In these lines, we will conduct an analysis of extreme realpolitik, looking at the stark economic data to understand what is happening and what to expect in the immediate future. Economic analysis is essential to understanding the complex phase of capitalism in this period. Beyond speculations about the unipolar and multipolar world, the one adjective that seems to have no place in many dissertations I've read and in the various stadium-based fan bases of red-browns and "middle-class progressives" in search of an author is imperialism. The struggle underway in this historical phase is not to open markets to more competitors, thus ensuring pluralistic globalization; rather, it is a clash between imperialist tendencies, with Europe at best acting as a pivot and at worst as a hunting ground.
Speaking of the USA: The international landscape of January 2026 has definitively lifted the veil on the true intentions of US imperialism, transforming what was once called "globalization" into a ruthless act of national survival. Within the "laws" that structure the intrinsically predatory nature of global capitalism, the need for American reshoring arises not from a sudden social vocation toward its own population, but from a biopolitical urgency to secure the material flows of production.
The doctrine we have seen consolidate under the pressure of "Trumpian" acceleration-a term that now defines not just a man, but a method of muscularly managing hegemony-has largely transcended the soft phase of tariffs, entering that of the military appropriation of resources. Reshoring is no longer an invitation to companies to return, but a structural coercion implemented through the creation of an exclusive industrial ecosystem, where access to energy and raw materials is guaranteed only to those who agree to relocate within the protected confines of the American enclave.
In this context, the 2026 operation in Venezuela is not a whim of the tycoon, nor an operation to eliminate a regime or a resurgence of the Cold War, but a necessary step in a process of defending US power in which the logic of controlling energy flows prevails over any diplomatic protocol. Control of Venezuelan reserves responds to the material need for the Gulf Coast refineries, technically designed for the heavy crude oil extracted in Venezuela. But above all, it serves to sever the umbilical cord of the "oil-for-debt" scheme that tied Caracas to Beijing.
Control of Venezuela, therefore, is not about lowering pump prices for Nebraska residents, but about dominating the basic chemicals value chain. The European industry, particularly in Germany and Italy, is built on transformation. Without heavy hydrocarbons, Europe is at a standstill. By removing Venezuelan crude from the global market, the US has created an unsustainable cost differential. While American refineries process low-cost "proprietary" molecules, European companies must turn to volatile spot markets or geopolitically risky suppliers.
The intervention in Venezuela thus inaugurated the phase of "preventive seizure" of supply chain nodes. The US has understood that the hegemonic war with China is not won on the stock market, but by grabbing resources through the occupation of mines and wells. The Venezuela affair-the occupation of strategic space and the denial of resources to a competitor-should be considered the "model" that will be applied to the lithium triangle in South America (Argentina, Chile, Bolivia) and to the cobalt and rare earth deposits in Africa. It is ultimately a resource denial, transforming energy from a commodity into a tool of asymmetric warfare: by removing Venezuelan oil from the Asian market, the United States not only stabilizes its own internal manufacturing costs, but exponentially increases the production costs of its competitors, effectively making reshoring the only option for Western capital to survive for its so-called partners. Or, in the worst case scenario, it can direct purchases to the West rather than the East.
This isn't a free market (if it ever existed); it's an input monopoly. If you control the basic molecule, you control the final price of every plastic, pharmaceutical, or technological component produced in Europe. American reshoring feeds on European deindustrialization: unable to compete on the cost of raw materials, EU chemical companies are forced to relocate to the United States to survive.
Trump's acceleration has given this process unprecedented speed, eliminating the multilateral mediations undertaken by Obama and Biden in favor of brute force acting directly on adversaries' critical infrastructure. While China attempted in previous decades to engage the West through the "New Silk Road," the United States responded by dismantling its energy terminals in South America, demonstrating that in the era of value chain realism, a military-controlled oil well is worth more than a thousand trade deals.
The significance of these actions on the global stage is the return to an armed mercantilism in which the market currency, the dollar, is once again guaranteed not only by trust, but by the direct and military control of primary resources. This marks the end of the decades-long mantra of a free and neutral global market, already utterly unrealistic. The awakening from the hallucination of the free market today tells us once again that geographic control matters more than finance, and physical proximity to a protected supply source is the only real competitive advantage left.
In this zero-sum game, China finds itself with billions of dollars in bad debt and a "shadow fleet" of seized oil tankers, currently seeking retaliation over rare earths. These retaliations affect not only the United States but also its allies/buyers. Rare earths play a supporting role, just like hydrocarbons. It's no coincidence that Trump is doing everything he can to secure Greenland while simultaneously haggling over the Ukrainian conflict and the rare earths beneath the disputed territories.
A spiral of interlocking blocks is unfolding, bringing global trade to a standstill. This fragmentation is not a systemic error, but a new configuration: the creation of self-sufficient and opposing industrial blocs, where every resource taken from the adversary is a tactical victory in the battle for technological supremacy in the 21st century. Europe, in this conflict, appears to be the most vulnerable. The accelerated focus on energy transition, implemented without any extractive or technological independence, has handed the automotive sector-and its related chemical and mechanical industries-over to Asian competition.
The electric dogma has ignored material cycles, pushing the industry to a breaking point where energy has become an unsustainable luxury. The attempt to compensate for this decline with accelerated rearmament has resulted in a drugged market: a temporary subsidy to heavy machinery that fails to address the competitiveness gap. The real danger is reverse decoupling: a Europe crushed between American protectionism, Asian aggression, and Russia's uncomfortable proximity.
On the one hand, high-tech EU industry is tempted by the subsidies of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). On the other, China's retaliation targeting critical minerals strikes at the root of the folly of Europe's green transition just as the energy crisis linked to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has made traditional production costs unsustainable. The third wheel, Russia, is a neighbor that has become inconvenient following its aggression against Ukraine, but which, in unsuspecting times, wasn't considered such a bad thing, as long as it provided cheap energy.
Let's consider for a moment the implications of the IRA, which is a bailout plan for the US manufacturing ecosystem alone, an operation of industrial piracy. The mechanism of tax credits and direct subsidies is designed to be "exclusive": you receive funding only if production and, above all, research take place on American soil.
This is causing a silent but massive migration of R&D (Research and Development) departments. Europe's leading companies in hydrogen, batteries, and new materials are no longer simply selling their products to the US; they're moving entire laboratories there to access billions of dollars from the US Treasury. The ambivalence is fierce: the US presents itself as the leader of the ecological transition, but does so by draining the intellectual capital of its allies. Europe finds itself paying the costs of training its own engineers only to then hand over the fruits to the American manufacturing system. It's legalized plunder dictated by doped market logic.
In this context of competing imperialisms, Europe's dependence on the US financial and military system becomes a trap. Every success of American reshoring is a nail in the coffin of European manufacturing. If fossil fuels and chemicals once again become Washington's controlling prerogative, Europe finds itself forced to choose between productive irrelevance or total political submission. America's "industrial fortress" does not have equal allies, but only subcontractors or technological colonies. The game of 2026 is not about tariffs, but about the ability to physically control molecules and electrons; a game in which Europe, lacking its own strategic vision, risks becoming the table where other players divide up the scraps.
JR
https://umanitanova.org/cronaca-di-unegemonia-armata-reshoring-e-controllo-delle-risorse-lillusione-del-libero-mercato/
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Link: (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #5-26 - Chronicle of an Armed Hegemony. Reshoring and Resource Control: The Illusion of the Free Market (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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