Trump’s second term has exploded into action with seemingly unstoppable momentum. Each day has been impossible to predict, and the avalanche of executive orders and other actions impossible to keep up with. By the time you’re reading this article, there will already be a dozen more shocking things Trump has said or signed into law. 

Trump is throwing everything at the wall, both to disorient and show his strength. Not all of it needs to stick in order to help accomplish his and the U.S. ruling class’s bigger goals. Their actions are ultimately an attempt to respond to the deep crises of capitalism, which include looming economic crisis, inter-imperialist conflict, climate catastrophe which could ultimately make parts of the planet uninhabitable for human beings, and a working class that is increasingly angry at the billionaires who control our lives.

Trump serves the interests of the U.S. ruling class, which is made up of the richest and most powerful people who control what is still the world’s most powerful imperialist country. But Trump is also self-serving, and at the same time has to balance his support from millions of disenfranchised people who, for instance, applauded the assassination of a healthcare CEO—that is the devil’s bargain the ruling class accepted when they made peace with Trump. 

Inter-Imperialist Conflict

In order to understand Trump it is important to know that we have entered a new era of capitalism. The old model of neoliberal globalization was hitting its limits, as the interests of the dominant imperialist ruling classes began to more sharply diverge. They are now increasingly forced into direct competition (militarily, if necessary) for control over markets and production in different parts of the world. As a result, two rival blocs have emerged, led by the U.S. and China, in a battle for who will dominate the world and its resources.

But the U.S. and China are also both imperialist powers in decline, in an era of capitalist crisis more intense and existential than this system has faced before, with fewer ways for capitalists to maneuver to save their system. That means there will likely be acts of desperation which do not fully fit in logically with their long-term imperialist interests, like getting embroiled in tangential wars with smaller states to solidify their bloc.

In order to prepare for a war economy and to increase billionaire profits, Trump is dismantling regulations and slashing the federal government to the bone, purging bureaucrats who will get in his way, and replacing them with loyalists. Trump’s tariffs on allies like Mexico and Canada are part of U.S. imperialism’s need to assert dominance on every front at once, even within the U.S.-led bloc. But this strategy is rife with risk: nearly every mainstream economist is warning of the danger of tipping the entire global economy into recession. And while it could temporarily strengthen the position of U.S. imperialism vis a vis others, punishing allies could provoke a weakening of the bloc, defections, or a degree of disintegration. 

Trump doesn’t fear collateral damage with his shock and awe tactics. So long as he can spin a few victories that project strength, in the eyes of his base he’ll maintain his image as the guy who gets stuff done. But if implemented to the degree he has threatened, tariffs would also drive up prices for U.S. workers (not to mention workers globally), who have already seen the price of basic necessities like food and housing skyrocket in the last few years. This could seriously undermine Trump’s current support among a wider layer of people who voted against the Democrats, but are much less ideologically committed to Trump’s project.

Reasserting The Balance Of Power

The ruling classes of the world were scared by the global revolts of 2019-2021, including the historic George Floyd protests, and did not want to risk a repeat. This process initiated the ruling class’s hard ideological shift to the right, including their acceptance of right-wing parties which had once been considered too risky for the stability of bourgeois democracy, their preferred method of rule.

Trump’s willingness to undermine the resurgent U.S. labor movement is to the delight of billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who can now use every means to crush unionization drives at their companies without the interference of the more pro-worker National Labor Relations Board appointed by Biden (even with all its many limitations and lack of real enforcement power).

Trump’s scapegoating of marginalized communities aims to ramp up nationalism and social control in the preparation for war, and redirect the blame that actually belongs to capitalism—a system unable to solve the key problems workers and young people face. Trump’s insidious insistence that immigrants constitute an “invasion” at the border, and that transgender people are a danger to women and girls, both instills in his base a siege mentality and justifies the strengthened repressive role of the state. 

Under the pressure from social movements like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and others of the last decade that the ruling class was forced to at least acknowledge that oppression exists, even though their “solutions” were hollow corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that would never be able to address the real roots of oppression.

Still, Trump’s effortless crushing of DEI is an attack on those movements, which were already deep in retreat. Using DEI as a catch-all term, Trump is attacking basic protections against discrimination and gains won over decades. Triumphant, the capitalist class with Trump at the helm will continue to use sexism, racism, transphobia, and other forms of oppression to keep workers divided and demoralized.

Trump and the U.S. ruling class won’t stop at trans people or DEI—they intend to attack all of the gains made by movements in previous decades, including Medicaid and Social Security, the right to collective bargaining, the right to abortion, anti-discrimination laws, and more. 

So What Do We Do?

The system of “checks and balances” in the government, the supposed guardrails of U.S. democracy, and especially the strategy of the Democratic Party have been a pathetic, ineffective resistance to Trump. Trump is not shy about breaking the law, and the courts are struggling to keep up. Some of his measures have been blocked for now, but it remains to be seen if Trump will accept decisions that don’t go his way. He already led the first attempted coup in the U.S. in nearly a century, and given the scale of his illegal, unconstitutional actions, we may be seeing the beginning of something much more dangerous.

The Democrats’ response to Trump’s onslaught of attacks has been, “we have no coherent message.” They will never put up an effective fight against Trump—the Democrats are terrified of mobilizing the mass working-class movements that would be necessary to defeat Trump’s attacks because that movement could be turned against the capitalist system itself, which the Democratic Party exists to protect. The Democratic Party will continue to move even further to the right, which will make the need for a new, left-wing, working class party even more urgent.

With every passing day, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that no one in the establishment is coming to save us. But the history of this country is one of titanic working-class struggles that have put up serious challenges to right-wing figures like Trump and the entire ruling class. We can’t forget that the federal right to an abortion in Roe v. Wade was won under the reactionary Nixon presidency as a result of the historic mass movements of the 1970s, not to mention ending the Vietnam War. 

Trump’s success or failure depends on whether there is an organized force that can point the way forward to a future actually worth living in and fighting for—a future without war, where we aren’t pawns in imperialist chess games, and we have what we need because it’s no longer being hoarded by the billionaires.

We have no choice but to fight. In early February, tens of thousands of immigrants, alongside U.S.-born workers and youth, took to the streets across the country against Trump’s mass deportations. Educators across the country are refusing to let ICE into their schools and defending their trans students. These actions are an inspiring start, but it will take a lot more to defeat Trump’s dangerous, and ultimately deadly, agenda. We need to build on these actions and link our struggles together to build organizations with democratic structures, and to organize for a new workers’ party to fight for the things all workers need. We need working-class solidarity in the face of a system that tries at all costs to keep us divided, because right now the ruling class knows our potential strength better than we do.