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Trumps war on globalisation

Marxist Analysis · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The article argues that Trump's trade war represents not a temporary aberration in US foreign policy but the beginning of the end of the post-war free trade order. The central claim is that the breakdown of globalisation is driven by the underlying crisis of overaccumulation, not by Trump's personal idiosyncrasies. Trump's mercantilist approach — treating trade as a zero-sum game and using US economic and military leverage to force bilateral deals that eliminate trade deficits — is a symptom of a system that can no longer sustain the expansion of global trade on which its post-war stability depended. The article insists that this is not a policy dispute that can be resolved by replacing Trump, because the same social conditions that produced him will persist.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on the Marxist understanding of capitalist crisis as the motor of political and geopolitical change. The article deploys the concept of free trade as an ideological expression of the needs of capital during periods of expansion, and protectionism as the reflex of capital in crisis. This is grounded in the classical Marxist tradition — from Marx and Engels' analysis of the bourgeoisie's need to "nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere" through to Lenin's theory of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, where inter-imperialist rivalry intensifies as the world market is carved up.

The article also implicitly draws on the Marxist critique of Keynesian and liberal internationalist illusions. The reference to the 1930s is not merely historical analogy but a theoretical point: protectionism does not cause crisis but is the political form that crisis takes when capital can no longer expand through peaceful competition. The argument that "globalisation together with the expansion of credit enabled the capitalist class to extend the post-war boom far beyond its limits" is a clear reference to the Marxist theory of overaccumulation and fictitious capital — the idea that the system postpones its contradictions through credit expansion, only to face them more acutely when the debt bubble bursts.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was written in June 2018, at the moment when Trump's steel and aluminium tariffs on Canada, Mexico, the EU, and Japan came into force. The specific conjuncture it analyses includes:

  • The G7 finance ministers' meeting where the six non-US members issued a statement of "unanimous concern and disappointment" — described by the French finance minister as the "G6+1"
  • Trump's use of "national security" as justification for tariffs on allies, which the Canadian finance minister called "absurd"
  • The US-China trade negotiations, where Trump pushed for increased Chinese purchases of US goods while the broader US ruling class focused on intellectual property and forced technology transfer
  • The successful bilateral deal with South Korea as a model for Trump's approach
  • Trump's blocking of WTO judge appointments, paralysing the organisation's dispute resolution mechanism

The article's central conjunctural claim is that the US can no longer play the role of guarantor of free trade, and no other power — not the EU, not China — can step into its shoes. This leaves the world economy without a stabilising hegemon at precisely the moment when crisis demands one.

Where the Argument Continues

The article leaves several questions open that are developed elsewhere in the IDOM corpus:

  • The nature of the crisis: The article states that the "present crisis in world relations and the threats to free trade are part and parcel of the economic crisis" but does not elaborate on the specific mechanisms of that crisis. This is developed in other IDOM articles on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and the long downturn.

  • The fate of the WTO: The article notes that Trump has paralysed the WTO's dispute resolution process but does not predict its complete collapse. Later IDOM articles on the breakdown of international institutions develop this further.

  • The political trajectory of the US: The article argues that removing Trump would not solve the underlying crisis, but does not specify what form the political crisis might take. This is taken up in subsequent analyses of the Biden administration's continuation of Trump's trade policies under different rhetoric.

  • The response of the working class: The article ends with the claim that "the inability of capitalism to deliver a decent living standard for the working class will lead to one political and social crisis after another, until the system is finally overthrown" but does not examine the concrete forms of working-class resistance or the political tasks of revolutionaries in this conjuncture. This is addressed in IDOM articles on the need for a revolutionary party and the critique of reformism.

Connections

  • Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto: The classic statement of the bourgeoisie's drive to create a world market and the contradictions this generates.

  • Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: The theoretical framework for understanding inter-imperialist rivalry and the division of the world market.

  • Trotsky, The War and the International: Trotsky's analysis of how imperialist war emerges from the contradictions of capitalist development.

  • IDOM articles on the long downturn and the rate of profit: These provide the economic underpinning for the political analysis in this article.

  • IDOM articles on Brexit: The article notes Obama's opposition to Brexit as part of the same defence of free trade institutions, and the parallel between Brexit and Trump's trade war as expressions of the same crisis.

  • Against the Stream episodes on trade wars and geopolitics: These develop the analysis of how inter-imperialist rivalry is reshaping global politics.

Key Quotes

  1. "Globalisation together with the expansion of credit enabled the capitalist class to extend the post-war boom far beyond its limits. All of that is now turning into its opposite."

  2. "The present crisis in world relations and the threats to free trade are part and parcel of the economic crisis. Whatever happens, the period of free trade is coming to an end, which in turn will usher in a period of deep crisis of the whole system."

  3. "Trump is a clear expression of the impasse the system has entered."

  4. "The US has for 70 years been the enforcer and guarantor of free trade in the capitalist part of the world. If they are no longer willing to play that role, but are also actively sabotaging the process, who is going to step into their shoes?"

  5. "What they ignore is that the same social conditions that gave rise to Trump will not guarantee the stability of the US political system. Even if they were to succeed in somehow removing Trump, there is no guarantee that they would get the kind of President they desire."

  6. "The absurdity of competition is of course that although it promotes efficiency in the long run, it does so only by destroying the productive forces in the short-term, something that in any rationally planned society would be completely unnecessary."