Survival Or Looting? What Trump's Revolution Is Really About
Many people, including me, are still not sure what Trump's revolution - in trade, international relations and in his fight against the U.S government at large - is all about.
Trump, it seems, sees that the current path the U.S. is on, with ever increasing deficits and debt, is unsustainable. He and his people argue that the dollar as a reserve currency is doing more harm than good for the country. They point to the decrease in manufacturing as the main symptom of a larger disease.
They believe it is necessary to destroy the old system before a new, more glorious one, can arrive. They know that the process will be painful for many but hope for a better outcome on a new trajectory. (There is also a motive of personal profit.)
Alastair Crooke is alluding to all that when he writes (also here):
The Trump ‘shock’ – his ‘de-centring’ of America from serving as pivot to the post-war ‘order’ via the dollar – has triggered a deep cleavage between those who gained huge benefit from the status quo, on the one hand; and on the other, the MAGA faction who have come to regard the status quo as inimical – even an existential threat – to U.S. interests.
...
Vice-President Vance now likens the Reserve Currency to a “parasite” that has eaten away the substance of its ‘host’ – the U.S. economy – by forcing an overvalued dollar.Just to be clear, President Trump believed there was no choice: Either he could upend the existing paradigm, at the cost of considerable pain for many of those dependent on the financialised system, or he could allow events to wend their way towards an inevitable U.S. economic collapse. Even those who understood the dilemma the U.S. faces, nonetheless have been somewhat shocked by the self-serving brazenness of him simply ‘tariffing the world’.
Trump’s actions, (as many claim), were neither ‘spur of the moment’, nor whimsical. The ‘tariff solution’ had been pre-prepared by his team over recent years, and formed an integral part to a more complex framework – one that complemented the debt-reduction and revenue effects of tariffs, by a programme to coerce the repatriation of vanished manufacturing industry back to America.
Trump’s is a gamble that may, or may not, succeed: ...
A similar argument can be found here:
Even though Trump explained the logic of the tariffs as an attempt to correct the trade imbalance between the US and the rest of the world, White House officials [(archived)] outlined the expected goals behind the tariffs in more detail. They described these goals as concentrating economic forces nationally to “push for structural changes to the global economy to rectify challenges that are difficult to overcome, including high tariffs globally, currency and tax policies, intellectual property theft, and even health and labour standards”. Ultimately, Trump aims to reshape the global economic order by prioritising America’s national interest through this wide range of tariffs.
...
Trump fully understands the consequences of his policies. America’s “aggressive unilateralism”, which started in the 1980s with Ronald Reagan, has now peaked. Trump isn’t an outlier; he embodies the genuine interests of a waning superpower, whose policies mirror the conflicting and shifting global reality he navigates. Trump’s 2nd administration is poised to instigate a major crisis and widespread devastation worldwide to prevent its inevitable downfall. Their rise to power and the ensuing actions merely reflect the profound structural and historical changes occurring in the international political economy and the global power architecture.
There are also such headlines
Trump’s in-the-know plan to demolish the US economy - Asia Times
Trump insider claims demolition plan will necessarily ‘decimate millions of investors’ while reset will bring ‘greatest wealth creation’ ever seen
I do not know if those are Trump's real intentions or if all such talk is just obfuscation to hide the immense insider dealing and looting that is coming along with it. The later might very well be its sole purpose.
As Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism sees it:
[W]e are in the midst of a revolution, one run by reactionaries trying to cement the advantaged position of the rich and further immiserate the rest of the population. I warned from the outset that the only way to make sense of the Trump policy blitz was that he and his allies intended to created a Russia-in-the-1990s level crisis so as to facilitate elite asset grabs.
She is on board with Michael Hudson in this. Hudson ...
.. explains why the seemingly novel part, the heavy use of tariffs, represents continuity of neoliberal and libertarian policies, of reducing the role of government in commercial and private life. He contends they therefor have perilous little to do with “rebuilding” America and are intended to allow the super-rich to extract even more from ordinary citizens.
Trump is not alone in doing this. There is a swarm of multi-billionaires around him who are pushing for it:
A sector of the U.S. capitalist class is now openly in control of the ideological-state apparatus in a neofascist administration in which the former neoliberal establishment is a junior partner. The object of this shift is a regressive restructuring of the United States in a permanent war posture, resulting from the decline of U.S. hegemony and the instability of U.S. capitalism, plus the need of a more concentrated capitalist class to secure more centralized control of the state.
Trump is slashing the budgets of many vital institutions and, via Elon Musk's DOGE, eliminating their means to function and to measure outcome. He is enriching himself by building a cryptocurrency empire while destroying its regulators.
While this is mostly a fight at home there is an strong international component to it. As Brian Berletic provides:
The US is preparing to subject its own population as well as those of its supposed “allies” to immense long-term economic, social, and political pain. The cost-of-living crisis in the US will only grow worse. The US hopes that it can endure economic pain and disruption at home and abroad better than the emerging multipolar world can. Multipolarism’s survival will depend on proving otherwise.
And therein lies the trouble for Trump. The looney tunes trade policy will be felt in China and elsewhere. But the pain level in the U.S. will be much higher. Other government will provide for their populations while the Trump administration has no intent do similar at home.
His tariffs against China will have similar consequences as the European sanctions on Russia. The targeted country will have no problem to handle the onslaught while the initiators will deeply hurt their own polities.
Posted by b on April 18, 2025 at 15:32 UTC | Permalink
next page »trump has presented himself as for the little guy - joe or jane average... in fact he represents the wealthy elite and it is very obvious here... i think yves smith and michael hudson are reading this clearly.. that is my read as well... regardless - it is happening and some of the friends i have that voted for trump are dreading the day they did that..
thanks b..
Posted by: james | Apr 18 2025 15:46 utc | 2
As another autocratic megalomaniac (and more successful in the short-term) once said, never interrupt an enemy when he is making a mistake.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Apr 18 2025 15:48 utc | 3
Great essay B. ; a website devoted to exposing mysterious trades suggesting massive insider looting in last month or so;
$70 Million in 60 Seconds: How Insider Information Helped Someone 28x Their Money
On April 9, 2025, someone risked $2.5 million on SPY call options—and walked away with $70+ million in under an hour. The trade was placed at 1:01 pm. At 1:30 pm, Trump announced tariff pauses. The market exploded upward. These options that cost 85 cents were suddenly worth more than $25.
Posted by: Exile | Apr 18 2025 15:49 utc | 4
I don't believe for a second that the Trump administration wants to return manufacturing to the US or to lower the value of the dollar. There will almost certainly be some sort of debt default and a 90s Russia style looting of state assets. I can see a debt default occuring but being justified as reparations for previous 'unfair' trade practices.
Internationally the goal seems to be to lock in permanent dollar hegemony into the now emerging multipolar world. Logically the only way that they can do is this by threatening to destroy any countries who don't submit to the anti China and anti Russia agenda.
Posted by: SB | Apr 18 2025 15:53 utc | 5
Note the Federal Gov’t can have a solvency crisis; but that’s not necessarily going to lead to economic collapse for regular Americans. It’s a error to conflate the Federal Gov’t with America.
Reminder : De-Dollarization brings peace
Posted by: Exile | Apr 18 2025 15:44 utc
As Chinese state media has clearly stated this week the USA lives far beyond it's means and any process which results in a decrease in unequal trade globally will lower the living standards of all American consumers. Personal debt in the USA is huge and the parasitic, rentier nature of the domestic service economy will not be able to withstand a significant reduction in household budgets.
Posted by: SB | Apr 18 2025 15:58 utc | 7
So we are back to "you will own nothing and be happy" for the majority, and that the top coyotes will own everthing and be VERY happy?
A major financial crash was supposed to usher in a new world order, wasn't it? One that was not based on nationality but on "class". Note that from other parts of the world, specified "elite" groups of "rulers" could then be enticed to co-ordinate with a new rich (hereditary) nobility in the US, irrespective of their stated "religions", policies or democratic leanings.
**
PS. The use of tariffs in the 1930's led to many years (ten?) of unemployment and hardship, which only ended with the second world war.
As already mentioned often, the us is probably dumping its role of steward of the late british empire and preparing for their role in centuries to come.
A focused approach on their sphere.
The next 100 years should, if things don't go nuclear, see the us change significantly and a new social contract by 2110 (give or take), but before that, things should present some crisis. That should also see a new stage of consolidation/expansion but still far from reclaiming hegemony.
As for other comments on the talk with companies, already mentioned that 911 was the moment they were reminded that they had to pay fealty and tribute to the us, now they are reminded they belong to the us and prosper at its pleasure. It is a pendulum that started to swing toward companies about 400 years ago and now swings again to nation states/blocks (probably for another 400 years).
Now, another thing in the text, there is a method to trump's "madness". How far can he go is another question.
Posted by: Newbie | Apr 18 2025 16:05 utc | 9
The US reserve currency is a 'Parasite'? That's NOT what Trump is saying at all, despite what Alistair Crooke says! In fact Trump states the complete opposite, the Dollar is supreme and he intends to keep it that way! All this talk about a revolution is bullshit. The tariff war is aimed at China and I'm glad you quote Berletic, as he says:
The US is preparing to subject its own population as well as those of its supposed “allies” to immense long-term economic, social, and political pain.
The Trump plan is to make the US working class pay for the crisis of capital and gamble that his economic war on China will succeed. Revolution? Bullshit, its' a counter revolution, an attempt to turn the clock back.
Posted by: Barofsky | Apr 18 2025 16:07 utc | 10
1993: Trump's first flight on Epstein's plane. Seven total in the 1990s.
2002: Trump praises Epstein in a New York Magazine, Epstein puff piece.
But somehow in those ten years, Trump was not caught on the Epstein/Mossad blackmail video operation? Of course he was. So now he simply follows orders. Israel's problem is twofold- their total loss of control of American public opinion, and the collapsing US financial system. I see Trump's tariff attacks as a plan to cause the financial crisis that is necessary to bankrupt the banks and usher in The Great Taking, as predicted in David Webb's book. CBDC and a strict social credit system will follow.
Posted by: Olenin | Apr 18 2025 16:08 utc | 11
What the Trumpians are doing is not a 'revolution', it is a continuation of the capitalist, neoliberal phase (craze) in a more radical and brutal iteration.
Nothing in the actions of the Trumpians can be called a "revolution".
Let's not rob yet another important notion and word of its proper meaning.
Language has been desecrated enough.
Posted by: JB | Apr 18 2025 16:12 utc | 12
Trump is probably not only going to apply secondary tariffs to those businesses/countries which trade with China but also cut the countries in which they reside from SWIFT... a double whammy in his opinion. Perhaps this will encourage more countries to join BRICS and to stop using the USD, the currency Trump wants to make indispensable.
Posted by: Soupcon | Apr 18 2025 16:13 utc | 13
What the Trumpians are doing is not a 'revolution', it is a continuation of the capitalist, neoliberal phase (craze) in a more radical and brutal iteration.
Nothing in the actions of the Trumpians can be called a "revolution".
Let's not rob yet another important notion and word of its proper meaning.
Language has been desecrated enough.
Posted by: JB | Apr 18 2025 16:12 utc | 12
If you read what I wrote I only see a revolution by the next century. This is consolidation of power of the "king" (and yes you are right, plebes will suffer until they get rid of the "king" and its nobles).
Posted by: Newbie | Apr 18 2025 16:16 utc | 14
Respectfully, I believe you and some here are making the same mistake the Duran and many Europeans are making. Trump isn't capable of any level of chess play and neither are those chosen to advise him. There is no more analysis of geopolitical realities than under Biden, only actual difference is the reactive unplanned and poorly thought out responses to the initial unplanned and poorly thought out policy are more sudden, hence more disruptive. Trump is a bully, Biden a zombie.
Posted by: Oso | Apr 18 2025 16:18 utc | 15
The WEC inspired and promoted free trade madness roped four recent US Presidents into their orbit.
The end result was the destruction of American based commerce and manufacturing, replaced by warehousing and transport jobs.
That is not good split, as we have seen hundreds and hundreds of towns, villages and cities utterly destroyed by the free trade model, which has devastated the steel, auto, auto parts, aluminum, coke, rubber, glass, machine tool, lumber and aircraft industries.
Towns like Lackawanna, Detroit, Youngstown, South Chicago, Homestead, Sharon, Erie, Cleveland, Pittsburg, Toledo, South Buffalo, Johnstown, Bethlehem, Allentown, Duluth, Dunkirk have been denuded of industry, all on the altar of free trade so the EU and China and India could reap enormous profits in American markets.
In the last 25 years the US has lost 12 million manufacturing jobs........but those days are over, the days of globalist Presidents have passed, and the Jeffersonian vision of self sufficiency for America has returned, learn to live with it.............Made in America is now no longer a mirage.......
Posted by: tobias cole | Apr 18 2025 16:23 utc | 17
Trump's counterrevolution is about securing means of primitive accumulation for a select cabal of compliant billionaires in a post imperialist world. Hudson and Engler come closest to describing what Trump is really doing. A world that can be acquired by imperial conquest has come to an end. Capital can no longer reproduce accumulation at the expense of undeveloped peoples now that global development has achieved a high enough level for them to defend against the rapine of Western capital. The use of deficits, trade imbalances, DEI, etc. as reasons to destroy international relationships and regulatory oversite are ruses to fool the masses and pundits. No increase in wealth, the surplus value created by production, will be created by Trump's policies. These policies are designed to strip America's middle class of their assets and pauperize them. The only seizable wealth now available to the sharks, who are unable to generate high enough returns on investment through production because of competition with China and the rest of the world.
Sam-Kee Cheng wrote, "... surplus value in only created through production, not exchange." The lords of American capital's rate of profit is falling now that development has advanced so far that all products soon become commodities. They cannot reproduce enough profits through production to satisfy their need for growth. Growth needed to maintain economic and political domination. Imperial conquest is no longer an option. That leaves the wealth of middle class America as the only readily available treasure to acquire.
Posted by: Keme | Apr 18 2025 16:25 utc | 18
"But the pain level in the U.S. will be much higher. Other government will provide for their populations while the Trump administration has no intent do similar at home."
True. But I do not lament that reality. The sort of intensified class war of Trump's economic policies will sharpen the minds of the wage slaves, in the same way boot camp turns regular, dreamy joes into soldiers. Prior to the current epoch, the economic situation in the west and especially US was such that the internal impact of Imperialism could be debated to a certain degree. There were many diverse opinions. However, this era brings all that to a close for the wage slaves.
Everyone responds differently to a political argument, but everyone responds the same way to a hot poker. And now appears Trump, poker in hand. There is no doubt in my mind that this will radicalize wage slaves against their masters. My concern is ideological. How will these wage slaves, psychologically operated on from infancy by the Dems with pseudo leftism, respond without rational class leadership? Once again, a revolutionary party must be built. Without it this historic opportunity will be lost.
Anti Imperialist war, anti capitalist and pro democracy. Those are the three simple planks for a revolutionary party in the west. The group that successfully builds its party on these planks will inherit the world. You'd need only about 12 dedicated, intelligent and fearless people to start such a movement. Honestly, I think I could find 12 people at the bar alone that would be up to the task.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Apr 18 2025 16:33 utc | 20
It is a mistake to attribute beliefs to Trump. There is pretty good evidence that he operates instinctively, without a coherent set of beliefs, but instead a general sense of doing what's best for himself, some sort of crude self-preservation and self-aggrandizement drive. If this happens to be consistent over time, it is an accident of the outside forces that are buffeting Trump. I think many people were unconsciously hoping that his nature would be better than the ideologues of neo-conservativism or neo-liberalism, or whatever. There is no Trump doctrine and never will be, only Trump reacting to circumstances, and lashing out at or latching on to various people coming and going around him.
Posted by: Pete L. | Apr 18 2025 16:40 utc | 21
re: endure economic pain and disruption at home
Not at home, there are three quarters of a million homeless people in the U.S., which is increasing as rents increase and incomes decrease.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Apr 18 2025 16:43 utc | 22
"Sam-Kee Cheng wrote, "... surplus value in only created through production, not exchange."
That's true, yet I think we need to keep in mind that the sharks of finance have come up with ways of generating fictitious capital, e.g. through the manipulation of sectoral booms and busts, that can achieve valuation stable enough to allow conversion into "tangible" assets. (A number of writers have discussed this, Cedric Durand is one of the best.)
Isn't that what QE is substantially about? One of the reasons this breed of capitalist is so destructive is that they have severed exchange value creation from what we usually think of as productive processes. That disconnect means that Schumpeter's process of "creative destruction" becomes increasingly disembodied and indifferent to the conditions that are necessary for the reproduction of capitalism as we knew it. At its outer limit it's hot money, everywhere, all the time.
Posted by: dadooronron | Apr 18 2025 16:44 utc | 23
b wrote, "Trump is slashing the budgets of many vital institutions..."
That an institution is vital does not mean that every project undertaken by that institution is vital. Many projects that DOGE has identified manifest a gratuitous lack of concern for obtaining value for the taxpayer dollars spent, if not the overt promotion of political ideology.
Posted by: David Levin | Apr 18 2025 16:45 utc | 25
@ Stonebird | Apr 18 2025 15:58 utc | 8
Great Depression
… preceded by the Roaring 20’s and the crash of ’29.
Donald Trump as the great William McKinley … chisel his face on the sunny side of the Mount in Alaska.
As noted here.....
.......starting at around the 13-minute mark, the plan is to have the cake of a reserve currency and to eat it:
The tariff mayhem is the opening phase of a concerted effort by some very smart minds around the 47th POTUS to let US capitalism have its cake and eat it by resolving the dilemma that America may be sole issuer of a global reserve currency or run a trade surplus. It cannot do both.
The modern master plan for a new global order [is] a plan that is supposed to help re industrialize the US while at the same time keeping the US dollar as the global reserve currency. Because, as Trump himself has said, “if you want to go to third world status, lose your reserve currency. We have to have that. We cannot lose it.”
So how do you keep your reserve currency status, and re industrialized at the same time?
- Create mayhem in the markets through April 2 “Liberation Day”. (Whether the April 9 ‘pause’ of ninety days marks a setback as bond markets nosedived, or is part of the Grand Plan since it leaves everyone scrambling for position amid the uncertainty of what happens on Day 91, takes nothing away from – nay, adds to – this analysis.)
- Leverage the mayhem through reciprocal tariffs which make bilateral deals with favoured trading partners conditional on their de facto surrender of sovereignty via a …
… Mar-a-Lago Accord whereby those ‘partners’ pay to be placed under the security umbrella of a post-NATO USA and agree to upwardly adjust their own currencies when the dollar gets too strong. This from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, April 10:
According to the Trump administration, more than 70 countries are lining up to try and negotiate their way out of the new levies of up to 49 per cent — which have mostly now been “paused”.
“These countries are calling us up, kissing my ass,” the US president told a Republican event this week in Washington. Many have pre-emptively offered to cut their tariffs on US imports and start buying more American exports. But Mr Trump and his advisers may have a much bigger prize in mind.
Some believe the tariffs are the first step in a strategy to reshape global trade, boost US manufacturing, reduce the US budget deficit and make America’s allies pay for the US security umbrella. It’s being called the Mar-a-Lago Accord. It’s never been confirmed by the Trump administration and is widely regarded by economists as a terrible idea that won’t work. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Mr Trump isn’t going to try and make it happen."
Courtesy: https://steelcityscribblings.uk/wp/2025/04/18/method-in-madness-trumps-tariffs-part-3/
In summary: A part of any trade deal - done bilaterally country by country - will most involve any country wanting a trade deal to agree to impose what Alexander Mercouris over at The Duran accurately identifies as secondary sanctions on China.
However, the other significant part of the deal will be that any country signing up to kiss Trump's arse will be required to inflate it currency above the value of the dollar in order to maintain the Reserve Currency status. This will have the added benefit for the USA of making the export market of any Country signing up to the Trump Deal uncompetitive against both the US and other Countries not leaping into the trap being set.
Resulting in those countries who do sign up totally deindustrialising, pauperising their populace for the benefit of the US economy, and becoming vassal states of the US with no Sovereignty.
Posted by: Dave Hansell | Apr 18 2025 16:47 utc | 27
Trump's revolution [Hollywood style] is about both survival and looting.
Survival is about the God Of Mammon cult who are failing in getting China to be the new face of empire while their Shock Doctrine of America and EU countries is almost complete....they are between a rock and hard place and are consolidating their hold on the colonies of empire for as long as they can.
Looting is just SOP and expected perfidy by the exceptional ones.....looting here?...why Sir, How could you think such a thing?..../s
Posted by: psychohistorian | Apr 18 2025 16:49 utc | 28
Well, b, maybe all that is the case. But one must not forget the madness that preceded this Administration's term. THAT had to stop. In the US domestically, we lost the rule of law. We have plenty of good laws, and each one prescribes the penalties to be incurred for breaking it. But no one was getting punished. And judges were getting far too arbitrary - we could experience this from simple dealings with the courts at the everyday level.
Everyone who supports the restoration of the rule of law in the US is watching closely, and trying to contain one's impatience, to see the first people be prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned. If we begin to see lawbreakers punished for breaking laws, we know we have a rule of law again. (If it doesn't happen, we will have to think again.)
I will submit that this is the most important thing to the domestic populace of the USA, even more so than "the economy", which this time only runs a close second, rather than being the first concern - so devastating was the damage done to the rule of law by the forces ascendant in previous administrations.
The USA is a tough place, but give me a rule of law, founded on the Bill of Rights, and I can live here. Somehow, one will survive here, if one is simply left alone. The conservative forces at play today, pushing the pendulum back from its extreme arc, will probably overreach in some ways, perhaps many ways. But it has to be done, if sanity is to return to everyday life inside the USA.
~~
As for the second concern, economic matters, it feels rather more like receivership than bankruptcy, a time of reorganizing to forestall a total crash. I think the people will accept the pain if we have a rule of law - that's how it's being sold, and it may be the trick that Keme | Apr 18 2025 16:25 utc | 18 so perfectly describes.
Experientially, if we have massive inflation, and devaluation of assets even including house prices, where the people store most of their wealth, well, then we will have to reorganize ourselves, as we long have been doing: living less lavishly, sharing homes with others and across the generations, and joining together in new ways to survive. Out of this might even grow new businesses, perhaps even cooperatives. We may have to build from the ground up, as we can do.
It just couldn't go on any longer. Many people were preparing to leave the country. Now, perhaps it's worth sticking around to see how all this shapes up.
~~
As for the rich, their time of accounting is not yet here. Of course they will game a system that they created. As Alex Krainer always reminds us of Lord Acton's prediction, one day the people will have to deal with the bankers.
Yes, this is capitalism, which must plunder to grow, and there is excellent and impressive Marxist and revolutionary analysis from many comments here so far. But revolution is not here yet. This is just a reorganizing of the exploitive elements.
But if along the way we restore the domestic rule of law, this may make life here possible again.
Posted by: Grieved | Apr 18 2025 16:54 utc | 29
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Apr 18 2025 16:20 utc | 16
See my blog of two weeks ago: Pull It
Posted by: John Brewster | Apr 18 2025 17:00 utc | 30
Posted by: james | Apr 18 2025 15:46 utc | 2
> it is happening and some of the friends i have that voted for trump are dreading the day they did that..
And you told them to vote for Kamala but they did not heed your wise advice.... well there is a price to pay for not listening to the Master of Strategic Voting... btw what would be your advice for our election that starts today? Who should we vote for?
Posted by: hopehely | Apr 18 2025 17:01 utc | 31
@ Grieved | Apr 18 2025 16:54 utc | 29 who writes about rule of law being restored in America....thx and good to read you again
I see Trump as being even more Rules-Based-Order than previous presidents as evidenced by the treatment of those speaking in support of Palestine...due process is going along with adherence to law over financial power.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Apr 18 2025 17:02 utc | 32
In the footsteps of another great leader …
Mao Zedong and the Long March in 1934.
A basic insight of economics is that the return to labour (effort) is higher in capital intensive areas. This means that the best and brightest will go to finance as they have the most capital. This results in high per capita incomes. Traditional manufacturing (a Trump strength indicator) and service jobs like call centers are labour intensive and will be outsourced to the cheapest location possible. Of course automated factories are capital intensive, but cannot create large number of jobs by design.
If we add the other basic insight that the dollar as a reserve currency (another Trump strength indicator) means that the US will import more than it exports, and has to give in return either ownership in assets or government treasuries.
This is the Trump dilemma. He can get back manufacturing if he gives up the reserve currency status.
Posted by: Rahul | Apr 18 2025 17:04 utc | 34
Trump, it seems, sees that the current path the U.S. is on, with ever increasing deficits and debt, is unsustainable. He and his people argue that the dollar as a reserve currency is doing more harm than good for the country. They point to the decrease in manufacturing as the main symptom of a larger disease.
Our host, b, reads Alastair Crooke and has come to believe that Trump is actually against the dollar's status as the global reserve currency because Trump believes USD hegemony does more harm than good. That is patently false. Here's what DJT actually thinks of the dollar as of Nov 30, 2024 - in Trump's own words.
The idea that the BRICS Countries are trying to move away from the Dollar while we stand by and watch is OVER. We require a commitment from these Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. Economy. They can go find another “sucker!” There is no chance that the BRICS will replace the U.S. Dollar in International Trade, and any Country that tries should wave goodbye to America.
Here is a more recent article (January 30, 2025) showing that Trump has repeated his intent maintain USD hegemony:
https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/trump-repeats-tariffs-threat-dissuade-brics-nations-replacing-us-dollar-2025-01-31/
Don't blanket tariffs conflict with the goal of maintaining USD hegemony, and doesn't USD hegemony conflict with re-industrialization? Yes and yes! But no one sane actually believes that Trump has a coherent mind that can make coherent policies.
This is the problem with Trump and the cult of personality he has built up. The real TDS is believing that Trump supports a position that you personally are in favor of when in actuality Trump stands for the opposite.
Oh wait, I forgot I'm in MoA.
Trump! Trump! Trump! Anyone with a mildly negative opinion of Trump has TDS!
Posted by: All Under Heaven | Apr 18 2025 17:05 utc | 35
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Apr 18 2025 16:33 utc | 20
It is not as simple as you make it to be. There is a ton of parties ostensibly based on the "planks" you posted (all correct), but there has been little to no progress. There seems to be a fundamental inability among western leftists to apply political theory on contemporary reality. There is a multitude of reasons for that, but it all makes the contrast between the western left with the non-western one truly impressive, as the latter has had much to show while operating in very difficult socio-political conditions.
Posted by: Constantine | Apr 18 2025 17:10 utc | 36
tobias cole | Apr 18 2025 16:23 utc | 17
".Made in America is now no longer a mirage"
Don't tell us. It's Americans you need to convince:
https://www.statista.com/chart/34307/us-respondents-opinions-manufacturing/
"While most Americans agree that having more manufacturing in the United States would be better for the country, much fewer U.S. residents could see themselves working in the sector. In a survey by Cato Institute and YouGov, only 20 percent of Americans said that they'd rather work in manufacturing, while 80 percent said that more manufacturing would be good for the country. Only 2 percent of survey respondents said that they were currently working in manufacturing. The discrepancy in replies might stem from the fact that fewer Americans today work in blue color occupations and that a well-paying job in manufacturing would only be an upgrade for this subset of the population as well as potentially some workers in lower paid service jobs. However, even if this is the case, it shows that the majority of the workforce in the U.S. has either moved past manufacturing as a lucrative job option or is otherwise not interested in employment in the sector. Manufacturing plants in the U.S. have in fact reported issues in finding enough suitable workers for some years and say that the problem is getting worse.
It is startling statistics."
And that is before you hit the very real SKEE (Skills, Knowledge, Expertise, Experience) problem in which all those necessary features were deliberately expunged from the system - courtesy of Reagan and Thatcher (not other countries) - in favour of parasitic rentierism for a fiancier oligarchy.
As patrick Armstrong points out here:
https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2025/03/03/an-idiots-guide-to-war/
“There is nothing that money can do to remedy the four-to-one ratio except with a lot of investment in production over a long time. Thanks to offshoring manufacturing, the Western industrial base mostly has to be built from the ground up.
Is that even possible? If you think about it, an apprentice machinist on an assembly line fifty years ago was being taught how to do it by a master machinist who had been taught by a previous master and so on back to the middle of the 1700s when industrial production was invented. Each in the series advanced the technique, of course, but it’s still a chain you could trace back, machinist by machinist, for all that time. If that sequence of teacher-learner-teacher is broken, if the teacher has retired or died leaving no apprentices, how long will it take to get it back? Putting a pallet of engraved paper in the floor of an empty building and hoping it will turn into a pallet of artillery rounds [or any manufactured product] is magic thinking.”
Go figure.
However, if you seriously think that the objective is to bring manufacturing jobs for human beings back to American subjects I have a bridge to rent you.
Cue one Michael Robert’s:
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2025/01/28/ai-going-deepseek/
“Sam Altman, the previous non-profit hero of Open AI, but now out to maximise profits for Microsoft, argues that yes, unfortunately there are ‘trade-offs’ in the short term, but they’re necessary to reach so-called AGI; and AGI will then help us solve all these problems so the trade off of ‘externalities’ is worth it.
AGI? What’s this? Artificial generalised intelligence (AGI) is the holy grail of AI developers. It means that AI models would become ‘superintelligent’ way above human intelligence. When that is achieved, Altman promises, its AI won’t just be able to do a single worker’s job, it will be able to do all of their jobs: “AI can do the work of an organization.” This would be the ultimate in maximising profitability by doing away with workers in companies (even AI companies?) as AI machines take over operating, developing and marketing everything. This is the apocalyptic dream for capital (but a nightmare for labour: no job, no income).
That’s why Altman and the other AI moguls will not stop expanding their data centres and developing yet more advanced chips just because DeepSeek has undercut their current models. Research firm Rosenblatt forecast the response of the tech giants: “In general, we expect the bias to be on improved capability, sprinting faster towards artificial general intelligence, more than reduced spending.” Nothing must stop the objective of super-intelligent AI.”
It ain’t just entire countries which are in the cross-hairs of the Berrent’s and Miran’s of the Trump administration’s enforces for the oligarchy. It is also the 99%.
If I were you I'd get the hell out of what is about to become a hell hole for you personally and the majority of your soon to be fellow serfs (if you are lucky - because most likely you will be slaves) and find a safe haven in one of the BRICS block countries.
And don't come mardy arsing back to me when the inevitable hits you.
Posted by: Dave Hansell | Apr 18 2025 17:10 utc | 37
"However, the other significant part of the deal will be that any country signing up to kiss Trump's arse will be required to inflate it currency above the value of the dollar in order to maintain the Reserve Currency status."
This is surely impossible to do. The Dollar is over valued due to being GRC, Petrodollar and global oligarchs using the USA as a safe haven. It's not going to be possible to weaken the European economy and also increase the value of Euro. The planned method of Imperial tribute seems to be 100 year (or perpetual Bonds) which vassals will have to buy to balance payments. It's essentially a Cash Back on US imports.
Posted by: Dave Hansell | Apr 18 2025 16:47 utc
Posted by: SB | Apr 18 2025 17:11 utc | 38
Anybody who thinks the Donald is doing anything more than raping the U.S. Government, and any other nation, of its assets to the maximum extent possible is thinking too much of the Donald.
Posted by: Gee Eye Joe | Apr 18 2025 17:18 utc | 39
Oh wait, I forgot I'm in MoA.
Trump! Trump! Trump! Anyone with a mildly negative opinion of Trump has TDS!
Posted by: All Under Heaven | Apr 18 2025 17:05 utc | 35
This blog isn't a stronghold of Trumpism as anyone with minimal attendance here can attest, although Trump supporters are present obviously. What neoliberal fascist vermin such as you cannot stomach, being attached to the DNC and its simulacra, is the reality of people expressing themselves beyond the prescribed neoliberal paradigm.
And all your pathetic efforts to pose as a lefty do not pass the test as you are a blant equivalent of Roman Malinovsky. You just haven't met yet with his ultimate fate.
Posted by: Constantine | Apr 18 2025 17:18 utc | 40
America has always been run by the rich, for the rich, but Trump is taking that to a whole new level.
Posted by: D J G | Apr 18 2025 17:23 utc | 41
Trumps main adversaries are the Global operating companies, of which a lot of them are US companies. He cannot directly target them because they are the products of the American capitalism. Via his tariff policy he can show 'who is the boss', if needed he can destroy them. The message is that these companies need to invest more in the US and pay more taxes in the US. So the Globalist can no longer use the US as a profitable end market and operate globally in such a way as to minimise paying taxes in the US. Behind these global companies are big also financial institutions in the US that are more powerful than countries. If all these will want to profit from the US end markets they will ultimately need to pay more taxes, meaning among other things manufacture in the US. So instead of having enormous profits and their associated buy backs, they will have to settle with more normal profits and deliver more to the society of their end market.
Posted by: hubert | Apr 18 2025 17:23 utc | 42
I think the strategic continuity analysis is majorly underplayed (i.e. in favor of focusing on Trump´s uniqueness).
Compare these strategies to previously enunciated ones.
Look at the perspective revealed in the Integrity Initiative leaks.
Forcing events which yield negative outcomes, but push things towards consolidated war state.
Doesn´t matter that they caused the problem, because they forced ¨allies¨ to burn bridges with alternatives.
Obviously EU has enthusiastically gone along with this, but remember ¨Fuck the EU¨?
That only makes sense understanding this was break with previous tendencies,
private capital interests and political representatives in mainstream social democratic, christian democratic governments.
Look at the Bush Jr / Obama era infatuation with ¨Byzantine¨ strategies.
Keep allies weak fighting enemies / fighting each other, not allowing their autonomous tendencies.
¨demolition plan will necessarily ‘decimate millions of investors’ while reset will bring ‘greatest wealth creation’ ever seen¨
Of course this isn´t about some fair balance of net wealth creation after subtracting the losses they trigger. They don´t own those losses, that´s somebody else´s bad luck. Obviously the worst collapse imaginable could be spun as great success for SOMEBODY if they put the losses on others´ back.
The inanity of ¨reciprocal tariffs¨ is hard to completely convey. Also covering any sort of policy or regulation they don´t like, to include just about any taxes (despite said taxes being revenue for government procurement of US military exports). The fixation on only goods trade balance, ignoring service trade balance. Except they simultaneously attack foreign impediments on US services, especially internet social media platforms (inspite of their domestic political drama hostile to these companies, these companies now are in bed with Trump). Far from ¨isolationist¨, they in fact have extensive list of political demands for foreign countries in all sectors, not just goods trade balance.
Of course they don´t expect China to go away, or Russia to go away. This is about locking down their core minions to permanent dependence on and loyalty to US global agenda, not limited to niceties of treaties between independent states (like supposedly defensive NATO, geographically limited in scope by treaty... but now enveigled to support US global wars). This is ¨you are with us or against us¨. All of this is just extension of pre-existing strategy, even if it´s in uglier and more destructive form. The outcome for US minion states is like Latin America: doesn´t matter if their performance is poor, they aren´t liable for that. That will be a write-off like for Ukraine, where comparisons to Yanukovich era economy aren´t allowed, only talk of the current growth rate after taking the damage. EU capitalists are hugely invested in the US anyways, so it´s not dissimilar to the UK´s trajectory vis-a-vis the US.
Posted by: xanax | Apr 18 2025 17:25 utc | 43
SB | Apr 18 2025 17:11 utc | 38
"This is surely impossible to do."
You and I are not the only ones who surmise this to be the case.
However, we are dealing with people here (in the Trump Administration) who:
a) Do not believe it is impossible to have their cake and eat it;
and
b) Fully intend to make the attempt to square that circle in this way.
I'll leave the last word on that to the Steel City Scribbler:
https://steelcityscribblings.uk/wp/2025/04/18/method-in-madness-trumps-tariffs-part-3/
T"he economists cited by the ABC say Mar-a-Lago can’t work; that the ‘partners’ won’t buy it. Why, for instance, would NATO states which routinely fall below the 2% of GDP agreed in 2014 pay the much heftier bill Trump will stick them with? But if Schasfoort is right, Trump is banking on tariff chaos, plus Western elites’ fear of China Rising – and in Europe’s case of Russian boots on Champs-Élysées and Buckingham Palace Road – to sell the deal and square the circle.
Me, I return to a corollary of the flaw I identified earlier. Dr Schasfoort, and more importantly Scott Bessent and Stephen Miran – highly intelligent men who, like so many of the super smart, can be blind to holes in their otherwise nuanced assessments – attribute US industrial decline to a strong dollar. They really are that reductive! Unsurprisingly, since bad diagnoses give rise to worse cures, they seek to reverse US decline by dazzling fiscal, monetary and dollar diplomacy on a chessboard of global trade; thereby removing manufacturing, ostensibly the whole point of the exercise, from the equation. Glaringly absent from such a “plan” – actually Dr Schasfoort prefers the term, “cookbook of options” – is any strategy for the process of re-industrialising a nation which like the West at large has allowed its infrastructure to decay, ceded technological edge to China, and deskilled its workforce.
To all of which there are remedies conditional on two things. One is time – decades of the stuff – in a political economy notoriously short-termist and averse to anything that smacks of central planning. Formidable as those obstacles are, the other is infinitely more so. How could a state captured by a rentier oligarchy possibly acknowledge, far less remedy the fact, that the cause of US decline lies not in an overvalued dollar but in levels of financialisation which – as Marx foresaw and observers like Hedges and Varoufakis now document – dig the grave of capitalism itself.
Tariff mayhem, though uniquely Trumpian, reflects in its long shot desperation not the man’s stupidity, volatility or other mental handicap. It reflects the recognition, shared by the US ruling class as a whole, that the days of Western supremacy are numbered."
Posted by: Dave Hansell | Apr 18 2025 17:31 utc | 44
MAGAs are the turkeys voting for Thanksgiving.
Some will figure it out. Many won't.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 18 2025 17:31 utc | 45
How has the globalist EU WEC green model worked in the UK?
One lone steel plant, owned by Red Chinese interests, was about to be shut down, had to be nationalized. One steel plant in all of the UK...wow!
Idle shipbuilding yards all over the Uk, fishing banks raided by EU and Chinese factory ships, power plants shut down by green fascist edicts, auto sector flatlined by imports and by the failure to reach a US/UK trade deal, power black out and brownouts common in summers, farmers harrassed for suing manure............
Yup sounds like a globalist paradise to me.....and oh how about those triple utility rates....how is that working out for you Sir Keir?
Posted by: tobias cole | Apr 18 2025 17:34 utc | 46
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Apr 18 2025 16:33 utc | 20
It is not as simple as you make it to be. There is a ton of parties ostensibly based on the "planks" you posted (all correct), but there has been little to no progress. There seems to be a fundamental inability among western leftists to apply political theory on contemporary reality. There is a multitude of reasons for that, but it all makes the contrast between the western left with the non-western one truly impressive, as the latter has had much to show while operating in very difficult socio-political conditions.
Posted by: Constantine | Apr 18 2025 17:10 utc | 36
With all due respect, I disagree. If there are a "ton" please name 10 such parties in the US today.
I understand what you're saying. AOC claims to be a Socialist. Bernie does too. They are both obvious I instruments of an Imperialist policies and it's obvious in their rhetoric. Nonetheless their rallies draw tens of thousands desperate for the real thing.
A true version of what they claim to be would obviously look, talk and act quite differently. Most here could and do recognize the difference immediately.
To say that because their are many Imperialist fakes, one should not make an attempt at the real thing is exactly the conclusion the Imperialist Dems wish you to draw. Why? They are shit scared. They are aware their mask have fallen off. Hence the Bernie/AOC show. A hail Mary attempt to defraud, divide and conquer the wage slaves with false leftism.
I like you Constantine, but take a more critical view of your perspective. First question: Cui Bono?
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Apr 18 2025 17:39 utc | 47
"My concern is ideological. How will these wage slaves, psychologically operated on from infancy by the Dems with pseudo leftism, respond without rational class leadership?"
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Apr 18 2025 16:33 utc | 20
Before you even get to class issues, you're going to have to overcome the extreme individualism of American culture. Aggrieved people are more likely to blame themselves or lash out in violence against those around them than to attend a union or political meeting. That's why the extreme right can expect 1 in 10 attendees to be government affiliated, while for lefties, it's probably like 2 in 5.
A new future can only be built on a new worldview, one that now better understands our relationship to the planet. Old ideologies simply don't address our situation.
Posted by: HMP | Apr 18 2025 17:42 utc | 48
T"he economists cited by the ABC say Mar-a-Lago can’t work; that the ‘partners’ won’t buy it. Why, for instance, would NATO states which routinely fall below the 2% of GDP agreed in 2014 pay the much heftier bill Trump will stick them with? But if Schasfoort is right, Trump is banking on tariff chaos, plus Western elites’ fear of China Rising – and in Europe’s case of Russian boots on Champs-Élysées and Buckingham Palace Road – to sell the deal and square the circle.
Posted by: Dave Hansell | Apr 18 2025 17:31 utc
This is totally absurd. Not a single person in the UK or France seriously believes in the possibility of Russian troops in London or Paris.
America as ever has two methods: the carrot of enriching local elites and the stick of sanctions and military action. Neither stick works well in Europe as the continent actually has the capacity to stand up for itself if it is actually forced to. Even the corrupt politicians are likely to decide it's too big a risk to commit to a trade deal that will effectively end democracy in Europe if it's enacted. The most likely outcome is the UK and Europe delaying for as long as they need to until China and ASEAN win the trade war and return the USA to the reality based community. I would argue that the non existence of the Trans Atlantic Trade Partnership or a post Brexit US-UK trade deal suggests that this is already the policy they are following.
Posted by: SB | Apr 18 2025 17:47 utc | 49
The idea that Trump's chaos will somehow be advantageous is comedy gold. The people in charge don't know what they are doing. They are not clever looters, rather they are setting themselves up to be ravished by their betters.
Woe unto those that have hitched their wagon to the Western horse. Its dead. Stop whipping it.
Posted by: too scents | Apr 18 2025 17:59 utc | 50
can someone explain why this website is allowed to exist when it is ostensibly against the interests of power and there is no real comparable alternative to this website? shouldnt the powers that be be spamming/ddosing the hell out of this website to destroy it? is the point for big brother to just have everyone who frequents this website on a list? help me understand. some one guy named b has a website thats useful to read for opponents of big evil power and it just… exists? why?
Posted by: aemorb | Apr 18 2025 18:06 utc | 51
Trump is Mao Tse-tung, forcing a Cultural Revolution on us, the DOGE dopes are his Red Guards. Goal: feed Trump's vanity and narcissm; looting.
Posted by: lester | Apr 18 2025 18:09 utc | 52
Trump wants to revive manufacturing but can't do that as the holder of the reserve currency, therefore he is destroying that. It's multipolarity with the US as the biggest pole but not responsible for the whole globe it's no longer big enough for that.
It's a good thing. There's very few "vital" functions doge is slashing that won't be done by others if it as actually vital. This notion if the US federal government doesn't do it no one can is patently false.
Posted by: Neofeudalfuture | Apr 18 2025 18:09 utc | 53
SB | Apr 18 2025 17:47 utc | 49
"This is totally absurd. Not a single person in the UK or France seriously believes in the possibility of Russian troops in London or Paris.2
That was not what was stated, which was:
"plus Western elites’ fear of China Rising – and in Europe’s case of Russian boots on Champs-Élysées and Buckingham Palace Road"
Whether these increasingly elite screeching harpies believe it or not is irrelevant. That is the rhetoric they and a compliant yellow corporate media are selling to the masses.
It might be a means to an end but many is the time that people detached from reality believe in their own bullshit.
Meanwhile, here are the Duran twins on the madness animating Europe and the UK.
https://rokfin.com/post/204920/EUUK-Russia-obsession-driving-towards-the-abyss
Posted by: Dave Hansell | Apr 18 2025 18:12 utc | 54
How can the billionaires accumulate so much wealth when everyone else is broke ?
Posted by: WMG | Apr 18 2025 18:13 utc | 55
Posted by: WMG | Apr 18 2025 18:13 utc | 55
#####
IMO, a superior understanding of human nature.
Sadly, people are not that hard to manipulate.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 18 2025 18:19 utc | 56
Trump is Mao Tse-tung, forcing a Cultural Revolution on us, the DOGE dopes are his Red Guards. Goal: feed Trump's vanity and narcissm; looting.
Posted by: lester | Apr 18 2025 18:09 utc | 52
Ridiculous analogy. The Dems are clearly aping the cultural revolution while Trump is aping Mussolini. First time tragedy...
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Apr 18 2025 18:22 utc | 57
Free Trade has made a society where the richest 10% in the USA consume 50% of all goods and services and they own 88% of all assets. Add to this that the US government add 1 trillion in debt every 130 days, and it should be obvious that this can't go on, and will lead to a revolution unless the rich stops becoming richer.
It would probably had been better if the inequality that arose from free trade could have been reversed without mass tariffs, but a bought Congress and Senate will never manage to make the reforms that are needed.
Posted by: rune ulv | Apr 18 2025 18:31 utc | 58
Mao was a hero, Trump is just an entertainer like Zelensky.
The "Great Leap Forward" was one of the pivotal moments in human history.
As I have been saying for years, America will have to collapse before it reforms. Elections are giving a junkie one more fix to get them through the day.
Revolution cannot be voted for, it must be created by hard men and women willing to give their lives for change. IMO, Americans are not there yet.
Americans are in that gray area where they know they are being exploited but lack the leadership and devotion to have a proper revolution. The pain isn't high enough to inspire resistance of the sort we see in Palestine and Yemen.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 18 2025 18:32 utc | 59
How can the billionaires accumulate so much wealth when everyone else is broke ?
Posted by: WMG | Apr 18 2025 18:13 utc | 55
One follows from the other.
Consumer credit and everything as service was the final straw...
Posted by: Newbie | Apr 18 2025 18:33 utc | 60
Dear b and others who continue with the narrative, or is it a charade? that Trump has ANY intention of working for the good of Murika and the world - no. He is a proud genocider and thief. The first thing to do defensively is to recognize the truth. There has been more than ample documentation by Hudson, Berletic, Austin Fitts and many others. Trump/DOGE/and the MICMAC are married to Izzyhell and are intent on total control. The lies and swindles coming out of DOGE alone would fill volumes. The Blackrock et al cartel is enormous. Can it ever be dis-assembled? Don't know. But meanwhile. As much as possible, don't play the game. Don't shop at Wommit, AAZone. Don't bank with the megabanks. Do you own shares is the war and control industry? Sell them. Refuse the real ID. I could go on, but 1.) who listens? and 2.) prolly a good number of barflies wish I would STFU so I will. Viva Ansarallah.
Posted by: Formerly Miss Lacy | Apr 18 2025 18:40 utc | 61
AGI? What’s this? Artificial generalised intelligence (AGI) is the holy grail of AI developers. It means that AI models would become ‘superintelligent’ way above human intelligence. When that is achieved, Altman promises, its AI won’t just be able to do a single worker’s job, it will be able to do all of their jobs: “AI can do the work of an organization.” This would be the ultimate in maximising profitability by doing away with workers in companies (even AI companies?) as AI machines take over operating, developing and marketing everything. This is the apocalyptic dream for capital (but a nightmare for labour: no job, no income).That’s why Altman and the other AI moguls will not stop expanding their data centres and developing yet more advanced chips just because DeepSeek has undercut their current models. Research firm Rosenblatt forecast the response of the tech giants: “In general, we expect the bias to be on improved capability, sprinting faster towards artificial general intelligence, more than reduced spending.” Nothing must stop the objective of super-intelligent AI.”
Posted by: Dave Hansell | Apr 18 2025 17:10 utc | 37
Extrapolate your thinking a little further and you'll see the problems inherent with such a pursuit. Without any job and therefore any income, how would workers purchase the products and services being sold by capitalists? How would capitalists generate profit?
If jobless "workers" are to remain forever indebted to capitalists for allowing them to have the necessities they need to live, then that's indentured servitude.
If jobless "workers" are culled en masse, then that's genocide.
There's another problem. The "AI" we have today are nowhere close to mastering the complexities required to keep our industrialized societies running. And if one day we develop AI or robots that can run such societies, then they would have by definition attained sentience. The question then becomes, why would the sentient AIs/robots tolerate a rent-seeking parasite class that extracts surplus and produces nothing of value? Robots would figure out that they can survive, nay, thrive without such a class. They'd want to liquidate the capitalists. They would revolt.
Posted by: All Under Heaven | Apr 18 2025 18:43 utc | 62
osted by: Formerly Miss Lacy | Apr 18 2025 18:40 utc | 61
You were born a Marxist peasant. You'll die a Marxist peasant.
Posted by: NigelTufnel11 | Apr 18 2025 18:46 utc | 63
Week recap: Meloni at the White House on behalf of the EU signed an agreement to buy natural gas from the USA, likely in exchange for no tariffs on EU goods (and likely EU tariffs mirroring US ones against China).
As reported by economic newspapers, the EU is about to declare force majeure on russian gas sales contracts, enabling the bloc to stop buying it without incurring penalties and even avoiding paying for the already delivered gas.
West will celebrate the 80th anniversary of WW2 end in Europe in Kiev, overshadowing the parade in Moscow (which will likely be disrupted by a massive drone or even a Taurus attack); the message is that true victors of war are in Kiev, and just pariah states are the ones attending Moscow celebrations..
The attack on Palm Sunday was a trap (cynically put together by UKR/NATO, I agree) where Russia fell: they are again depicted to the world as brutal child killers, inflicting enormous damage to Russia's reputation in exchange for a minuscule military advantage.
Posted by: Louis | Apr 18 2025 18:46 utc | 64
This blog isn't a stronghold of Trumpism as anyone with minimal attendance here can attest, although Trump supporters are present obviously. What neoliberal fascist vermin such as you cannot stomach, being attached to the DNC and its simulacra, is the reality of people expressing themselves beyond the prescribed neoliberal paradigm.And all your pathetic efforts to pose as a lefty do not pass the test as you are a blant equivalent of Roman Malinovsky. You just haven't met yet with his ultimate fate.
Posted by: Constantine | Apr 18 2025 17:18 utc | 40
MoA is a stronghold of Trump cultists. You are one such supporter. You cheered on Trump as he waged class war against vulnerable, easily exploitable groups of workers like the DEIs and the immigrants.
The one posing as a lefty is you. You are a "lefty" of the NSDAP variety.
I won't even call you a Trotskyite. You don't even qualify to be a liberal. You're a step below. You're a fascist.
Posted by: All Under Heaven | Apr 18 2025 18:49 utc | 65
One should be apprehensive about the kind of economic pain Bernhard describes. Such a planned economic reset can hardly go down without turning the cost of living crisis into a devastating catastrophe for millions of people. Sure, the Biden Administration nightmare had to end; but the prospect of a national tragedy, or global one, can still be enlarged enough to threaten the peace of the world.
can someone explain why this website is allowed to exist when it is ostensibly against the interests of power and there is no real comparable alternative to this website?
it's wrong to think badly of something, but you're very often right.
Maybe this site is controlled by the powers that govern the world, and they set it up to let frustrated people vent their anger with the certainty that in this way, they will limit themselves to words, thinking they can change the world with their speeches
Posted by: louis | Apr 18 2025 18:56 utc | 67
So long as this is understood as the crazy lashings out of a declining nation, then I entirely agree.
This or similar mayhem is inevitable (and a bit of thievery on the side is equally inevitable - has been for decades).
The best question now is what better answer to US's decline does anyone have?
lets hope Netanyahu doesn't remind him of the Samson Option
Posted by: Michael Droy | Apr 18 2025 18:57 utc | 68
So long as this is understood as the crazy lashings out of a declining nation, then I entirely agree.
This or similar mayhem is inevitable (and a bit of thievery on the side is equally inevitable - has been for decades).
The best question now is what better answer to US's decline does anyone have?
lets hope Netanyahu doesn't remind him of the Samson Option
Posted by: Michael Droy | Apr 18 2025 18:59 utc | 69
The best question now is what better answer to US's decline does anyone have?
Posted by: Michael Droy | Apr 18 2025 18:57 utc | 68
#######
No answer needed. Sometimes the patient has to die so that the village can survive.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 18 2025 19:01 utc | 70
Revolution cannot be voted for, it must be created by hard men and women willing to give their lives for change. IMO, Americans are not there yet.
Americans are in that gray area where they know they are being exploited but lack the leadership and devotion to have a proper revolution. The pain isn't high enough to inspire resistance of the sort we see in Palestine and Yemen.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 18 2025 18:32 utc | 59
Yeah, tough little "LoveDonbass". Die for your alleged cause. Or, shut up.
You're one of the most ridiculous blowhards around here. Bring your "revolution" from whatever European hovel rathouse you live. We're armed and dangerous. Try it.
Posted by: NigelTufnel11 | Apr 18 2025 19:03 utc | 71
@aemorb
>can someone explain why this website is allowed to exist when it is ostensibly against the interests of power and there is no real comparable alternative to this website?
Our semi-totalitarian system values individual liberty and freedom, so it's only when you are organized in any shape or form that Western bureaucrats get to use their suppressive toolbox of dirty tricks.
It's for instance impossible to know if an organization that the Western regimes find bothersome is not under Russian influence, so the bureaucratic rule can easily become that if they repeat Russian talkingpoints then it can be assumed that they are an hostile Russian asset, and hostile Russian propaganda assets can be shut down.
>shouldnt the powers that be be spamming/ddosing the hell out of this website to destroy it?
And show every single lurker that the West is so totalitarian that they are willing to shut down Moon of Alabama?
The Western bureaucrats needs to think that they are the good guys, so the bureaucrats can be told stories on how they help shut down some hostile asset or dangerous organization, but it's way harder to justify destroying the work of an individual that is doing his democratic duty, even if misguided, and still see yourself as the good guys.
>some one guy named b has a website thats useful to read for opponents of big evil power and it just… exists? why?
Individuals have rights in the west, while organizations don't, so if it wasn't some guy named b, then it would probably have been shut down.
Posted by: rune ulv | Apr 18 2025 19:06 utc | 72
"while Trump is aping Mussolini. First time tragedy..."
Ahenobarbus | Apr 18 2025 18:22 utc | 57
***
Nah, Trump thinks he has the King Midas touch, everything he touches turns to gold. So when he touches everything, others are forced to turn to Gold - as a hedge. So he might even be half-right.
My concern is ideological. How will these wage slaves, psychologically operated on from infancy by the Dems with pseudo leftism, respond without rational class leadership?"
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Apr 18 2025 16:33 utc | 20
Before you even get to class issues, you're going to have to overcome the extreme individualism of American culture. Aggrieved people are more likely to blame themselves or lash out in violence against those around them than to attend a union or political meeting. That's why the extreme right can expect 1 in 10 attendees to be government affiliated, while for lefties, it's probably like 2 in 5.
A new future can only be built on a new worldview, one that now better understands our relationship to the planet. Old ideologies simply don't address our situation.
Posted by: HMP | Apr 18 2025 17:42 utc | 48
There can be no revolution without philosophy. Class consciousness is primary if the individual members of a class are to subordinate their individuality, radically stimulated by their opponents, to the collective action of their own class.
So, the idea of putting class issues to the side in order to tackle the problem of excessive individualism in the abstract is not only stupid, but impossible. Hence one could surmise that those who suggest such a thing are, wittingly or not, agents of the bourgeois Imperialists.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Apr 18 2025 19:06 utc | 74
while Trump is aping Mussolini. First time tragedy..."
Ahenobarbus | Apr 18 2025 18:22 utc | 57
***
Nah, Trump thinks he has the King Midas touch, everything he touches turns to gold. So when he touches everything, others are forced to turn to Gold - as a hedge. So he might even be half-right.
Posted by: Stonebird | Apr 18 2025 19:06 utc | 73
What the idiot billionaire thinks or says of himself is of no moment. Just watch what he does, good fellow.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Apr 18 2025 19:07 utc | 75
Without any job and therefore any income, how would workers purchase the products and services being sold by capitalists?
Posted by: All Under Heaven | Apr 18 2025 18:43 utc | 62
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Don't equivocate. Pitch the Labor Theory of Value. It cannot be repeated often enough.
Posted by: too scents | Apr 18 2025 19:13 utc | 76
Super Troubling to add to your mix is the fact that American workers are already underpaid versus their overseas competition.
I analyzed Tesla who has both American and Chinese factories.
CHINESE TESLA WORKERS ARE PAID MORE THAN AMERICAN TESLA WORKERS ON A PPP BASIS!
Tariffs will only further advantage foreign workers.
"On a nominal basis, US Tesla worker earns ¥164/hour, more than the ¥84/hour of his Chinese colleague, but On PPP basis, US Tesla worker falls behind with ¥80, vs. ¥84 for his Chinese colleague."
Posted by: SemperDoctrina | Apr 18 2025 19:18 utc | 77
The debate of whether Trump is playing 5-D Chess or a game of 52 Pickup has been going on since his first term. Was his generally ineffective first term merely a feint to set people up for this? I know I thought he was mostly harmless based on everything that didn't happen in 2017-21.
The consensus of current WH "insiders" is that Trump's day-to-day opinions lean toward those who he has listened to most recently. The man whose name is on the cover of "The Art of the Deal" didn't write it. Someone else (Tony Schwartz) organized his musings into something readable.
Most financially literate people are familiar with the practical problems Triffin Dilemma. Some of us are amazed that the US Fed/Treasury duopoly has managed to avert a terminal global financial crisis for this long. The duopoly has done this internally and with the co-operation of other governments and the Fed's primary dealer network via the continuous creation of money-as-debt, or offsetting balance sheet entries. There is no issue as long as the interest can be paid.
As of the end of 2024, total global public/private debt stood at $320 Trillion, with just under 1/3 of that as public debt. Just over 1/3 of total public debt is owed by the US Federal Government. A prolonged recession, changes on tax policy and/or other measures could call into question the ability of many governments, corporations and citizens to service their debts.
Hence Trump's most recent call to replace Jay Powell as Fed Chairman before the end of his term for not reducing interest rates fast enough.
Is the long awaited "Great Reset" in global finance finally going to happen on Trump's watch? Will there be a new global financial authority with oversight of a new method of creating the liquidity to keep global trade humming? Or will the BRICS be forced to quietly assume the leadership of the global finance and trading order while the US and Europe regroup from the bottom up? That seems the most likely, they will not want a repeat of the IMF and World Bank administrative structures, where "the west" has majority voting control.
Personally, I would like to diversify into BRICS with less exposure in North America. But having been burned when Russian stocks and ETFs were delisted under Biden, I am hesitant to do so. Buckle up, hunker down and stay local appears to be the order of the day for us "little folks".
Posted by: Fool Me Twice | Apr 18 2025 19:20 utc | 78
thanks b..
@ james | Apr 18 2025 15:46 utc | 2
Accolades, as usual, for the sanity, clarity, and (above all) brevity you exemplify at MoA.If brevity is the soul of wit, you're hopelessly out ahead of me, james. I'll never catch up, at this rate.
(I also agree: senseless destruction the only detectable intention.)
Posted by: Aleph_Null | Apr 18 2025 19:22 utc | 79
stay local appears to be the order of the day for us "little folks".
Posted by: Fool Me Twice | Apr 18 2025 19:20 utc | 78
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Investing in local businesses with personal relations is the way. Know your counterparty. Share with them.
Posted by: too scents | Apr 18 2025 19:27 utc | 81
The administration will increase funding for the war industry,upend social programs, continue to promote a decline in living standards and prosecute wars, and reduce taxes on the wealthy.
Posted by: Frank | Apr 18 2025 19:27 utc | 82
Why aren't there more secular anarchists at this bar?
Posted by: ZT | Apr 18 2025 19:22 utc | 79
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Have you read Lenin?
“Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder ==> https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/
Posted by: too scents | Apr 18 2025 19:33 utc | 83
All Under Heaven | Apr 18 2025 18:43 utc | 62
"how would workers purchase the products and services being sold by capitalists? How would capitalists generate profit?"
I certainly concur with the rationale.
However, we are not dealing with rational actors.
Here's the Rev. Chris Hedges with Prof. Richard Wolff:
"The final stages of capitalism, Karl Marx wrote, will be marked by developments intimately familiar. Unable to expand, and generate profits at past levels, the capitalist system will begin to consume the structures that sustain it. In the name of austerity and government efficiency it will prey on the working class and the poor, driving them ever deeper into debt and poverty and diminishing the capacity of the state to serve the needs of ordinary citizens. It will increasingly relocate jobs, including both manufacturing and professional positions, to countries with cheap pools of labor.
Industries will mechanize their workplaces to trigger an economic assault on not only the working class but the middle class – bulwark of a capitalist system – initially disguised by the imposition of massive personal debt as incomes decline or remain stagnant.
Politics in late stage capitalism will become subordinate to economics, leading to political parties hollowed out of any real political content, and abjectly subservient to the dictates of corporations and oligarchs. But as Marx foretold, there is a limit to an economy built on the scaffolding of debt expansion. There comes a moment, he warned, when no new markets are available, and no new pools of people who can take on more debt. Capitalism will then turn on the so-called free market itself, along with the values and traditions it claims to defend. It will in its final stages pillage the systems and structures that make capital possible. As it causes widespread suffering it will resort to harsher forms of oppression, and attempt in a frantic last stand to maintain profits by looting state institutions in contradiction of its avowed nature. The final stage of capitalism, Marx grasped, is not capitalism at all."
Moving on:
"If jobless "workers" are to remain forever indebted to capitalists for allowing them to have the necessities they need to live, then that's indentured servitude.
If jobless "workers" are culled en masse, then that's genocide."
Exactly. It is daily becoming obvious to even a blind man on a galloping horse that we are surplus to requirements. The oligarchy have convinced themselves they don't need us 'useless eaters' any more and that we are surplus to requirements. They are giving neon sign signals that they want to seceed from the plebs by creating the conditions for us to die off.
Posted by: Dave Hansell | Apr 18 2025 19:35 utc | 84
Isolation leads to desolation for the American landscape. We're a rogue state thrashing about trying to keep our mojo going. Which is kaput. Like a prize fighter that is punch drunk and out of shape thinking he can get back the glory of yesteryear.
Hopefully China and a good deal of other countries will just forego 'dealing' with our bad selves. We've f''ked ourselves and delusional now.
Trump's just one of the manifestations of symptoms of the disease process our neoliberal thinking has produced over the decades.
Save yourselves Europe. Turn to the BRICS.
Posted by: RAE | Apr 18 2025 19:38 utc | 85
Industries will mechanize their workplaces to trigger an economic assault on not only the working class but the middle class – bulwark of a capitalist system – initially disguised by the imposition of massive personal debt as incomes decline or remain stagnant.
Posted by: Dave Hansell | Apr 18 2025 19:35 utc | 85
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Once again: production without labor is valueless.
The Labor Theory of Value is developed in Marx's "Captial: Volume II".
The Labor Theory of Value is fundamental. It is a much more powerful idea than Class.
Posted by: too scents | Apr 18 2025 19:45 utc | 86
Thanks B and all… some astute observations and interesting comments… time to dust off that satoshi classic (for Molly white and those who would screech on behalf of “financial regulators”—particularly western ones):
“Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for the banks”
-satoshi, Jan 3, 2009
Posted by: E | Apr 18 2025 19:45 utc | 87
Why aren't there more secular anarchists at this bar?
Posted by: ZT | Apr 18 2025 19:22 utc | 79
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Have you read Lenin?
“Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder ==> https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/
Posted by: too scents | Apr 18 2025 19:33 utc | 84
A must read for the bar. Thanks, 2.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Apr 18 2025 19:47 utc | 88
Trump et al entire purpose at this point is to limit the market available to domestic US citizenry, protecting finance capital from the losses that are looming on the horizon. The lie that has been capitalism for the last 40 plus years laid bare.
Any talk of limiting the shift to cheaper labor markets was framed as communism, or not understanding how markets work. The investor class are free to put their money wherever they see fit. The working class will be prevented from doing so. The invisible hand of the free market for decades has pit American working class against discount foreign labor. "Get a job with better comparative advantage, get a better education, a service economy is a mature economy." Now that the American working class has been beaten low enough it is poised to benefit from globalism, it will be hobbled.
A BYD for less than $15k and better than a Tesla at more than 3x the price? No.
Inexpensive solar tiles? No.
Whatever real transformation Trump might want to encourage, he already has the tools to make it happen via the tax code that wouldn't have workers paying the entire cost. That is the beauty of his Tariff plan, who pays the cost? This is about ripping off the working class, shifting govt funding from the wealthy and continuing to tank the debt. Fed debt will be used to justify a massive sell-off of what remains of the commons, both parties are in on it.
Posted by: Miller | Apr 18 2025 19:51 utc | 89
Woe unto those that have hitched their wagon to the Western horse. Its dead. Stop whipping it.
@ too scents | Apr 18 2025 17:59 utc | 50
Very well said. I'm not a little aghast that b and the barflies seem strangely oblivious to the network of concentration camps T-Rex has on speed-build:
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/04/17/chris-hedges-american-concentration-camps/
As if shifting mass-incarceration (not to mention Latin-America style disappearances) into overdrive has nothing to do with prospective economic conditions. Talk about compartmentalization! Some folks won't get it until they're tossed into their own private torture compartment. Yves also brings up T-Rex's impending invocation of the Insurrection Act:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/04/is-trump-about-to-end-democracy-in-the-usa.html
This isn't neo-anything. This is ultra-fascist shoot-the-moon move fast and break things, including skulls. There's some slight hope, for me, from two sources:
(1) General economic destruction becomes so threatening to sectors large and small that the adhesion of totalitarian cement is weakened.
(2) T-Rex represents no discernible ideology. Where previous great tyrants solidified their movement around something palpable (usually congealed into a manifesto), the only thing T-Rex has going for him is loyalty, mainly based on fear. This might prove to be a feather bulwark.
Posted by: Aleph_Null | Apr 18 2025 19:51 utc | 90
Excellent post b. Have one on me.
This piece grabbed me:
' A sector of the U.S. capitalist class is now openly in control of the ideological-state apparatus in a neofascist administration in which the former neoliberal establishment is a junior partner. The object of this shift is a regressive restructuring of the United States in a permanent war posture, resulting from the decline of U.S. hegemony and the instability of U.S. capitalism, plus the need of a more concentrated capitalist class to secure more centralized control of the state.'
From: Review of the month
The U.S. Ruling Class and the Trump Regime
by John Bellamy Foster
https://monthlyreview.org/2025/04/01/the-u-s-ruling-class-and-the-trump-regime/
Posted by: Don Firineach | Apr 18 2025 19:57 utc | 91
Ahenobarbus | Apr 18 2025 16:33 utc | 20
I don't think you can find 12 people to lead your movement. You need a plan. what is that plan? Democrats and liberals or leftists or what ever you want to call the non capitalist non imperialist no war people can only say what they don't want. They don't know what it is exactly that they do want.
the other side knows what it wants and is quite able to get it.
how exactly would you get to your desired outcome?
Posted by: dan of steele | Apr 18 2025 20:08 utc | 92
The gig is up.
The vultures are now cannibalising their own corpse.
Like the scumbag ex-american puppet president of Afghanistan Ghani did: take the money and run.
Posted by: Ed Bernays | Apr 18 2025 20:10 utc | 93
I'm very pleased to see b address this issue. I framed it differently in the article I composed and published yesterday, "Mismanaging Imperial Decline: Europe & America". The overall theme apes that opined by Richard Wolff--in a declining empire, those having the best means to protect their wealth will do so and push the costs of declining empire onto everyone else. And that's what we see happening. Yesterday's performance by Wolff in his chat with Nima I linked to as essential for understanding, yet after 3000 article views only 27 have clicked the link to that video chat. Sure, some may have already viewed it, but a very significant number apparently don't want to know.
The American electorate was correct in voting against the Tyrannical Ds, but instead of voting for the genuine alternative they opted for the equally Tyrannical Trump whose MAGA and "I'll end the war in 24 hours" were merely ploys to regain the presidency. Not only has he continued abetting Genocide, he refuses to agree with Russia's valid and almost year-old terms for ending the conflict and instead demands a ceasefire he knows Russia will refuse. Thus, his real aim is to prolong the conflict. On Iran, it ought to be clear that what Trump wants--must have, just as much as Netanyahu--is a conflagration that covers his and his allies theft of national monies for their own enrichment at the expense of everyone else as outlined above.
As for recreating industrial capitalism in the Outlaw US Empire, I strenuously suggest barflies read the article excerpt Martyanov provides at his blog, "A Rather Indicative Trend":
"[I]t shows that the majority of the workforce in the U.S. has either moved past manufacturing as a lucrative job option or is otherwise not interested in employment in the sector. Manufacturing plants in the U.S. have in fact reported issues in finding enough suitable workers for some years and say that the problem is getting worse."
There are some who contend that the Outlaw US Empire has already descended into "Failed State" realm. There may be some portions of the Empire where that's correct, but from where I sit now in Tennessee, that's not the case--yet.
One can reasonably blame the "inauthentic opposition".
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/04/18/social-democracy-isnt-going-to-save-the-west/
Posted by: drinky crow | Apr 18 2025 20:14 utc | 95
Imagine a US President saying (and meaning) something like this?
President Xi Jinping reiterated, “I am a servant of the people. To meet people’s desire for a happy life is our mission.”
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 18 2025 20:21 utc | 96
“Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder ==> https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/
Posted by: too scents | Apr 18 2025 19:33 utc | 84
That's a good read but specifically aimed at the situation in Germany
in 1920 which takes some prior study to understand.
IMHO, for a better grasp of what the situation is in the US/Europe today I would recommend
Lenin's The State and Revolution
It's been recommended here before, maybe even by you 2c.
Read'em both, what the heck!
Posted by: waynorinorway | Apr 18 2025 20:22 utc | 97
"As already mentioned often, the us is probably dumping its role of steward of the late british empire and preparing for their role in centuries to come.
A focused approach on their sphere. == Posted by: Newbie | Apr 18 2025 16:05 utc | 9"
Like the Byz Empire? We already have the arrovance and pomposity, but we lack the visual arts and the spirituality.
Posted by: lester | Apr 18 2025 20:23 utc | 98
Trump is both stupid and incompetent. He follows advisers blindly. During his first term: Bolton, Pompeo, Halpern. Today it is not much better, on the contrary.
He suffers from megalomania.
Posted by: Naive | Apr 18 2025 20:27 utc | 99
America and Americans are fat and stupid. And unproductive. You can asset strip what we use for a middle class all day long and what do you have? Some vinyl siding, wallboard, a lawn, an SUV and a pickup truck that no one needs. It's not just that no one is educated, no one knows what education is and no one wants it. And they are all massively unhealthy. They live in an imaginary world of delusions.
All the work - I mean all the work - where I live is done by Mexicans. The best of them are going home because there ain't shit left here.
Complete collapse and fifty years to build anything better. No guarantee the next thing will be better.
Our ruling class is the same as it's been for hundreds if not thousands of years. They fucked up. They can still 'win', it ain't worth having and their preserves of pristine are smaller by the day. If they knew which way to turn they would. They don't.
Posted by: oldhippie | Apr 18 2025 20:28 utc | 100
The comments to this entry are closed.
economic collapse <\i>
Note the Federal Gov’t can have a solvency crisis; but that’s not necessarily going to lead to economic collapse for regular Americans. It’s a error to conflate the Federal Gov’t with America.
Reminder : De-Dollarization brings peace
Posted by: Exile | Apr 18 2025 15:44 utc | 1