César Fonseca avatar

Cesar Fonseca

Political and economic reporter, editor of the website Independência Sul Americana.

870 Articles

HOME > blog

American capitalist collapse leads Trump to war.

"To avoid collapse, they resort to war as a perpetual solution."

US President Donald Trump at the Capitol in Washington - 05/20/2025 (Photo: REUTERS/Ken Cedeno)

Experts in American history, such as the Brazilian historian and diplomat in Germany, Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, a Brizola supporter linked to the Socialist International and author of "The Formation of the American Empire," who is respected worldwide, have always emphasized that American capitalism goes to war when economic crises shake the structure of the system, sharpening its contradictions.

To avoid collapse, they resort to war as a perpetual solution.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in thanking President Donald Trump for siding with Israel against Iran: "First war, then peace."

 

WAR, THE NEW LANGUAGE OF IMPERIALISM

 

It is the new pragmatic language of imperialism.

The American deep state, dominated by war, rallied and buried Trump's solution of trying to end the war through tariff measures.

Neoliberal joke.

It would be a step back to the 20th-century economy, valid under neoliberalism, in the market economy, prior to the 29 crisis.

The deep state has given the order: war is the alternative capable of sustaining the expanded reproduction of capitalism through state spending, when the option is war, as President Trump has just decreed.

 

Keynes's Eternal Advice

 

The United States has followed Keynes's advice since 1936.

The English lord, the world's greatest economist, advised Roosevelt: “I think it is incompatible with a capitalist economy for the government to raise public spending on the scale necessary to validate my thesis – that of full employment – ​​except in conditions of war. If the United States becomes insensitive to arms preparation, it will learn to know its own strength.” 

General Eisenhower, the former American president during the war and considered a national hero, acknowledged in 1960 that American power is embodied in the American military-industrial state.

The government drives global demand through war, contracting services from the arms industries coordinated by the Department of Defense.

Keynes was a disciple of Colbert, minister of Luiz 14.

For him, "public debt is the lifeblood of war."

It is she who energizes the economic space.

 

TORN SPEECH

 

Trump tore apart the supposedly neoliberal discourse of budgetary balancing with which – in his delusional neoliberal Wall Street mindset – he imagined he had all the solutions.

He envisioned fixing the financialized American economy through tariff wars.

This strategy contradicted American military power, according to Eisenhower's concept that war is the seed of American macroeconomics in the Keynesian vein.

War economy!!!

It is war that strengthens the dollar, the hegemonic currency that the empire refuses to relinquish. 

Trump began attacking BRICS precisely because he sees the organization, strengthened by the presence of allies China and Russia, as the main adversary of the United States to be defeated.

De-dollarization, the watchword of the BRICS, is the threat that Trump fears most.

The war, driven by dollarization and the pursuit of deep state power, modernizes the American productive sector and places the United States at the forefront of global technology and productivity.

Trump came to his senses and entered the war to save war capitalism.

How could you help Israel if you had to implement an inflationary, protectionist tariff policy in order to reduce your trade deficit against powerful China?

His protectionist attempt turned out to be surreal.

It prevents the expansion of the war economy and affects the power of the Deep State, which actually drives the interests of the United States in geopolitical terms.

With no other option but to avoid impeachment in Congress, the president surrendered to those who control Congress: Jewish financial power.

The American Congress, without being consulted by Trump, revealed itself to be partisan to the interests of Israel's war, a byproduct of American military power, to dominate the oil-rich Middle East with the supremacy of the dollar.

 

NEW IMPERIALIST POLITICAL ECONOMY

 

Certainly, the new American monetary policy will align with the demands of war, triggered by the bombers and American atomic cargo planes seeking to destroy Iran.

War economy = expansion of public spending, unbalanced budget.

Neoliberal discourse in Brazil, in the face of the new Trump option, will fall out of fashion.

The order is to spend in order to secure the war power waged by the fascist right.

The chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, has already signaled that interest rates will remain stable in the coming months.

Trump is betting on war to increase the supply of domestic credit and win over public opinion.

Monetary expansion is the translation of Trump's choice for war, as a weapon to lower interest rates and devalue the American domestic debt of 37 trillion dollars, requiring payments of 9 trillion dollars annually in services.

Trump follows Adam Smith's advice: public debt is not paid off, it is renegotiated.

The American bombers in Iran are the Empire's new debts to sustain the war, in the process of reforming old, expensive debts, etc.

The political economy of war comes into operation with Trump, along with his choice of war against Iran, alongside Israel – in reality, it is an Iran-US war contracted by proxy for Israel to operate on behalf of American war interests in the Middle East, which then drive American global demand in the dispute against China.

 

DOWN WITH THE AYATOLAHS' CONTROL OF OIL

 

Washington is now acting directly to overthrow the Ayatollahs' regime in order to control the region's oil.

Iran is an ally of China and the largest supplier of oil to the Chinese.

Washington wants to cut this Iran-China umbilical cord in the oil trade in the Middle East.

Only by overthrowing the Ayatollahs can Washington prevent the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The Ayatollahs control 30% of the oil trade transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

If Russia, possessor of the atomic bomb, supports the Ayatollahs in closing the Strait of Hormuz, the capitalist economy could suffer a fatal heart attack.

Explosive global instability would shake the entire global productive and occupational structure dependent on oil, and the capitalist system would be jeopardized.

Prices for derivatives will increase in the coming weeks.

Business owners are already factoring the risk into the price of goods.

Inflation will rise, which is why Trump is pressuring Jerome Powell not to raise interest rates in the United States.

There would be global financial instability, given the increased need to expand public spending on the war.

The financial market would become volatile and savers would rush to the banks.

 

CENTRAL CONTRADICTION OF CAPITAL

 

The contradiction Powell faces is that lowering interest rates to satisfy Trump's appetite for war is causing dissatisfaction among stock market players, who depend on high interest rates to multiply their profitability.

The contradiction lies at the heart of the financial system, in the context of financialization under rampant speculation, at the very moment Trump enters the war.

 

China-USA vs. Democracy

 

Ultimately, the economic game ceases to be a priority, giving way to the political foundation of the crisis, the central contradiction: the ideological dispute between Chinese political economy and American politics.

The first calls for the political organization of the State to achieve economic stability; the second deepens speculative economic and financial instability, favoring pro-war state anarchy.

Financial power, through war, exerts all its force to maintain political power by destroying the institutional framework of democracy, as an alternative to political hegemony.

Financial hegemony transforms into political hegemony.

Trump bypassed Congress to invade Iran; in other words, he ended democracy in order to prioritize force first, then peace, as Netanyahu advocated.

Democracy, therefore, becomes merely an empty expression of the hegemonic failure of Western Christianity.

This is the democratic aspect that interests war capitalism: empty democracy.

In the context of war, truth is the first thing to be sacrificed.

With the collapse of the UN, international coordination ceases to exist, and the watchword becomes, first, force; then peace.

Trump put force into practice. 

* This is an opinion article, the responsibility of the author, and does not reflect the opinion of Brasil 247.