land to repel this aggression would, in turn, give some relief to the onslaught here. An anti-imperialist alliance of the workers across North America and beyond is essential to increase their capacity to fight back to the fullest extent against their common enemy. To bridge national divisions and further the defense of the interests of the working masses, including in the U.S., such an alliance would put opposition to the imperialist subjugation of Mexico and the national oppression of Quebec at its center.

The only progressive way out of the current mess is for the working class to seize the reins of industry and society itself. But any step in this direction is impossible while respecting the right of the U.S. rulers to dominate the world—the very thing driving the chaos. But this is the lie that the trade-union bureaucrats of all stripes preach. The working class must begin to take measures now to increase its unity and collective strength, so it can stand on its own two feet, rather than be dragged down by either wing of the ruling class and the union bureaucracy attached to it.