Trump has been back in office for less than a hundred days, and while the charge he is leading is unmistakable, its destination remains uncertain. The two texts that follow are attempts to make sense of what is being set in motion, and what that reveals about the current configuration of political and economic power.
Both reject the idea that Trump marks a rupture in American priorities. Instead, they trace how long-standing tendencies in U.S. statecraft — toward authoritarianism, militarization, and social demolition — are being sharpened and accelerated. Chaos is deliberately being created for the purpose of reorganizing governance and geopolitical alignment around the shifting needs of capital.
The texts differ in how they understand the nature of the project, and disagree on the coherence, or lack thereof, of the Trump administration’s policies. The first sees the administration as a vehicle for multiple, often competing factions — held together by Trump’s personal authority but lacking a stable ideological core. The second views the administration’s actions as part of a coherent effort to prepare for inter-imperialist war.
The two texts offer views from different perspectives on the unfolding of events. Both were written and discussed before the Trump administration raised the stakes on April 2 by imposing hefty global tariffs.
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