Whatever Trump ends up achieving (or more likely, not achieving) in his second term, he has made personality cults great again. Exhibit A: the shameless ass-kissing of acolytes whom he once viciously insulted– “Little” Marco Rubio come to mind- gushing about how Trump is the only one who can reform government, cleanse America’s body of illegal immigrants and its soul of woke platitudes, bring about world peace, and restore American manufacturing dominance. But one month in, there have been no substantive achievements and his poll numbers are dropping: only 49 % of Americans approve of Trump’s performance. What will happen when his cuts start to hit home? Poor and white working class Americans can feel proud that Ivy League colleges which they will never attend can no long use race as a factor in admissions, but when their social security payments are chopped and Medicaid is reduced, they will not be able to blame Democrats or illegals. At that point– probably just as mid-term election season gets into high gear– Trump’s coalition may well start to unravel. Remember his signature promise from his first term: ending Obamacare. He did not end it because Congress realized that even his most rabid working class supporters in red states had learned that Obamacare, flawed as it may be, actually helped them meet their healthcare needs.

Trump would love an eighty foot bronze statue of himself on Wall Street, but through his first term and one month of his second he is more Wizard of Oz than Stalin: a sad old man madly pulling levers to sustain the illusion of fundamental change. But it is mostly theatre. Take for example his crackdown on illegal immigration. While the pace of deportations has increased, the raids seemed staged with future political commercial in mind that will remind voters that “Trump does what he says.” However, only one month in to the “biggest crackdown on illegal immigration ever” ICE officials are being re-assigned because of the slowing rate of removals. Slow or fast, there is no way that Trump will undermine the agricultural economy by targeting migrant labourers en masse. There are about 11 million undocumented migrants in America now, and in 2028 I predict there will be just about 11 million undocumented migrants in America.

His other signature piece– tariffs, have yet to be imposed, save on China, and then only at 10% rather than the 60% he promised. Inflation is creeping up and while that may not dissuade him from going forward with the broader suite of tariffs he has promised, the disruption to industrial supply chains that will cause will not leave American workers unscathed, at least in the short term. Auto executives have been sounding the alarm about the impact tariffs on Canadian and Mexican manufactured parts and American brands is evidence that the American ruling class remains split on Trump. Those splits are likely to get wider if Trump does proceed with his attempt to return to an essentially mercantilist global political economy with America at the centre. If enough workers start to hurt from disrupted supply chains, higher costs for consumer goods, prescription drugs, and the generalized chaos mass layoffs in the federal government are likely to cause, Trump’s Napoleonic period will be even briefer than the real one’s reign.

But the past week’s news cycle has been focused on Trump’s foreign policy, and here his goals, while contradictory, are not uniformly wrong. Trump is correct: the Ukraine war does need to end and it never should have started in the first place. He is also correct that it is not America’s job to protect the whole world– that argument has been a staple of Realist thinking since the end of the Cold war, not to mention a key plank of peace and anti-imperialist movements. His “plan” for Gaza, is abhorrent and needs no further critical comment, but the people of Gaza do need to live in peace and material security. The danger that Gazans face is less from his plan than from Israeli unwillingness to allow Gaza to be reconstructed. While still astoundingly callous and arrogant, he also sometimes says some surprising and welcome things: he has proposed nuclear talks with Russia and China to reduce stockpiles and there are reports that Secretary of Defense Hegseth has ordered a review of Pentagon spending that could lead to epochal reductions (32% over four years, if reports are true) in the military budget.

The Democrats pursued none of these laudable- in the abstract- foreign policy goals. At the same time, we are not witnessing a retreat of America from the global stage, but a re-configuration of the way in which American power is deployed. Despite liberal hand-wringing we are not seeing the decline of the ‘rules-based international order,” because there never was a “rules-based international order.” There was and is a power-based international order in which the most powerful nations wrote and re-wrote the rules to suit their interests. The rules were written differently in the Cold War, when the US and the Soviet Union had to take into account the existence of the other, then they shifted after 1919 to become, on the surface, more cooperative and multilateral in some respects, and are now shifting again, as Trump re-positions American foreign policy under the assumption that America is the preponderant global power and needs to use its military and economic might to serve a different interpretation of its interests.

Trump’s gambit may fail, but it is not an incoherent stew of half-baked ideas as critics like to pretend. It is a return to a nationalist and realist foreign policy. But this shift is in keeping with the times. First the 2008 crisis and then Covid caused a return to some aspects of Keynesian economic stimulus and a hardening of borders that have not disappeared with the end of the pandemic. Right wing nationalist-populist ideologies are in the ascendant across the world– Trump is less disruptor-in-chief than a creature of the times. The nationalist re-trenchment across the globe proves– if further proof were needed- of the absurdity of the argument that an anonymous “Empire” of capital and digital flows had replaced American imperialism, as Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt argued. American imperialism never went anywhere- ask Gazans and Ukraninians, who were killed by American bombs and pushed into war with Russia by a Democratic government stuck in Cold War thinking and a closely allied European security establishment haunted by nonsensical fantasies of Russian tanks rolling across the Donbass all the way to Normandy.

Trump is wrong that Zelensky started the war but he was used as a tool by the US and NATO in an overt and publicly acknowledged plan to degrade Russian power. Trump is correct that the war has become a World War one-like stalemate that needs to end. And he is also correct that Ukraine is in a much worse bargaining position and will most likely have to cede territory that it would not have had to ceded had either the Minsk 1 or Minsk 2 treatises been agreed to or Russia engaged in serious talks in December 2022 when a list of negotiating points were sent from Moscow to Washington, only to be arrogantly rebuffed. The Ukrainian people have paid the price.

Can Trump deliver peace, not only in Ukraine, but in the Middle East and globally? One cannot deny that Trump can shape the rhetorical field. He seemingly extemporizes shocking proposals which rarely come to pass, but get everyone’s attention and crack open formerly fixed positions. Trump knows that America still wields massive military and economic power and he is willing to threaten to use it to bend other nations to his agenda. But there are serious tensions and contradictions at work in the overall strategic picture that is emerging.

Looking carefully at the moves Trump has made or is threatening to make, it becomes clear that he is trying to rid himself of the Ukrainian and Middle Eastern entanglements the better to compete exclusively with China for manufacturing share but also for control over the world’s rare earth critical mineral supplies. Trump is not subtle: the cat does not need to get out of the bag because it was never in it. His envoy hands Zelensky a contract to sign over 500 billion dollars worth of rare earths and tells him to shut up and sign. Bad news for Denmark/Greenland, Canada, and perhaps Norway: Trump is proposing a new era of US-Russian Arctic co-operation (i.e., joint domination). None of this is motivated by Trump’s love of Putin, it is designed to weaken the alliance between Putin and Xi. But that is also the strategy’s main weakness.

However much Putin welcomes the feigned respect paid to him by Trump and Rubio, they are setting him on a collision course with the reality of Trump’s desire to hem in and weaken China. Russia is and will remain dependent on China as the major customer for his oil, natural gas, and minerals. European markets for oil and gas are not coming back, and Trump has no intention of helping them come back, because he wants to keep the European market open for American Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) deliveries. Trump also wants to use threatened tariffs as leverage to open up the Indian market for American LNG, which just happens to be another major purchaser of discounted Russian oil. Over the next few years these contradictions are going to amplify. How they will play out is not certain, but it is much more probable that the globe is heading towards a generational political-economic conflict. China cannot lose access to the American market and continue its manufacturing-led economic rise. Putin cannot lose access to the Chinese market for his oil, gas, and minerals. Trump cannot back down from his goal of re-patriating American manufacturing industries. While his commitment to shrinking the American global military footprint is long overdue, no one should mistake his agenda for a commitment to a project of comprehensive, life-valuable, positive social peace. He may well imagine that other countries will fall into line. The evidence from South Africa, Mexico, and even dangerously dependent countries like Canada is that they will not.

Canadian readers of my vintage will remember the Alberta-based bumper sticker campaign inspired by the demand made by an angry caller to a Calgary radio station to “let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark.” His ire was inspired by Trudeau pere’s National Energy Program and the threat that it posed to provincial jurisdiction over Alberta’s oil and gas resources. Trump’s 25 % tariffs on all Canadian goods imported into the US (10% on oil and gas) imposed on February 1st and then suspended for 30 days has aroused Canadian anger across the country. Ontario premiere Doug Ford went the furthest, arguing that we should cut off electricity and energy supplies. Trudeau fils was not willing to take that dangerous step, at least in the first round of response, but he did announce an escalating series of counter-tariffs. Whether Trudeau’s willingness to offer a robust response, or whether his economic advisors were able to explain the implications of “integrated supply chain,” or whether Trump decided he could attain his ultimate economic goals (shifting investment from Canada and Mexico to the US) by slowly bleeding concessions from Canada and Mexico I cannot say at this point. But what is clear is that the complex set of dependencies that ties the Canadian economy to the American puts Canada in an extremely precarious position.

Political forces that were once against free trade when it was first negotiated in 1987, and then deepened and extended to Mexico in 1993 with the North American Free Trade Agreement (renegotiated under the first Trump administration and re-christened the United States Mexico Canada Agreement) find themselves forced to defend it. Economic nationalists going back to Harold Innis have warned that the size differential between the Canadian and American economies meant that Canada will always need America more than America needs Canada. Abundant natural resources offer only limited leverage– if there is only one market for the resource (America), then threats to suspend exports are idle: the resource only has commercial value if it is sold, and if there is only an American buyer, then not selling will have even worse economic consequences than paying the tariff. In any case, critics of integration and free trade lost the argument, and now Canada faces its most serious economic problem since the 2008 global financial crisis.

The threat is real, in particular to the auto industry, situated in Southern Ontario. Windsor-Essex where I live could face economic obliteration. I am not exaggerating. Tens of thousands of workers in the assembly and engine plants and dozens of smaller tool and die, injection mold, and parts plants could lose their jobs. Parts go back and forth across the border multiple times. Do the math: if every time a part crosses into the US the manufacturer must pay a 25 % duty, the costs will be enormous. Experts predicted that the entire North American auto industry, dependent as it is on the integrated supply chain and just in time production, could grind to a halt in 7-10 days from the imposition of tariffs. While the fact that American auto workers would be laid off would be sure to get Trump’s attention, it would also get the attention of the owners of parts plants and future investors. Capitalists are risk averse: they will close plants on this side of the border and not make future investments if they are going to be exposed to tariffs. The industry will not disappear tomorrow (because plants cannot just be moved overnight), but overtime the plants will relocate to the US to avoid tariffs, or even the threat. That is Trump’s plan, and it may be starting to work already. Even though the tariffs have been suspended, a number of firms located in Canada have announced lay offs in anticipation that they will be applied in March. But even if they are not, Trump can keep them dangling like the sword of Damocles over Canadian heads.

Perhaps alone amongst nations, Canadian politicians take American political and economic aggression as a personal insult. They rhapsodize about what a good friend Canada has been to the US, what close allies we have been, how special and unique our connection is, how we share the world’s longest undefended border (but not any more, since Trudeau has agreed to further police and militarize it as part of the commitment he made to Trump to stave of the implementation of the tariffs). But they forget both Lord Palmerston and Pierre Eliot Trudeau, the first of whom argued that states have no permanent friends or enemies, but only interests, and the second who warned that when a mouse sleeps next to an elephant, it is always in danger of being crushed. One can disagree or even despise Trump’s tactics, but Trump is the President of the United States and has both the right and the power to impose whatever economic policies he and his advisors believe is in the interest of the United States.

Viewed from the standpoint of American capital, Trump’s politics are contradictory, which explains the mostly critical response from the business establishment. One must not forget that globalization was largely an American-capital driven process: the policy architecture that created the conditions for globalization was called the Washington Consensus. While the trade liberalization that made possible the re-location of manufacturing industries did not harm the bottom line of most industries– indeed, the whole point of relocation was to reduce labour costs and undermine the power of unions– it did gut many smaller American cities and create what is not affectionately known as the “Rust Belt. Some industries were also directly harmed by competition with lower priced Chinese imports– steel comes immediately to mind. All economic policy- and the neo-liberalism that underpinned globalization was a policy, not a distinct form of society– must be understood in terms of its function: to create the conditions for expanded capital accumulation. What we are clearly witnessing is the unravelling of neo-liberal globalization. States have been re-trenching behind stronger borders since 2008, and especially since COVID-19. Trump is part of a global wave of right-wing populist movements coming to power based upon dissatisfaction with the impotence of social democratic parties (in the US, the Democratic Party) in the face of global threats to working-class living standards. As is sadly too often the case, working class anger is directed downward- against immigrants, especially– rather than upward, against the ruling class. Nevertheless, the social and economic problems feeding right-wing populist movements are real.

Which brings us to the crucial, as always, question: what is to be done? And as soon as that question is posed one faces a problem– a paradox, really– that I have been wrestling with, without success, for many years: the short term damage caused by phase transitions between one form of global economic governance and another is real, suggesting that only fundamental, long-term, system transformation can solve the problems, but the short term pain that would be required to reach those long term goals would be at least as bad if not worse than trying to re-float the system, which impedes political mobilization in support of structural changes. Moreover, since structural alternatives are just textbook ideas, people understandably cling to whatever version of the system works for them– tariffs in the pre-free trade world, now free trade– because life requires certainty of need-satisfaction today and tomorrow. If the mortgage must be paid at the end of the month and groceries bought each week, workers are going to mobilize behind those forces that seem best able to secure the social conditions that allow them to do so. Most workers might not have much when compared to the ruling class, but they have a great deal more to lose than their chains.

But they do stay chained to a system whose periodic convulsions and internal transformation threaten their lives and livelihoods. How this paradox between the fact that these system convulsions threaten the very needs that keep people wed to the system is to be solved, I do not know. As is usually the case when an American threat to the Canadian economy begins to take hold, voices cry out that it is time to de-couple from the American economy. This time is no different. Left-nationalist voices have called for but a more self-reliant Canadian economy, voices further to the left have called not only for a more independent but also a democratic socialist economy These calls sound good in the abstract, and in the abstract their “necessity” can also be proven. But they float down from the (not absolutely, but relatively more secure) halls of academia. Making an argument in class to students is one thing, making it in the Penalty Box Lounge across Walker Road road from the Windsor Assembly Plant (Canada’s largest manufacturing plant) to auto workers facing immediate job losses would be quite something else entirely.

Sam Gindin grasps the paradox better than most. A long-time leader in the CAW/UNIFOR before leaving for a career as an academic, Gindin understands the lived realty of Canadian workers’ vulnerability to changing American priorities. He is also correct to infer– but it is more like a logical inference than a political program– that the radical alternative- not just de-linking but socialist reconstruction of the Canadian economy, is the only practical alternative. Correct as an inference but not as a political project because neither Gindin nor anyone else could tell the workers’ affected how this economy can be built, how long it would take, how it would function, and how it would employ the manufacturing workers who would certainly lose their jobs as their factories shrank because they were no longer selling into the gigantic American market. Moreover, the crucial question of how a relatively small economy could become an independent bastion of democratic socialism is left unanswered. Serious solidarity between Canadian and American workers seems impossible to imagine right now. The only existing vehicles by which such solidarity could be constructed are unions whose primary function today is job protection, and Canadian workers are facing the problems that they are facing because Trump is selling his agenda as a job-creator. Should it prove to be a job killer– as he has been warned it will- a return to the status quo ante rather than a new era of collective working class struggle is far, far more likely.

Trump is deploying nostalgia for a supposed Golden Age to build an ideological bloc in support of his virulent nationalism. Despair can be tempered by the knowledge that the mandate that he claims for his wrecking-ball approach to governance is much smaller than he claims– only 1/3 of eligible voters cast their ballot for him. But the power vested in the Executive branch is allowing him almost free hand right now. Democrats have, predictably, adopted a ‘make lawyers rich again’ court-based strategy to try to slow him down. But what is needed — Gindin and others are correct– is a renewed democratic socialist project: one that begins from shared interests underlying distinct identities rather than the individual and abstract ‘stories’ and ‘journeys’ of those identities. From shared and universal need-satisfaction as the material condition of the unique and to a society which allows for- as J.S. Mill said beautifully in On Liberty— an open-ended set of “experiments in living,” that is the principle upon which a renewed struggle for a better world must be organized. But it is just a principle, a platitude, really, which can do nothing on its own but requires the force of millions of people working together to put it into practice.

Who will discover the rhetorical and political key to inspiring people to take the risk they will have to take to solve the structural problems that capitalism as such poses with real invention rather than ideological nostalgia?