The US empire[1]is going through a profound structural economic crisis, which has now also become a social one, with distant origins and which the entourage surrounding President Trump is now trying to manage. The strategic choices deemed necessary to achieve this goal are probably at the basis of Trump's actions more than any psychiatric or emotional reasons given to justify his actions. In developing this hypothesis, we do not intend to affirm that Trump is the custodian of profound economic thought, but only to argue that the incumbent President represents a convenient megaphone, a frontman called upon to manage a strategy that currently prevails not without contradictions within the US establishment and which arises from deep and distant elaborations.
In our analyses of US domination, we have always tried to highlight the lines of continuity that have characterised the actions of the presidents and the political class of a state born of slavery and genocide, as demonstrated by the analysis of the economic-political phase developed in 2022 at point 6.5.7. we argued that:"The military aggression of the United States of America is an old and never-ending story. Their economic power, however, has been in sharp decline for a long time: the trade balance entered into deficit in the mid-1970s and has fallen increasingly into the red to the point of reaching almost $700 billion in 2020; the overall share of world trade has fallen from 23.3% in 2000 to 16.9% in 2018; "the weight of American industry, in the twenty decisive years for our history, has fallen by a third..."; in the same period (2000-2018) the US added value at a global level has fallen from 6% to 5.5%, and is falling in all areas except Europe; the share of manufactured goods from 23.2% to 15.7%; entire areas of ancient industrialization have been desertified (Flint, Gary, etc.).
The military path to colonialism has undergone a a hard blow in Afghanistan, comparable to that of 1975 in Vietnam and the new frontier is that of the proxy war, aimed at weakening Russia and enslaving the EU, with the complicity of Great Britain. The dollar exchange rate is strengthening, which will make US goods even less competitive and a wave of strikes is looming on the horizon. If globalization represented the imposition of the US economy on the entire world, deglobalization corresponds to de-Americanization."[2]
Four eventful years have passed, yet the economic and political development trend has not changed; on the contrary, it has accelerated, moving in the direction predicted by actual economic and geopolitical data. Indeed, the US balance of payments, although recording a decreasing trade deficit to $54.5 billion in January 2026 (driven by record exports of gold, computers, and aircraft and declining imports), reached its lowest level since October, with exports increasing to $302.1 billion. It should be noted, however, that in 2024, the overall deficit in goods and services was $926 billion, higher than the $773.4 billion in 2023, and that in 2025, the trade deficit reached $901.5 billion at the end of 2025, a record high and signaling a trend. Despite this result, the US maintains a large surplus in the services sector (approximately $282-293 billion in 2024-2025), which partially offsets the large trade deficit in goods. A general commentary on the situation suggests that the trade balance generally stands at a deficit of 4-5% of GDP, rising to $83.5 billion in February 2026, reflecting the volatile nature of monthly trade. The high trade deficit is also driven by low private savings and high government deficits, a phenomenon known as the "twin deficit."
The overall share of world trade stood at 10% of global exports and 13% of global imports. Today, the US remains the world's leading market for many categories of goods, with a sharp increase in imports of capital goods, computers, and semiconductors, bringing the value of imports to $372.1 billion in February 2026. Although the weight of American industry in the world is still very high due to the fact that the United States is home to the largest companies in the world by market capitalization, production is concentrated in high technology, aerospace, defense, electronics, telematics and energy (oil and gas) and shows high labor productivity, increased by 50% between 1995 and 2019, the country has undergone a significant manufacturing transformation in recent decades, the share of US manufactured goods in the world has decreased,
for the divestment of entire production chains, positioning the United States as the world's second-largest manufacturing power behind China, which holds a stable share of around 29%. The US manufacturing sector has seen a long-term contraction in total Gross Domestic Product (GDP), so much so that while in 1970 it represented approximately 24% of the US economy, in 2023 its share fell below 11%. Proof of this is the fact that the Rust Belt has expanded and, in addition to including Michigan, with the worsening of the automotive crisis, has increasingly involved Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, resulting in the emptying of entire cities and production areas.
Although US GDP has surpassed $29 trillion, representing approximately 26% of global GDP, and per capita wealth exceeds $73,000 annually (in 2022 purchasing power parity), poverty in the United States affects millions of people. According to available data in 2020, approximately 37 million people lived below the poverty line, equivalent to 11.4% of the population. However, the situation has worsened significantly since then, with over 40 million people out of 349 million citizens estimated to be poor. The lower-middle class is particularly affected by the rising cost of living, particularly housing and basic necessities, caused by inflation, labor costs, and the lack of access to social services, due to the disappearance of many poverty relief programs and healthcare services, given that one of the US system's hallmarks is the lack of welfare structures.
Globalization and productive decentralization
The current configuration of the US manufacturing system is the result of the United States' stubbornly pursued policy of decentralization of production, which has fueled economic globalization and multiplied the intersection and interdependence of supply chains. Faced with rising labor costs in the United States, American business has found no better solution than to resort to massive decentralization of production to its immediate neighbors, Mexico and Canada, as well as China and many other countries around the world, relocating production to places where labor costs are lower and the working class is disorganized and therefore willing to accept lower wages. In doing so, however, the US has progressively dismantled its manufacturing structure, rendering it uncompetitive. It has compensated for the impoverishment of the productive system by financializing it, concentrating production on high-tech and innovation sectors, and focusing on the control and provision of services, especially those characterized by heavy computerization and automation, a choice that has led to a significant workforce layoff. Accumulation and growth have been fueled by the creation of successive bubbles, ranging from the real estate bubble that burst in 2008, known as the subprime mortgage crisis , to the technology sector bubble, with a strong focus on artificial intelligence (AI).
The use of the dollar as a currency for economic transactions has contributed to accentuating the financialization of the system and exacerbating deindustrialization in the US.
The Trump administration sought to address these difficulties through tariffs, confident that the US market aspired to remain the world's largest revenue hub, and hoping to thereby raise the capital needed to reindustrialize the country. The cost of this operation would have to be borne by the empire's vassals, especially Europe, against whom the United States has waged a war that only the empire's foolish servants fail to see. Although initially, these vassals were also forced to resort to decentralization of production, deindustrializing themselves and embroiling themselves in a serious economic crisis. It can be said that this process affected the European market to a relatively lesser extent, but now the empire has presented the bill by requiring them to shoulder the costs of reindustrializing the United States, draining capital and forcing them, through tariffs, to relocate production to the United States. Thus, the United States' economic objective has become the systematic destruction of European welfare, through the privatization of healthcare and pension services to siphon off the capital earmarked for these purposes and divert it toward investment in their reindustrialization. This, in turn, forces its vassals to finance their economies through rearmament and the purchase of American weapons. This explains the US's satisfaction with the sabotage of Nord Stream II and the resulting energy crisis, artfully created through the Venezuela operation first, and especially the war against Iran, with the subsequent destabilization of the productive sector of the Persian Gulf economy.
All this occurred without US strategists grasping the essential, structural fact of the United States' productive decline: that of 56 key production sectors for innovation and development, China is currently the leader, while the United States maintains primacy in only four of these production sectors.
The coils of the serpent
The American empire can be visualized as an anaconda. The system it supports is built on the US dollar's share of international transactions, which exceeds 50% but is decreasing under pressure from the BRICS nations, which are increasingly using their national currencies for trade, without China aspiring to replace the dollar with its own currency.
Trump's actions, launching the war against Iran and destabilizing the Middle East's productive system within the global economy, have undermined the dollar investments of the Gulf oil monarchies. Faced with the destruction caused by Iranian attacks on their countries' infrastructure and productive systems, as major investors in the US market and holders of dollars, they have asked the US government to initiate swaps. These swaps involve the exchange of cash flows in different currencies to ensure foreign currency liquidity. This will help them overcome the liquidity shortage and avoid having to liquidate their dollar investments, both on the stock market and as a reserve instrument through holding US government bonds. This is essentially a form of quantitative easing (QE), aimed at injecting liquidity into the economy to reduce long-term interest rates and encourage lending, with the aim of preventing deflationary pressures and stimulating growth. The request was made by the United Arab Emirates, but was soon extended to all Gulf countries. This is because there is no US empire without the petrodollar, and it is therefore essential that oil be paid for in dollars and not in other currencies, as these states threaten to do.
The US Treasury immediately agreed to the request, understanding that the rest of the world will pay the price, as the United States, to provide for it, will simply print dollars, fueling domestic and international inflation. However, this bloodbath cannot continue for long. It remains to be seen what the interest charged on these transactions will be. However, this temporary measure does not solve the problem at all, since, faced with rising energy prices, holders of US government bonds as reserve currency and those investing in the US real estate and financial markets will be forced to divest to raise the capital needed to fuel their respective economies. This will inevitably trigger a crisis in the US financial system.
It is no coincidence that France, which could have done so as the victorious power in the war, withdrew its gold reserves from Fort Knox, and that China does not request or seek to have its currency become an international currency of exchange, because to sell it to other countries it would have to increase its imports, go into debt abroad, and mobilize production on its own territory.
Two converging options
The current US strategy for managing this phase is the result of a convergence of interests between a nationalist statist component, identified primarily with the MAGA movement, which aims to strengthen the United States as a leading country. This objective is then articulated into multiple, sometimes contradictory, components (for example, isolationism, yet simultaneously the full deployment and strategic projection of the country's hegemonic power; the strengthening of executive and presidential power, and the simultaneous tendency to support the privatization of services and a further reduction in the role of the state; the rejection of new wars and the expectation of Armageddon). These contradictions can be explained by the convergence of evangelical movements, or more specifically, by the political projection of this cultural-religious component, which hinges on "prosperity theology," which in turn serves as a bridge to another "economic-philosophical" component, identified with the builders of speculative bubbles.
By this we mean the builders of economic bubbles such as the dot-com bubble (or speculative-technological bubble) of 1997-2000, which culminated in the collapse of the markets in March 2000, or the real estate bubble of 2008, known as the subprime mortgage crisis ,[3]or even the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble which began in 2023 and is now considered by many experts, including industry leaders such as Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg, to be an "industrial bubble" linked to frenetic investments in data centers and AI infrastructures, expected to grow strongly in 2026-2027. This bubble hinges on the so-called "magnificent 7" (US Tech Stocks), namely those of American technology companies (Microsoft, Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Nvidia, Tesla) that have driven market growth, reaching very high valuations, raising fears of a possible burst in 2026.
The high risk of a financial crisis originating in the US in 2026, potentially driven by the collapse of AI valuations and the ongoing global geoeconomic crisis, would be covered by a further bubble in the genetics sector, which is brewing, characterized by human-machine integration. Speculative financial groups are preparing for this, not disdaining to associate the scientific and industrial aspects with cryptoassets that use bitcoin and other digital assets that have shown rapid growth and development dynamics, typical of financial bubbles. The best-known "liaison officers" of this latter group who manage the convergences of evangelical groups with the theo-technologists of the IT industries are Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, leaders of this latter component nestled in the companies of Silicon Valley and its surroundings.
Allied in the conquest of power in the United States and in supporting Trump's presidential candidacy, these two components of the US political landscape oscillate between alliances and conflicts, convergences and divergences, fueling both market and geopolitical uncertainties and insecurities. Recall, for example, the role given to Musk at the beginning of his term, when he was appointed head of the DOGE (Dogeo Economic and Political Administration), only to be subsequently dismissed.
The European Union and other states aspiring to be part of a multipolar world must contend with all of this, but that's another topic we'll explore.
[1]The term "American" is deliberately not used as a synonym for US to avoid implicating other innocent populations of the American continent in the role played by US imperialism and colonialism.
[2]UCADI, Analysis of the 2022 phase, Newsletter, N. 163 - September 2022.[
3]Erupted in the United States due to mass defaults on high-risk loans, it caused the collapse of the real estate market and, after the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, it turned into a global financial crisis and the worst recession since the Great Depression.
GC & SC
https://www.ucadi.org/2026/05/23/la-crisi-dellimpero-statunitense/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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