United States (US) Pres. Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff hikes sent the biggest single day economic policy shock through the global capitalist system since, well, so long enough ago that it’s hard to remember when. Maybe it really is just the famously explosive Trump haphazardly wielding the vast powers of the presidency in his bid to “Make America Great Again”. Maybe.

But that would assume that US capitalism’s painstakingly crafted political economy has so completely broken down that some random buffoon could just rise to the top of the most powerful government presiding over the largest economy and most lethal military on earth – and then just do things on insane random whims. It may be useful to look beyond the bombast though and consider that many illiberal autocrats may be gaining populist electoral legitimacy, rising to power, and undertaking radical policy shifts because of deeper structural tendencies in play.

Rather than a merely skillful political charlatan taking the presidency, it’s perhaps a little bit more likely that Trump is somehow playing a role in the US’s radical rethinking of strategy for how an empire maintains hegemonic dominance upon the dramatic changes in the world after half a century of neoliberal globalization. Instead of smugly dismissing the policy steps of the US as just out of the hyper-ego or incompetence of an individual, it’s probably better to start by recognizing that what’s happening is driven by the structural malice of US imperialism.

Motive

Why is the US doing what it’s doing? Its overarching motive is to retain and reassert American imperial hegemony, especially against the spectacular rise of China. The US is doing this while adjusting to the specific financial and economic conditions created by the globalization era which started in the 1980s and is in its twilight years today.

It’s economic, most of all. The US wants to reindustrialize to regain lost manufacturing and related technological leadership. This is not just to complement its current dominance in many high-technology digital sectors but to actually ground these sectors, many of which are services, in domestic manufacturing capacity. Financial and technological corporate elites will meanwhile remain favored with tax cuts and substantial regulatory relief.

The US has to do this while managing increasingly unsustainable record-high government deficits and debt. It still has the so-called exorbitant privilege of being able to borrow cheaply because of the global dominance of the US dollar. However, the bloating debt over the last decades of globalization is testing the limits of this “privilege”.

But as ever, it’s also military – because economic hegemony must always be underpinned by overwhelming military dominance. When the White House declared that Trump is “leading with peace through strength,” it stressed that he will “[restore] the US military’s mission of lethality [to] restore safety and security around the world” and do this by “re-establishing the US military as the strongest, most powerful fighting force in the world.”

Means

Does the US have the capacity to get what it wants? Notwithstanding many legitimate observations about the decline of the US, it is in many important respects still an unmatched superpower. Trump and the ruling corporate and oligarchic elites he represents are gambling a lot, but their bravado is not totally unfounded.

The US is still the largest economy in the world. In 2023, the US accounted for 26.1% of the world economy followed by China with 16.8% and then distantly by Germany at 4.3 percent. These are measured with gross domestic product (GDP) at current exchange rates instead of the purchasing power parity (PPP) figures which are, in the context of measuring economic power, misleading.

Its share even increased a little, by 1.2 percentage points, from 25% in 1980. This is often overlooked because it’s so overshadowed by the phenomenal 15.1 percentage point increase of China from 1.7% in 1980. The momentum China built up through the globalization years is unmatched and justifiably threatening to the US.

The so-called rise of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is mainly the rise of China which is catching up with the US. While the combined share of the original BRICS in the global economy rose from 7.8% (1990) to 24.4% (2023), this is overwhelmingly due to China. The rest of the other BRICS bloc saw their shares in global GDP fall, with the exception of India whose share increased marginally by 2.2 percentage points.

Trump has reason to accuse US allies in the traditional G7 imperialist bloc of somehow free-riding on its efforts and not pulling their weight. While the US’s share of global GDP increased by 1.2 percentage points between 1980 and 2023, all six non-US members of the G7 saw their shares of global GDP drop over that same period – Japan’s by 5.9 percentage points (to 4% of global GDP), Germany by 4.1 percentage points (to 4.3%), France by 3.2 percentage points (to 2.9%), Italy by 2 percentage points (to 2.2%), United Kingdom by 1.7 percentage points (to 3.2%) and Canada by 0.4 percentage points (to 2%). The weakening of all the non-US G7 members caused the combined share of the G7 to fall from 65.5% of global GDP (1990) to 44.6% (2023).

In this economic sense, the world has become bipolar around the US-China axis. The current multipolarity is more in how the weakening influence of the US-led G7 and the rise of the China-led BRICS as some kind of alternative has emboldened more countries to be more geopolitically assertive.

The US is still the world’s largest foreign investor. Its US$9.4 trillion in outward stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2023 was 21.3% of the global total, and nearly double that of China’s US$5 trillion (including Hong Kong) or 11.2% of the global total.

At the same time, the Trump administration knows that it is still the world’s premier FDI destination – the US hosts the most foreign investment in the world where its inward FDI stock of US$12.8 trillion accounted for 26.1% of the global total in 2023, compared to US$5.8 trillion in China (including Hong Kong) which is 11.7% of the global total. The largest part of inward FDI in the US is already in manufacturing at US$5.5 trillion in 2023.

There’s further reason for Trump to be confident. Global FDI flows contracted for the second straight year in 2024, by 8% to US$1.2 trillion. The biggest contraction was in the European Union (EU) where FDI flows fell 45% (especially in Germany, Italy, Spain and France) followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (9% contraction) and Asia (7% contraction). In particular, FDI flows to China contracted for the second consecutive year, by 29%, and are now 40% lower than their peak in 2022. In contrast, FDI flows to the US increased 10% in 2024.

The US is still the world’s biggest consumer market. This stems not just from having the world’s biggest economy but also from having the richest consumers in the biggest consumer market in the world. This vast domestic market is where Trump gets his confidence that firms will keep selling to the US or even set up behind whatever tariff walls are built. The US is a major market for consumer products as well as for industrial goods and services, especially as reindustrialization picks up.

The US’s nominal GDP was US$29.2 trillion in 2024. Its GDP per capita of US$82,769 is technically only the eleventh highest worldwide but the combined population of the 10 “richer” countries (26.6 million) – Monaco, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Bermuda, Ireland, Switzerland, Cayman Islands, Isle of Man, Norway and Singapore – is even less than that of either just California (39.4 million) or Texas (31.3 million) in the US.

The US’s personal consumption expenditure was US$19.8 trillion in 2024, of which US$6.2 trillion was for goods and the balance of US$13.6 trillion for services. The US was also the world’s biggest importer in 2024 with US$3.3 trillion in goods and another US$822.3 billion in services.

Because of all this, the US – despite its 334.9 million population accounting for just 4.2% of the world’s total – made up a hugely disproportionate 31.4% of the world’s household final consumption expenditure in 2023. This was nearly three times greater than China’s 11.6% share even though it is the world’s second biggest economy with a much larger 1.4 billion population (17.5% of the total). To put this further into context, the US private consumer market alone is as large as that of the 105 middle-income countries combined, as classified by the World Bank, which together account for 75% of the world’s population.

Aside from being the world’s biggest consumer market, the US is also the world’s biggest service exporter and accounts for US$1.03 trillion or 12.7% of total global services exports of US$7.9 trillion. These are prominently in financial services, professional and business services, information and communication services, and intellectual property – which embeds the US in many foreign industries and markets – and also travel/tourism, and other services. Adding services supplied by US transnational firms’ extensive foreign affiliates would likely even add over US$2.1 trillion more to US service exports.

The US is still a financial and technological powerhouse, despite the prominent challenge from China and other shifts in the global economy. Principally, the US dollar remains the world’s main reserve currency and the most widely used currency for international trade and other transactions globally.

The share of the US in the global economy has halved since 1945. Although the share of US dollar holdings in global holdings of foreign exchange reserves in specified currencies is down from more than 70% in 2000, it still accounted for 57.8% of the total US$11.5 trillion in reserves at the end of 2024. And while the US accounts for just 10.8% of global merchandise trade and 11.9% of commercial services trade, around half of global trade remains invoiced in US dollars.

More than 70% of the world’s US$7.5 trillion-per-day foreign exchange transactions are sent via the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). The US dollar accounted for over half (50.2%) of all worldwide payments going through the SWIFT system, distantly followed by the euro constituting some 23%, the British pound with around 7.1%, and the yuan with just 3.8 percent.

The US has the world’s deepest and most sophisticated capital markets. Its US$60.1 trillion in equity market capitalization is unrivalled and makes up nearly half (48.6%) of the total US$123.6 trillion total global equity market cap today, distantly followed by China with US$15.6 trillion (12.6%) and the EU with US$15 trillion (12.1%). The US’s fixed income markets composed of Treasury securities, corporate bonds and other securities worth US$55.3 trillion comprised 39.3% of the US$140.7 trillion worth of outstanding securities worldwide, which was more than double the next largest market, the EU. It also accounts for over 70% of flows into the US$13 trillion global market for private investments, which includes equity and credit.

In particular, the market capitalization of the “Magnificent Seven” major US technology firms Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Nvidia, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Tesla – recently peaking at US$17.8 trillion in February 2025 and down to US$15 trillion upon Trump’s pause in the reciprocal tariffs – makes up almost one-third of the entire US stock market. These corporations control key technologies, platforms, infrastructure, and data flows not just in the US but globally. Their expansive global supply chains and market access are, however, vulnerable to trade wars and changing international relations.

This centrality of the US dollar to the global economy enables the US to borrow more easily from abroad as well as significantly extends the reach of US financial sanctions. The US controls SWIFT banking access aside from strongly influencing financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

The US military is still the largest, most technologically advanced and most experienced military force in the world especially from its constant wars of aggression. The US is the only country able to conduct sustained large-scale military operations literally anywhere in the world, both deploying from the US as well as relying on its expansive global military footprint.

The US has some 742 foreign bases and facilities in 82 countries and territories. It also has 226,762 civil-military personnel deployed in 176 countries and territories, aside from the 2.6 million stationed in the US. It also has bilateral military agreements with 179 countries.

In comparison, the overseas military presence of Russia and China is much less and limited to nearby countries and territories. Russia has just 52 reported bases and facilities in 12 countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, and Ukraine.

Meanwhile, China has only 29 bases and facilities. Most of these are concentrated in the South China Sea – in the Paracel Islands (20) and Spratly Islands (7) – with just two other bases in Djibouti and Cambodia. China is however also speculated to have military posts and facilities in Cuba, Myanmar, and Tajikistan.

US spending to maintain this dominance is enormous and, notwithstanding rumored cuts especially in Europe, is likely to remain under the Trump administration. The US accounted for just 4.2% of the world’s population in 2023. Yet US military spending in that year of US$916 billion was 37.5% of total global military spending, which was almost as much as the 38.1% of the next 10 countries combined and over one-and-a-half times more than the 24.4% of the remaining 163 other countries monitored.

The US was distantly followed by China’s US$296.4 billion in spending (12.1% of global total), Russia’s US$109.5 billion (4.5%), and India’s US$83.6 billion (3.4%). The G7 combined accounted for US$1.23 trillion or 50.4% of global military spending, although this is mainly due to the US. Outside of the US, the rest of the G7 spent US$316 billion (12.9%). The BRICS bloc accounted for US$515.1 billion or 21.1% of global military spending.

Emerging challenges to US hegemony give it purpose, while its superpower status (albeit diminished) provides it with capacity. How might it translate these into action?

Method

How is the US going to strengthen its imperial hegemony? Its method boldly mixes immediate disruption with steady nudges towards strategic shifts. Multiple measures overlap and interact – often unpredictably, which implies much risk-taking by the Trump administration and discipline to see beyond short-term noise.

Some general contours of the overall strategy are beginning to emerge. Given the uncertainty surrounding the eventual impact of these radical shifts, there may not yet be complete unity among America’s ruling elites – though there is at least enough consensus to begin moving in new directions.

It bears highlighting that many of these general policy trends started long before even the first Trump presidency and as early as after the 2008 global financial and economic crisis – now spanning the Bush (2001-2009), Obama (2009-2017), first Trump (2017-2021), Biden (2021-2025) and now second Trump (2025- ) administrations.

Protectionism to strengthen American manufacturing. The US sees itself disproportionately disadvantaged by openness which caused deindustrialization and dependence on overseas sources of goods, hence the steady shift to protectionism and much more aggressive industrial policy.

The US wants to correct how manufacturing’s share of US GDP has fallen from over 28% in the 1950s to 9.9% at the end of 2024 – this is in stark contrast to how China’s manufacturing kept growing to reach 26.2% of its GDP by 2023. The US now has among the lowest shares of manufacturing in GDP among the G7 – lower than in Japan (21.4%), Germany (19.7%), Italy (16.3%), and France (10.6%), while only slightly larger than in the UK (8.9%) and Canada (9.1).

US manufacturing’s share in GDP started to drop rapidly from the early 1970s and then throughout the globalization era since the 1980s as US firms set up their global supply chains abroad to take advantage of cheap labor, access to raw materials and suppliers, and proximity to overseas markets. Driven by profit-maximization, they relocated industrial capacity abroad to the EU (especially Ireland, Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium, and Italy), Canada, UK, Switzerland, China, Mexico, Southeast Asia (especially Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand), Israel, and Japan. It also started to rely on many non-US subcontractors in these countries and elsewhere.

The US turn to industrial policy and protectionism to rebuild the American industrial base started upon the 2008 global financial and economic crisis. “Buy American” provisions in its 2009 stimulus were followed by waves of tariff hikes and other trade protection, state subsidies, investment regulations and more public procurement measures.

Even before Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, the US had already implemented the most protectionist measures of any country in the world since 2008. Its 10,742 new interventions by January 2025 were more than second-ranked China’s 7,868 interventions, and even more than those implemented by the 154 countries with the least such interventions over that 2008-2024 period. The focus on semiconductors, critical minerals, defense, and energy has included attracting foreign firms to be managed in domestic industrial ecosystems.

The first Trump administration started its trade and technology war with China through large unilateral tariff hikes in 2018 and 2019, followed by moves to restrict China’s access to essential semiconductors and other technology. The US categorically dropped the pretense of neoliberal globalization when the Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science (CHIPS) Act, and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) in 2022.

These laws included massive subsidies in the form of tax incentives, loan guarantees and grants to bolster US-based manufacturing. For instance, the IRA has been estimated to give anywhere from US$385 billion to as much as US$2 trillion over a decade to support climate change responses and domestic energy security, while the CHIPS Act appropriates some US$155.7 billion to subsidize semiconductor firms, research and development, and technology transfers.

Trump paused the disbursement of funds under the IRA soon after taking office and openly criticized the CHIPS Act. It remains unclear whether this is because Trump is opposing the laws on some principle – for instance, the president is a notorious climate sceptic – or mainly because their fiscal burden is seen as unjustifiable. It is possible that US industrial policy priorities are starting to give more emphasis on tariffs which are fiscally much less costly but, somehow, possibly seen as having higher impact especially in conjunction with other bullying tactics. In any case, it is very unlikely for an industrialization strategy to proceed without the sorts of interventions the IRA and CHIPS Act provide.

The Trump administration quickly declared its America First Trade Policy and followed this soon after with an America First Investment Policy. These established the government’s framework for stronger tariff and non-tariff barriers, countering currency manipulation, technology controls, foreign investment regulations, and other protectionist measures. They also explicitly declare that all existing trade and investment agreements will be reviewed and replaced with more favorable America First-aligned bilateral deals. China is the most prominently and frequently targeted “foreign adversary”, but others also mentioned are Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela.

Some of Trump’s early controversial pronouncements can also be read as indicating intent to ensure age-old industrial requirements of cheap labor, raw materials and captive markets. This includes pursuing a minerals deal for rare earth minerals, uranium, titanium and others with Ukraine, taking over Greenland including its rare earth minerals, uranium, iron and others to be a part of the US, and taking over the Panama Canal to control the substantial global maritime trade passing through it.

Moderating federal government deficits and debt. The US has increasingly used debt, both public and private, to manage its escalating economic crisis for decades. It is now seeking to control the resulting mounting financial pressures – hence, its large-scale government spending cutbacks and plans to raise additional revenues (including through higher tariffs). These are however also to create the fiscal space for extending and expanding tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations that Trump approved in his first term.

Federal government debt rose forty-fold in the 44 years between 1980 and 2024, from US$907.7 billion to US$35.5 trillion (increasing further to US$36.2 trillion as of February 2025). The increase is still large even adjusting for inflation – a ten-fold increase from US$3.4 trillion in 1980 to US$35.5 trillion in 2024, in inflation adjusted 2024 dollars.

Measured as a share of the economy, there was a four-fold increase in federal debt from 31.2% of GDP at the end of 1980 to 121.9% by the end of 2024. Most of this increase was after the global financial and economic crisis of 2008 when it bloated from 64.1% at the start of 2008 to 106.9% in early 2020 before the pandemic.

The US federal deficit did spike during the pandemic to US$3.1 trillion in 2020. The general trend of rapidly rising federal deficits however started much earlier when it tripled from US$450 billion in 2008 to US$1.4 trillion in 2009; the US$1.8 trillion budget deficit topped 6% of GDP in 2024.

The most aggressive moves to slash federal spending have so far been through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) headed by Elon Musk which supposedly targets as much as US$2 trillion in cuts. Aside from the opening salvo of cutting USAID programs, there are proposals to cut public spending on Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP food aid, veterans aid, federal grants for public schools, and possibly even Social Security. The approved House budget framework apparently contains as much as US$1.5 trillion in cuts to federal programs and services (while adding around US$175 billion for military spending).

On the revenue side, Trump’s tariff hikes will supposedly ease deficits and debt by raising anywhere from US$2.2 trillion to US$6 trillion over the next decade. Estimates vary widely mainly because of uncertainty about the eventual tariff rates but also from the unpredictability of retaliatory measures, imports and other economic trends.

There are also indirect ways to reduce the US’s debt burden. Some stem from the vastly increased global economic uncertainty from increasingly aggressive and disruptive US foreign policy. This could trigger a flight to the generally still perceived safety of assets like long-term US Treasuries. Any such surge in demand could push bond prices up and yields or interest rates down. A global economic slowdown due to US policies, compounded by geopolitical crises, could also spur interest rate cuts to stimulate economies.

Dropping interest rates could save the US hundreds of billions of dollars in debt refinancing costs. On the other hand, such central bank interventions might be tempered by persistent inflation stoked by global tariff hikes and supply chain realignments, or by trying to avoid stock market crashes.

Derailing the long-standing US-backed multilateral system. The US sees itself as disadvantaged by multilateralism – which it believes has largely enabled China’s economic, technological and geopolitical rise – even as it has shouldered the system’s financial costs and geopolitical responsibilities for decades. Hence, its decision to step back from this towards more emphasis on bilateral negotiations where the US makes maximum use of its power over individually weak countries.

The so-called rules-based international order first took shape with the establishment of the United Nations (UN) in 1945 and the so-called international community this represents. The US built this up further with the creation of the IMF and World Bank, whose post-war economic interventions gave the emerging multilateral order immediate traction. The spread of “free market” policies vastly expanded when the World Trade Organization (WTO) was formed in 1995.

Other multilateral institutions professing to uphold liberal norms of open markets, human rights, rule of law, and international cooperation also emerged. The G7 or G20, EU, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Asian Development Bank (ADB), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and many others expanded and deepened multilateralism with their specializations and regional focuses.

Liberal multilateralism is generally understood to be part of the US-dominated post-war international order. This was challenged first by the erstwhile socialist bloc and its own parallel system, and then more recently by China-dominated mechanisms – the BRICS, New Development Bank (NDB) and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and others.

From the 1980s, upon the era of neoliberal globalization, the US-dominated and -managed multilateral system was used to open up economies worldwide to more systematic capitalist exploitation. It will also be recalled that the US was a strong supporter of China’s entry into the WTO in 2001. Tariffs were driven to their lowest levels in over 200 years and foreign investment regulations were eased around the world. Free trade deals resulted in some two-thirds of global trade occurring without tariffs, with agriculture, selected strategic industries and some other sectors remaining highly protected.

The US’s merchandise trade deficits soared as it opened up its domestic consumer market while relocating and dispersing industrial operations abroad. Growing services trade surpluses moderated but did not offset goods trade deficits. The US sustained these deficits as well as its massive debt with the US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. Countries with trade surpluses with the US often reinvested their accumulated dollars in US assets especially Treasury bonds.

The US and its globe-spanning transnational corporations (TNCs) were a major beneficiary of the restructured, more open, and multilateral-driven world economy. But China and its state-owned or otherwise state-supported enterprises benefited as well from accessing markets and the managed entry of foreign investments – arguably even more so, if its rapid economic rise is any sign. This may be among the drivers of the US shift to unilateralism and more protectionist economic policies.

This shift actually started under the Obama administration after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis – it began blocking reappointments to the WTO’s Appellate Body, which made the WTO’s dispute system inoperative and its agreements unenforceable. This has been sustained by subsequent administrations. The shift developed rapidly under the first Trump administration which made extensive use of higher tariffs, export restrictions, technology restrictions, and stricter investment regulation against China (which the Biden administration maintained) as well as tariffs on European steel and aluminum (which the Biden administration backtracked on).

Overall, the US has been steadily rolling back from the multilateral system it has anchored, underwritten and promoted for some eight decades in other ways. It has been erratic in its payments to the UN for some time. The first Trump administration however started systematically cutting funding to various UN programs and withdrew from the Paris Agreement implementing the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). The second Trump administration has already pulled out of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), World Health Organization (WHO), and UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), as well as quit the ongoing UN Tax Convention negotiations.

Including and beyond the UN, the US has already begun a review of its funding and other support to all international organizations “to determine which organizations, conventions, and treaties are contrary to the interests of the US” and to recommend “whether the US should withdraw from any such organizations, conventions, or treaties.”

It has also become willing to antagonize traditional allies like the EU and Japan while combining opportunistic engagement and containment with Russia. The stance against China appears more antagonistic, befitting its status as a strategic rival, despite continuing US dependence on China-based supply chains.

The shift to imperialist bullying through bilateral negotiations – where the US can engage in power plays to leverage its strength, advantage and authority – is evident in its recent sweeping tariff hikes. These ultra-high tariffs are protectionist measures primarily directed at China, but also serve as leverage to impose America First-biased trade and investment policies along with other military, security and other non-economic concessions.

Retaining unparalleled US military dominance. The US’s protectionist stance to strengthen its domestic economy parallels apparent efforts to strengthen military dominance in its most immediate sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere.

Containing China in the faraway Indo-Pacific is still the US’s highest strategic priority. The US is also continuously expanding its capability to project force anywhere in the world such as by nuclear weapons modernization and expanding its attack submarine fleet. There is however also increased attention to upgrading the US’s domestic missile defense shield (with an “American Iron Dome” costing as much as US$100 billion or more annually) and developing more space-based or orbital offensive weapons systems. The military has also been given a more prominent role in enforcing domestic US borders, including an increased military presence on its southern border,

These would be consistent with the US consolidating immediate territorial influence from as far north as Greenland through Canada, on the US’s northern border, then reaching beyond the US’s southern border towards Panama. Further beyond this it would have to contend with the more independent and US-resistant foreign policy stances of countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Brazil in the rest of the Western Hemisphere.

It remains to be seen if proposals for the US to allow regionally limited hegemons will be pursued – such as China or Russia in their own respective spheres of influence. If so, this would be a major change from the consistently expansive global US military dominance in the post-1945 modern era which included preventing the emergence of hegemons on either side of Eurasia.

Madness

The simplest narrative would be that Pres. Trump is simply unhinged and that his bombastic, exaggerated and volatile policymaking style is just a reflection of his erratic personality. But another way of looking at what’s happening is that the US is undergoing a radical transition from decades of accustomed grand strategies – one that requires a political figure disruptive enough to force that change. Squinting through the policy bluster, zig-zags and flip-flops it does seem possible to make out some broad contours of an emerging direction.

But all this is uncharted territory and it’s unclear if the bold new strategy and tactics will succeed. Will there be a manufacturing and technological resurgence in the US after the hyper-tariffs and other national industrialization policies are implemented? Will the US better secure its imperialist hegemony upon an eroded, fragmented or even dismantled liberal multilateral international order? 

The stakes are extremely high – does the US have enough economic and geopolitical high cards to give it the upper hand or will the other capitalist powers call its bluff? They are not without their own devices. Many twists and turns still lie ahead as the contradictions of global capitalism and inter-imperialist rivalries unfold – and their resolution could involve any combination of crisis, conflict or transformation.

What is clear is that the Trump administration’s measures will burden the working classes in the US and worldwide with inflation and social dislocation, precarious livelihoods and exploitation, and job insecurity and austerity. The most heavily indebted and commodity export-dependent poor countries will be pushed into debilitating debt crisis. Meanwhile, the ultra-rich and corporate elites are protected and positioned to capture new rents and profits from state-backed industrial policies, deregulation, and market reconfigurations.

What could derail this most recent effort at US imperial consolidation and instead bring forth a more progressive alternative? The recent “Hands Off” protests in the US with some three million protestors gathering in some 1,400 events across the 50 states is an important political spark. If Trump rose to power from skillful manipulation of the desperation and fear of tens of millions of American voters, a movement bringing together a vast coalition of workers, professionals, students and other ordinary citizens is an important check to anti-people Trump policies and, at best, a potential grassroots movement to somehow bring Trump down.

The “We are the 99%” Occupy movement in 2011 was a massive outpouring of oppositional energy in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007-2009. This eventually faded from lacking the organizational discipline or minimum basic ideological clarity and consensus that are so vital to sustained mass movements.

The US empire’s aggressive efforts to reshape the world in its self-interest today will however bear down even more heavily on ordinary Americans than the Great Recession did. With deeper organizing, cross-sector solidarity, and clearer political consciousness, the crisis can spawn resurgent and more enduring working-class struggles.