Trump's victory is a desperate and historically understandable gesture by US society to halt the decline of the imperial prosperity it experienced throughout the 20th century and, above all, after the Second World War. It is a desperate gesture, because society has to turn to a president convicted by the US criminal justice system, who has performed very badly during the Covid-19 pandemic (1.2 million deaths, many of them avoidable), who has incited the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and who openly claims to be willing to eliminate the very essence of US democracy – the limited powers of each sovereign body (checks and balances) – in exchange for the promise that everything will go back to the way it was before.

But it is also a historically understandable gesture because all previous empires have declined and died due to the internal degradation of their social, economic, political, and cultural life. If anything, external enemies delivered the final coup de grace. It is difficult to define what the decline of an empire consists of, when it begins and when it ends. For example, the Roman Empire began to decline after the death of Marcus Aurelius (180 AD), but only collapsed three hundred years later. Broad generalizations should be avoided on this subject, which is prone to determinism and insensitive to historical contingencies. I can imagine future historians worrying less about the decline of the American empire than about how long the empire survived the predictions of its decline.

When I talk about decline, I'm talking about the discourse of decline as a political weapon for access to power. Trump's main slogan, MAGA (Make America Great Again), is clear in this respect. There is decline, but it can be halted, even reversed. The popular vote given to Trump shows that this discourse is convincing in the US today.

Halt the decline or fall into the abyss?

Social polarization, the concentration of wealth, the increase in social inequality, the degradation of the quality of the political elite and of democratic coexistence, the dominance of financial capital over productive capital—these are all seen as signs of decline. Decline is a structural but discontinuous process. It can be halted at times by the same forces that are responsible for its decline.

Because of its rentier nature, financial capital was the first to show signs of halting the decline. The day after Trump's victory, Bloomberg's Billionaires Index announced that Donald Trump's victory had helped, overnight, to increase the fortunes of the 10 richest people in the world. According to the index, these fortunes gained almost 64 billion dollars on Wednesday alone. It was the biggest daily increase recorded since the index began in 2012. Elon Musk, the world's richest man, also saw his fortune grow the most. His net worth increased by 10%, the equivalent of 26.5 billion dollars. He was one of the biggest supporters of Trump's campaign and was promised a position in the next government; the fortune of Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon, increased by more than 3%, which means an increase of 7 billion dollars; Bill Gates, owner of Microsoft, saw his wealth rise by 1.2% to 159.5 billion; Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Google, saw their wealth increase by 3.6%, each reaching a fortune of around 150 billion.

The euphoria in the world of bitcoins was another manifestation of financial optimism. If these individuals were nationals of a country hostile to the US, they would immediately be labeled oligarchs. Whether this is evidence of a halt to the decline or a deepening of the decline is an open question for now. In reality, it means a new boost to the concentration of wealth, a new economic protectionism with unpredictable consequences, and a deepening of the crisis of democratic coexistence. If the danger of fascism was real if Trump was elected, as was said and repeated by Kamala Harris' campaign, why is Joe Biden now making statements guaranteeing the peaceful transition of his government to the Trump administration? Is this a democratic gesture in a democracy on the brink?

Democracy or a new kind of oligarchy?

Of course, Trump didn't win the election with the vote of the tycoons. He won the election with the vote of the American people, especially the most vulnerable, who have seen their standard of living deteriorate over the last four years, especially after President Biden's social agenda was blocked in Congress and the war in Ukraine became the Biden administration's major investment. The Democratic Party has long abandoned the working classes, exposing them to declining living standards, inflation in the price of essential goods, and increased exploitation. It's no surprise that these classes are now abandoning it. In relation to the 2020 election, the Democratic Party lost 10 million votes and only gained votes among the upper classes. It clamorously lost the youth vote, outraged by US complicity in the Gaza genocide.

How is it possible that the social groups that will eventually suffer the most from the worsening concentration of wealth voted for Trump? One of the essential conditions for the functioning of liberal democracy is for citizens to be well informed. This condition is deteriorating worldwide in times of fake news and hate speech, and the American public is considered one of the most ill-informed in the world.

But this may be just one of the reasons. Public opinion surveys consistently show that US citizens are in favor of progressive social policies: expanding affordable medical services, the right to housing, controlling inflation of essential goods, and increasing taxes paid by the richest. However, the Democratic Party focused its election campaign on the danger of fascism and the backlash against race and gender identity politics. It seemed a sensible tactic given Trump's racism and misogyny throughout his campaign. The truth is that all this seemed too abstract for 75% of the voter population, who, polled at the exit polls, said they were experiencing financial difficulties. The identity politics argument only won votes among the higher social classes.

This is reminiscent of the analysis by US political scientists in the 1970s and 80s about the low value Latin American countries placed on democracy, easily exchanging it for any dictator who promised to improve their living conditions. Perhaps these analyses should be revisited, but now applied to the American people.

It seems increasingly clear that the majority of the American population no longer has any influence on the conduct of political life. In a recent book, Oxford professor Joe Foweraker (Oligarchy in the Americas, 2021) argues that a transition is underway in the US from a democratically elected constitutional government to a government of an unelected oligarchy that is virtually unaccountable to anyone.

This is a new kind of oligarchy. Unlike the robber barons of the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, today's oligarchs don't use corruption, state subsidies, or state loans; they simply control political power so that the taxation system and the economic regulatory framework favor their interests. In other words, they manipulate political power in order to distort markets or prevent the state from reforming them. The vast majority of US senators and congressional representatives belong to the richest 1% in the US and are compensated for defending policies that favor the new oligarchy. In view of this, the vote for Trump may well have been a protest vote. A genuine vote, but one destined to fail. A protest vote destined to fail because Trump has already announced more tax cuts, more deregulation of the economy, and an increase in fossil energy production.

The analysis of Project 2025 (Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, 920 pages) published by the Heritage Foundation in 2023 is revealing of what could happen in the coming years, both in the US and in the world influenced by US politics [1]. In addition to the concentration of power in the figure of the President, the project is based on the following ideas: “Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-government to the American people. Defend the nation's sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely – what our Constitution calls 'the Blessings of Liberty'.”

Defending the borders means deportation. And what will massive deportation of undocumented immigrants mean? Thousands of police? An army? Construction of internment camps? What will the invective against teachers in schools and universities mean if Trump considers the vast majority to be far-left radicals, Marxists, or even communists? How will he force teachers to “teach students to love their country and not hate it”?

Trump and the world

Everything that happens in the US at home has repercussions in the world. Trump's victory is likely to have the following global impacts. It accelerates the ethnic cleansing underway in Palestine in order to consolidate the Israeli government as a spearhead in the Eastern Mediterranean, historically the geopolitical space for relations between East and West; as the empire's advance guard in a strategic area, Israel will have veto power over US policy in the region; true to this strategy, Iran is geopolitically more important than Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe where, incidentally, around 30% of the land is already in the hands of the multinational companies DuPont, Cargill and Monsanto (owned by the world's largest investment fund, Blackrock).

It aggravates the confrontation with China, but whether this increases or decreases the likelihood of World War III is unknown for now; everything will depend on China's strategy for whom four years of Trumpism is little more than a minute in China's long life; and if the war is fought, it may be by very different means from previous wars, even if it ends up with the same death toll as always. It strengthens far-right forces around the world now that the “world's largest democracy” is ruled by the far right. It will try by all means to halt the advance of the BRICS. This last topic deserves a special mention.

The BRICS and the Trojan Horse

By vetoing Venezuela's entry into the BRICS, perhaps the most clumsy act of Brazilian diplomacy in recent decades, Brazil has established itself as the Trojan Horse of the BRICS, that is, as a wedge of US imperialism at the heart of an initiative that sought to be an alternative to it. Oil still says almost everything. If Venezuela joined the BRICS, in future 6 out of every 10 barrels of oil produced daily in the world would be produced by the BRICS. Brazil is not alone in this policy, as India, albeit more discreetly, is also trying to delay the affirmation of the BRICS. Just as Brazil is too close to the US, India is too close to China.

It is legitimate to think that Brazil, by acting in this way, is trying to refound the policy of non-alignment that emerged from the Bandung Conference in 1961. The problem is that the original non-alignment was between Soviet socialism and Western capitalism, while the non-alignment sought now would be between two versions of capitalism, one led by China, the emerging empire, and the other led by the US, the declining empire. The history of capitalism shows that between two versions of capitalism there are no alternatives but rather a savage struggle, which, however, can include more or less long periods of truce.

History indicates that these periods will become shorter and shorter. Just bear in mind the sad recent history of Europe. After the Second World War, Europe built a version of capitalism, social democratic capitalism, and presented it as an alternative to US liberal capitalism. Similar phenomena occurred in Japan and South Korea. But these alternatives were only viable as long as they served (or didn't hinder) the interests of US capitalism. The moment this was no longer the case, these alternatives went into crisis, and, in the case of Europe, the war in Ukraine was the coup de grace. To halt its decline, US capitalism demanded Europe's full support for its plan to confront China by weakening its strongest ally, Russia.

Europe went along, making its social-democratic model unviable, diverting funds previously allocated to social policies to finance the war, and stopping buying cheap gas and oil from Russia in order to buy them several times more expensive from the US. The propaganda war made the mediocre politicians who govern Europe believe that once Europe was more closely aligned with the US, it would be stronger and safer. Trump's victory, the divestment from NATO, and the protectionism that are being announced cruelly show that Europe will soon be standing in the middle of the world square naked and dumb, wondering how all this was possible. Perhaps it will return to being, as it was until the 15th century, an insignificant corner of Eurasia, as far away from Russia as it is from the USA. There were warnings, but Cassandra's curse is more alive than ever.

In the case of Brazil, I would dare to advise the Itamaraty politicians to read or re-read the books by Ruy Mauro Marini, one of the greatest Brazilian social scientists of the last century, who, in various publications, develops the theory of sub-imperialism. At the time, Marini was analyzing the relative autonomy of the military dictatorship's government in the Latin American context in relation to US imperialism. This reading or re-reading is urgent so that politicians and diplomats can conclude that times have changed and that there is no place for relative autonomy today.

Brazil's move against Venezuela is geopolitically an act to halt the decline of US imperialism. The US will be grateful for this support from the only political forces that are now its unconditional allies worldwide, the right and the far right. I wouldn't like to see the PT government in a few years' time, like Europe, standing naked and dumb in the world square wondering how all this happened.

Donald Trump is not an aberration. He and the seventy-five million who voted for him are just as American as Kamala Harris and the seventy-two million who voted for her. They can all feel legitimized by the Declaration of Independence, a structurally ambiguous document that can justify both inclusion and exclusion, “the two faces of American freedom” (Aziz Rana). Trump's victory is above all a symptom of the crisis of liberal democracy, especially since neoliberalism assumed hegemony in capitalist economic thinking from the 1980s onwards. The causes need to be looked into more deeply, and it is from this reflection that alternatives can emerge if the human race does not run out of time.

If anyone has any doubts about the crisis of the left and of progressive politics, try to imagine the possibility of such a vast array of think tanks coming together to produce a progressive policy plan as detailed and as vast as this ultra-conservative policy document-manifesto.