Trump's Trade War: Imperialism Today and EmancipationD. RAJA, General Secretary, CPI

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was not merely the brilliant tactician of the 1917 October Revolution—he was among the finest Marxist theoreticians of the 20th century, whose contributions significantly deepened and sharpened the weaponry of revolutionary thought. Where Marx and Engels laid the foundation of the critique of capitalism, Lenin grasped the transformations of capitalism in the epoch of monopoly and finance capital. In his seminal work ‘Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism’ (1916), Lenin provided a rigorous and materialist analysis of how capitalism, having exhausted its progressive character in comparison to feudalism, necessarily morphed into imperialism—the global domination of finance capital, marked by competition for markets, the export of capital and the violent partitioning and repartitioning of the world. His insight, that “imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance,” continues to provide a lens through which we must understand modern inter-imperialist conflict, including the aggressive trade wars of the 21st century.

The trade war initiated by U.S. President Donald Trump is a textbook example of this imperialist logic at work in its most crude and chauvinistic form. Trump's hyper-nationalist economic policies—expressed under the banner of “Make America Great Again"— represent not a break with the capitalist system, but its intensification. His use of tariffs, threats and unilateral economic coercion are not meant to protect American workers as he claimed, but to defend the declining dominance of U.S. finance and corporate monopolies in the global economy. Beneath the veil of populist rhetoric, these measures served the interests of a ruling class desperate to reassert its supremacy in the face of global competition.

What makes Trump’s trade war especially dangerous is not simply its economic irrationality, but its reckless and militaristic character. The move towards trade-war by Trump and other leading economies would be catastrophic and of greater magnitude than the currency war that followed the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. By openly flouting multilateral agreements, threatening sanctions, weaponising the dollar and transforming trade policy into a tool of geopolitical bullying, Trump is pushing the world closer to a condition Lenin described as “the epoch of wars and revolutions.” Trump’s approach to international relations—militarised, racialised, and arrogant—signals the desperation of a hegemon clinging to imperialist privilege.

Moreover, Trump’s economic nationalism is accompanied by a virulent xenophobia and racism. While capital is given unfettered mobility through tax breaks and deregulation, the movement of people—especially workers and migrants—is violently restricted. Immigration bans, border walls, detention camps and racist surveillance regimes are justified in the name of protecting American jobs, even as corporations outsourced labour and undermined unions. This contradiction—free movement for capital, forced immobility for labour—is at the heart of imperialism, where workers are reduced to disposable units of exploitation, and hyper- nationalist poison is used to divide the proletariat.

Lenin’s analysis helps us understand that such phenomena are not policy aberrations but expressions of a decaying global system. The contradictions of monopoly capitalism cannot be resolved within its own framework. Ever since the formation of the Bretton Woods institutions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, they have tried to arm-twist the world and especially countries from the Global South into adopting polices that lead to concentration of wealth. Unhealthy competition between great powers leads inevitably to conflict. The working class in imperialist countries is turned against its counterparts in oppressed nations, and war is prepared in the name of peace, just as exploitation is carried out in the name of prosperity. As Lenin wrote, "the more developed capitalism is, the more strongly the yoke of the united imperialist bourgeoisie will be felt by the proletariat.”

What, then, is the way forward? How do we escape the clutches of these destructive, racist and militarist policies? The answer lies in revolutionary Marxism-Leninism—in the reconstitution and strengthening of working-class internationalism and the unmasking of imperialism’s true character. We must reject the false promises of protectionism and populism, and instead advance the struggle for socialism. The working class must realise that their liberation is bound together, not through war and exclusion, but through solidarity and common struggle.

Revolutionary praxis today must boldly reaffirm Lenin's internationalism. As he declared, "There can be no hope of victory except by the ruthless exposure of colonial and financial bondage, by awakening in the masses of the proletariat a hatred for imperialism and a determination to fight it." This means opposing all forms of economic coercion and racism, building unity and dismantling the ideological weapons that pit worker against worker.

Trump’s trade war, far from protecting the American working class, exposes the global decay of imperialism and its inability to provide a just or peaceful world order. The alternative is not a return to classical neoliberalism, which itself nurtured inequality and imperialist domination, but an organised effort towards socialism— rooted in the legacies of Marx, Lenin and the revolutionary movements they inspired. Only then can we move from the world of exploitation and division to one of equality and cooperation, where peace is not the fragile pause between wars, but the enduring outcome of a world beyond capitalism.

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