WHAT EXPLAINS TRUMP'S RECKLESS TARIFFS & OTHER MADNESS

In a word, the extreme concentration within the financialization phase of global capitalism in the current U.S. post-hegemonic era. Notice that in 1900, that high concentration was centered in Europe under British global hegemony. It took two world wars and the Great Depression (1929 ~ 1940) to dramatically and irreversibly re-center the world-economy from Europe to the emerging global hegemon, the U.S. 

After enjoying an unparalleled and unquestioned overall supremacy in all aspects of the world-system - from productive, commercial, financial, technological, cultural, geopolitical to military -, the half-century (1945-2000) U.S. world order gave way to the present "post-hegemonic" era, in overreach fits and huge strategic setbacks for the U.S., leaving it today with only TWO areas of dominance (which is not the same as hegemony), now under various challenges: global finances and military power.

This maps shows the U.S. dominance of the global capital (financial) markets. An even more spectacular one exists for U.S. dominance in military terms. There should be a third map showing the emerging resistance among the peoples of the world - including our own!

The truth is that, without dominance in the other previous areas of hegemony, the increasingly reckless behavior of the U.S. since Bush II's "endless wars", the speculative financial meltdown in 2008/10, and the neomercantilist/fascist/isolationist tendencies of Trump 1.0 & 2.0, it should come as no surprise the American plutocracy has now defaulted to that old empire-in-trouble, self-defeating recourse to high tariffs. A "sign of Autumn", Fernand Braudel - who noticed the same pattern at the end of British and Dutch hegemonies - would say.

Of course, these desperate measures won't work, just like the other extreme measures to shore up lost hegemony backfired and accelerated its economic and geopolitical decline in the world-system and now has led to the spread of domestic chaos.

We cannot, and will not, return the halcyon years of U.S. global hegemony. Heck, we cannot even return, under present deeply dysfunctional, socially polarized, politically chaotic circumstances, to the golden era of the domestic duopoly ("bipartisan") rule, which we must remember was always funded and sustained at the obsequious service of capital, but with a tangibly and increasingly generous social contract (New Deal labor rights and benefits + expansive, inclusive civil rights & liberties for marginal, oppressed "others"). 

That social contract was financed by two main sources: the unparalleled productive dynamism of the most advanced American economy, and the huge profits from empire extracted during the Cold War. Both are now practically gone.

We here in the United States are forced to face the future with a daunting question: now what? That's a big and urgent question!

The answer is blowing in the wind - from the genocidal blasts of Gaza & Ukraine, to the blasts of unilateral tariff shocks, to the madness of Maga/Trumpism; and yes, blowing also in the whirlwind  arising from the indomitable resistance around the world and, particularly, from the American people, finally.

Not a moment too soon. See you at the trenches! 

Another world is possible, another North America is necessary. Another vision is required.