There appears to be loads of fact to this take:
🚨 ALERT: What the brand new US Administration is doing could be very clear and strategic: it’s referred to as psychological overwhelming. Hitting us day by day with XXL doses of baffling rhetoric and erratic insurance policies serves to “management the script”, distracting and dishorienting us, normalising the… pic.twitter.com/QfHbMZozAf
— Francesca Albanese, UN Particular Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) February 26, 2025
So I’d prefer to make an try to chop by loads of the noise and take a more in-depth have a look at a query many appear to nonetheless be wrestling with: does the Trump 2.0 administration characterize something apart from a rebranding of empire?
I don’t imagine it does, and that’s what I’ll argue right here.
The bigger rebrand underway is seeing elite “reconciliation” below Trump and plutocrats line up behind the repackaging from a “woke” empire to a extra old school model centered on race, faith and extra brazen exploitation. Within the pursuits of retaining this publish manageable, I’ll have a look at this on Wednesday and focus right here solely on the transition kind Biden’s “Overseas Coverage for the Center Class” to America First, how they complement each other, and the way these narratives are nothing extra than simply that: tales used obfuscate the truth that insurance policies are solely involved with additional enriching American oligarchs and lengthening their means to extract lease to each nook of the globe.
America’s “Enemies” Are the Motive You Can’t Pay the Payments
In some ways the Biden administration’s Overseas Coverage for the Center Class (FPMC) and Trump’s America First are related. They each search to current a veneer of solidarity with the US working class by the scapegoating of overseas bogeymen for Individuals’ ever declining requirements of dwelling. In actuality these bogeymen have little to nothing to do together with your $100,000 medical invoice however they do at all times occur to be the enemies of American oligarchs.
Whereas Crew Biden nonetheless paid lip service to the human rights-democracy-feminism-LGTBQ instruments of empire, they’ve largely worn out their usefulness. Trump discards these subtleties. Each are a might-is-right strategy, however the latter is simply the empire at its most trustworthy.
Regardless, each are concerned within the technology of narratives supposed to obscure the truth that these evil international locations are branded so as a result of they resist the identical oligarchic forces bleeding Individuals dry. (This isn’t meant to romanticize these nations as they’ve their very own points with neoliberalism and oligarchy.)
Let’s begin with Biden’s FPMC. Nationwide safety advisor Jake Sullivan, largely credited with being the mind behind the failed tech struggle towards China, additionally was the chief architect behind the narrative that wed a rebuilding of the American center class with the Biden overseas coverage. Right here’s Politico again in 2020 describing Sullivan’s philosophy:
…the power of U.S. overseas coverage and nationwide safety lies primarily in a thriving American center class, whose prosperity is endangered by the very transnational threats the Trump administration has sought to downplay or ignore.
That time period “center class” was a crimson flag from the beginning, because it has at all times been a part of a challenge of constructing the working class disappear.
But it surely did attempt to lay blame for struggles of the aggrieved working class on nefarious overseas forces. Not a long time of neoliberalism, not Biden yanking away Covid help, not the actual fact American life is a market versus a society. No, after all not. The actual culprits are Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran and all those that refuse to bend the knee to Washington. Should you should be offended at your lot in life, be offended with them, was the message of FPMC.
The 2 political events within the US, that are unwilling to tackle the plutocrats, are subsequently compelled to contrive these hackneyed gross sales pitches to the general public, however the actual campaigning is occurring behind the scenes involving concepts on how the administration will develop the attain of American capital. That is evident within the actions of the Biden administration and the course America First is already taking.
Let’s shortly evaluation what Collective Biden did for the “center class.”
A proxy struggle towards Russia coupled with an effort to strangle China’s tech sector, thereby ensuring the US reigned supreme. After yanking away Covid help, Crew Biden handed the CHIPS Act, which subsidizes semiconductor manufacturing within the US, and the Inflation Discount Act, which incorporates billions for clear vitality tech. They usually threw in a genocide in Palestine for good measure. What have been the outcomes?
The top of Covid help decimated the working class. Undertaking Ukraine has efficiently walled off Europe from Russia nevertheless it’s been a navy catastrophe for Ukraine and NATO. Russia has turned eastwards and appears to be solely strengthened by the empire’s efforts to cripple it. China’s tech sector is doing positive and within the absence of Western imports it used to depend on is studying to make its personal.
The IRA+CHIPS has invested $388 billion up to now which has reportedly helped assist 135,800 jobs within the US. That’s a small blip on the radar when contemplating the three.7 million jobs despatched to China from 2001 to 2018.
The CHIPS push has already stalled because of a scarcity of certified staff, and the actual fact stays that it doesn’t matter what slogan the Biden, Trump, or subsequent administration comes up with, it’s not going to carry again jobs that have been offshored or take away the financial vise from most Individuals with out addressing the nation’s advanced-stage neoliberalism. As Micahel Hudson writes:
[The US] has constructed too excessive a rentier overhead into its economic system for its labor to have the ability to compete internationally, given the U.S. wage-earner’s budgetary calls for to pay excessive and rising housing and schooling prices, debt service and medical health insurance, and for privatized infrastructure providers.
And as James Ok. Galbraith writes, “The Biden economists had ignored a basic reality, which is that the last word good thing about any “stimulative” coverage flows to these with market energy—to land and to capital—no matter the way it could also be distributed at first.” That’s a basic reality conveniently “ignored” by each administration.
Naturally, Biden’s FPMC after all didn’t assist the “center class.” Listed below are actual wages:
And there’s proof that almost all of these miniscule positive aspects are on the backside for the working poor because of their have to promote their labor in unsafe Covid circumstances.All different financial indicators — from bank card and medical debt to homelessness and financial inequality — continued their downward spirals below the “new FDR”:
Sanders mentioned at the moment once more that Biden is the “most progressive president since FDR.”
It is a whole lie. The employees’ share of nationwide revenue has plunged to its lowest degree on document below the Biden administration.
Biden was a bonanza for Wall Road. pic.twitter.com/NDjrk7JUWY
— Joseph Kishore (@jkishore) October 27, 2024
So how about “America First”? Properly, it’s nonetheless early, however the query is, as at all times: whose America — the working class or the monetary vultures and Silicon Valley oligarchs bleeding the nation dry? And can the Trump administration do something apart from make this reality worse: the US wealth inequality is now on par with what it was on the eve of the Nice Despair, which was the very best degree within the nation since its creation.
The Trump administration’s America First bullet factors are right here, however are broad, e.g., “On the President’s course, the State Division may have an America-First overseas coverage.”
A extra detailed take is helpfully damaged down right here:
As we will see from the administration’s actions up to now, like with FPMC, an emphasis is positioned in successful new world struggles and blaming others for Individuals’ financial struggles.
There are ulterior motives in each case of blaming foreigners. Let’s take just some examples.
China is accountable for the fentanyl. (Permits for extra aggressive posture in the direction of Beijing. Extra tariffs incoming.)
Whites are below assault in South Africa. (A stress marketing campaign on South Africa that targets a BRICS founding member and a location the US wishes a naval base as a way to management delivery lanes and preserve naval dominance as a way to comprise China.)
 Muslim terrorists are on the march. (Let’s ethnically cleanse Palestine, enhance presence in Somalia in combat over Crimson Sea and maximize stress on Iran.)
Latinos stealing your jobs. (Militarize the border and supply testing floor for surveillance and inhabitants management tech however after all not go after the basis of the issue: American firms that need low-cost exploitable labor. )
This a part of Trump’s attraction for the oligarchs: he’s fostered sufficient anger and project of blame for the deterioration of American lives to overseas actors and enemies at dwelling that maybe sufficient immigrants shipped off to Guantanamo and public shaming of DEI supporters can suffice whereas the looting of America can double its tempo. Hassle is, the oligarchs envision a world through which everybody will grow to be as weak because the undocumented immigrant.
Blaming the overseas additionally helps enlist Individuals within the combat towards all these enemies around the globe, together with accepting propaganda like the concept we should bow down on the altar of AI as a way to win a race towards the evil Chinese language.
[AI] Arsenal of Democracy
As their FPMC floundered, Collective Biden was additionally busy redistributing an historic quantity of wealth from the general public to weapons firms — $1.3 trillion over 4 years — which Biden bragged about in his farewell handle (navy spending is ready to soar increased below Trump). They resurrected speak of the “arsenal of democracy” to defend this. Most likely finest summed up by former Underneath Secretary of State and wrecker of worlds Victoria Nuland:
“Vemember, zee bulk of zis cash goez vight again into zee economic system.”
— Herr Nuland explains self-licking ice cream cone idea to CNN’s final remaining 500 subscribers.
The neocons made a silly, clumsy play for imperial conquest over Russia, now the entire world is witnessing… pic.twitter.com/diHiE1pGhZ
— Chebureki Man (@CheburekiMan) February 25, 2024
Collective Biden additionally tried to jumpstart the US chip trade, which is critical to “prepare” AI, whereas on the identical time stopping superior chips from stepping into the arms of the unhealthy guys in China.
Constructing on that, there at the moment are calls below Trump-Musk for the US to grow to be the “AI Arsenal of Democracy.” What does that imply in observe? Right here’s Jack Burnham, a analysis analyst within the China Program on the Basis for Protection of Democracies, offering a pleasant abstract of the suggestions rising from assume tanklandia and Trump World today: Â
Extra export controls in an effort to limit China’s entry to sure applied sciences.
Separate the world into opposing AI blocs
”Preparation to deploy and scale future non-public sector improvements that may additional tilt the long run steadiness of navy and financial energy in Washington’s favor.”
Extra knowledge facilities even when that “frustrates” housing and group improvement and federal lands for knowledge middle building.
In fact. This final level highlights how these FPMC and America First divert vitality and a focus away from what John Maynard Keynes actually advocated for (spending on social applications) and as an alternative propagates the thought of “navy Keynesianism.”
And the US can’t even do that each one that properly anymore. One downside that the Biden FPMC bumped into was that the US doesn’t even have the workforce anymore to construct sufficient bombs to maintain up with all these raining down on girls and kids in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and varied different US proxy wars.
It implies that the Pentagon contracts Common Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Programs (a US firm) to construct three 155mm projectile steel components strains in Texas, however the firm must name in Turkish subcontractors. Because the Division of Protection itself notes, the “superior weaponry and supporting tools essential to dominate in trendy warfare require extremely refined manufacturing, but the home workforce has suffered for many years.”
Possibly it’s a expertise scarcity, possibly individuals don’t wish to make bombs, possibly they don’t wish to work in a poorly ventilated manufacturing facility throughout an ongoing pandemic, or possibly the roles aren’t as enticing as they was. As Taylor Barnes factors out, “…[the defense industry] dropped common salaries, and battered its unions in current a long time, which means that, from a labor perspective, a job within the military-industrial advanced simply isn’t what it was.”
Which means the US at present depends on parts made in China for plane carriers and submarines. It means a trillion {dollars} in protection spending helps enrich China – the very nation which is supposedly one of many factors on an axis of evil behind the elevated protection spending within the first place.
However that’s nothing that extra neoliberalism can’t remedy on the AI Arsenal. The Trump administration is now engaged on bringing in additional “expert” foreigners for the AI workforce. Trump already sided with Silicon Valley over his MAGA base within the H1B visa combat, and now we get this:
JUST IN: President Trump declares a brand new immigration “Gold Card” that will likely be bought to immigrants for $5 million.
The Gold Card is a premium model of a Inexperienced Card, in keeping with Trump, and can present immigrants with a pathway to citizenship.
“We’re gonna be promoting a gold… pic.twitter.com/U3Bx3Nogfd
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 25, 2025
A lot of the reporting on the “Gold Card” centered on the chance {that a} bunch of rich individuals will flock to the US, however a more in-depth have a look at the transcript reveals that’s not likely what the order is designed for (rich might already purchase their approach into the US in any case). Right here’s Trump:
An individual comes from India, China, Japan, numerous completely different locations, and so they go to Harvard, the Wharton Faculty of Finance. They go to Yale. They go to all nice faculties. They usually graduate primary of their class, and they’re made job affords, however the provide is straight away rescinded as a result of you haven’t any concept whether or not or not that particular person can keep within the nation. I need to have the ability to have that particular person keep within the nation.
These firms can go and purchase a gold card, and so they can use it as a matter of recruitment.
So it is a software for US firms to usher in the employees wanted for the AI Arsenal of Democracy. And what a democracy it will likely be. A bunch of hierarchical South Africans nonetheless stewing over criticism of their daddies for his or her function in apartheid recruiting for his or her hierarchical AI challenge.
AI and Monopoly “Guardrails” Vs. Authorities for AI and by AI
Let’s have a look at one noticeable shift.
If we should give the Biden administration any credit score, it was the staffing on the Division of Justice Antitrust Division and Lina Khan and firm on the Federal Commerce Fee. And naturally the plutocrats revolted. Even these minor protections for Individuals have been an excessive amount of, and the shift of Silicon Valley cash to overwhelming backing of Trump has at the least been partially defined by the need to punish Democrats for the Biden group’s gall at considering it might regulate them.
It seems the difficulty of antitrust remains to be not utterly settled within the Trump administration.
There are forces within the administration — represented by the JD Vance – Peter Thiel wing — that favor some degree of enforcement. They see some monopolies — equivalent to Google — as purely lease seekers. Others are helpful after they create new merchandise and assist American capital unfold its dominance around the globe. Vance, Thiel, and the pronatalist motion need much less financial burdens on Individuals to allow them to produce extra offspring for the civilizational struggle to return (and who is aware of, possibly extra pristine blood for Thiel’s longevity?).
On the opposite facet are enterprise capitalists like Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen who’re extra traditional libertarians who wish to abolish authorities and privatize a few of its capabilities. They and others like Steve Bannon imagine that almighty unfettered American capitalism received WWII (it’s an fascinating thought train to think about how the US would have fared towards Nazi Germany with no authorities intervention within the economic system and with out the united states doing all of the heavy lifting) and that any authorities interference would have misplaced the Chilly Struggle and can lose the New Not So Chilly Struggle. This ahistorical view ignores how the federal government has been foundational in virtually each essential trendy tech advance.
However most of all, they imagine individuals exist to offer them revenue and be used as lab rats of their AI experiment. They don’t imagine in a public commons and so they don’t need any of their cash touched for it.
The Biden administration’s modest proposals on antitrust, regulation of crypto and AI and taxing unrealized positive aspects, have been destroying the enterprise capital trade, in keeping with Horowitz and Andreessen. And of their telling which means destroying America itself and condemning it to lose the New Chilly Struggle.
For them Trump is nearer to Obama and Clinton than Biden and represents an excellent leap ahead on the nation’s neoliberal highway to victory over labor and anybody on the planet that oppose domination by American capital. Underneath Trump 2.0, all’s proper with the Silicon Valley universe once more:
The Obamaians outsourced a lot of their considering to Silicon Valley energy amid a transport of enthusiasm for the way tech would liberate us.
Now many Trumpians are doing the identical.
— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) February 26, 2025
The American elite are in virtually common settlement that their US requires a strong economic system, technological supremacy, and a robust navy. Any debate is essentially over whether or not the federal government ought to do something greater than shovel cash to self-declared geniuses in Silicon Valley after which get out of the best way. One can see why the likes of Horowitz and Andreessen view this fashion of struggle capitalism as the important thing to American supremacy. As Malcolm Harris wrote in Palo Alto:
Struggle Capitalism might placed on a blindfold and run right into a maze of horrific, absurd plans with confidence as a result of it had class energy echolocation for a information: So long as the wealthy strengthened and the working class weakened, then issues needed to be stepping into the fitting course. It didn’t matter that capitalists have been investing in finance sugar highs, monopoly superprofits, and a world manufacturing race to the underside fairly than sturdy jobs and an expanded industrial base. The twenty-first century was going to be all about software program anyway, child. The robots will determine it out. Silicon Valley leaders sat on prime of this world system like a cherry on a sundae, insulated from the melting basis by a wealthy tower of cream.
It’s all so silly, it might be humorous if it weren’t going to be devastating for therefore many. Right here’s only a temporary abstract, courtesy of Blood within the Machine, of America First’s embrace of Silicon Valley merely turning into the federal government:
However, silly or not, it’s a strong fiction. It joins the echelon of different AI tasks helmed by Musk and his cohort, just like the “AI-first technique” DOGE is implementing, the federal government chatbots they’re constructing, and the programs designed to mechanically take away pronouns and DEI verbiage from authorities web sites. The very concept that DOGE’s AI can streamline and automate the federal government is already getting used to justify the hollowing out and the reshaping of the federal workforce. Leaning into the popularity of generative AI, which has been touted because the so-powerful-it’s-terrifying future by Silicon Valley and the media, and into his meme-agency’s mission of finding efficiencies, Musk has bought his operation as the long run, and he has carried out so emphatically sufficient that GOP is very happy to run with the charade.
So we’re transferring in the direction of the automation of presidency on crappy hallucinatory AI, “AI coding brokers” writing authorities software program for various companies and being educated partly on present authorities contracts. Ai huckster termites are consuming away at the whole lot just like the DOGE staffers at HUD who’re from an AI actual property agency.
The aim seems to be a US model of the neoliberal shock the US directed at Russia within the Nineteen Nineties, which led to a collapse of actual wages and life expectancy worse than the US Nice Despair.
The US capitalist system and those that run it are making nice use of Trump. A big chunk of the inhabitants worships him and imagine he’s main a rethink in US overseas coverage and rooting out waste in authorities. The opposite half thinks he’s a moron managed by Moscow. Silicon Valley is laughing all the best way to the crypto financial institution.
However he has drawn Silicon Valley “efficient accelerationists,” conservative and libertarian assume tankers, and each monetary and industrial capitalists to his facet (which helps clarify the deafening silence coming from Crew Blue). The Democrats at the moment are doubtless hoping for dissatisfaction amongst a faction of the oligarchs to come up.
If some plutocrats circle again to Crew Blue, Democrats will likely be there ready. They received’t roll again the nice AI looting experiment, however they could present a band assist for a flesh wound as they rebrand the identical plutocratic insurance policies below some new model of FPMC so the entire “world’s biggest democracy” present can go on.
