Trumping the Empire

The widespread political expression of hyper-nationalist sentiment against globalization has its roots in one of the most paradoxical aspects of the making of global capitalism. Since this did not bypass states, but rather depended on states facilitating and codifying a globalizing capitalism as well as cooperating in its management internationally, state legitimation still depended on justifying all this as an expression of the ‘national interest’. This not only sustained national identity but also provided ground for those expressing nationalist ideology in anti-globalization terms. This political outcome of the first great capitalist crisis of the twenty-first century was especially heightened, following on the outcome of the Brexit referendum and the electoral successes of hyper-nationalist anti-immigration parties in Europe, with Donald Trump’s election to the presidency of the American empire. What distinguishes the Trump administration is that rather than circumventing particularistic protectionist claims articulated in Congress, it is itself making such claims on behalf of – usually not even at the behest of – certain American industries. Its expressed determination is to claw back concessions previous administrations made in order to draw other countries into the American-led global neoliberal order, and to make others bear the burden of the contradictions which that order has systematically generated. Of course, the greater the effects this has on the behaviour of the American state, both at home and abroad, the more can we expect that this will itself have effects on the balance of social forces in other states. Alongside the material effects, this may take the form of emulation as well as revulsion. In this way, the American empire’s role in the making of global capitalism has come to be challenged from within rather than, as had been so widely expected, from without. As we argued in our book, The Making of Global Capitalism, ‘the significance of the fact that the political fault-lines of global capitalism run within states rather than between them is … replete with implications for the American empire’s capacity to sustain global capitalism in the 21st century’. We will attempt here to trace out these implications as they have unfolded since the crisis of 2008, up to and including the Trump administration’s first years in office