A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI, #208 - The Crisis of the American Empire (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The US empire[1]is going through a profound structural economic crisis, 
which has now also become a social one, with distant origins and which 
the entourage surrounding President Trump is now trying to manage. The 
strategic choices deemed necessary to achieve this goal are probably at 
the basis of Trump's actions more than any psychiatric or emotional 
reasons given to justify his actions. In developing this hypothesis, we 
do not intend to affirm that Trump is the custodian of profound economic 
thought, but only to argue that the incumbent President represents a 
convenient megaphone, a frontman called upon to manage a strategy that 
currently prevails not without contradictions within the US 
establishment and which arises from deep and distant elaborations.
In our analyses of US domination, we have always tried to highlight the 
lines of continuity that have characterised the actions of the 
presidents and the political class of a state born of slavery and 
genocide, as demonstrated by the analysis of the economic-political 
phase developed in 2022 at point 6.5.7. we argued that:
"The military aggression of the United States of America is an old and 
never-ending story. Their economic power, however, has been in sharp 
decline for a long time: the trade balance entered into deficit in the 
mid-1970s and has fallen increasingly into the red to the point of 
reaching almost $700 billion in 2020; the overall share of world trade 
has fallen from 23.3% in 2000 to 16.9% in 2018; "the weight of American 
industry, in the twenty decisive years for our history, has fallen by a 
third..."; in the same period (2000-2018) the US added value at a global 
level has fallen from 6% to 5.5%, and is falling in all areas except 
Europe; the share of manufactured goods from 23.2% to 15.7%; entire 
areas of ancient industrialization have been desertified (Flint, Gary, 
etc.).
The military path to colonialism has undergone a a hard blow in 
Afghanistan, comparable to that of 1975 in Vietnam and the new frontier 
is that of the proxy war, aimed at weakening Russia and enslaving the 
EU, with the complicity of Great Britain. The dollar exchange rate is 
strengthening, which will make US goods even less competitive and a wave 
of strikes is looming on the horizon. If globalization represented the 
imposition of the US economy on the entire world, deglobalization 
corresponds to de-Americanization."[2]
Four eventful years have passed, yet the economic and political 
development trend has not changed; on the contrary, it has accelerated, 
moving in the direction predicted by actual economic and geopolitical 
data. Indeed, the US balance of payments, although recording a 
decreasing trade deficit to $54.5 billion in January 2026 (driven by 
record exports of gold, computers, and aircraft and declining imports), 
reached its lowest level since October, with exports increasing to 
$302.1 billion. It should be noted, however, that in 2024, the overall 
deficit in goods and services was $926 billion, higher than the $773.4 
billion in 2023, and that in 2025, the trade deficit reached $901.5 
billion at the end of 2025, a record high and signaling a trend. Despite 
this result, the US maintains a large surplus in the services sector 
(approximately $282-293 billion in 2024-2025), which partially offsets 
the large trade deficit in goods. A general commentary on the situation 
suggests that the trade balance generally stands at a deficit of 4-5% of 
GDP, rising to $83.5 billion in February 2026, reflecting the volatile 
nature of monthly trade. The high trade deficit is also driven by low 
private savings and high government deficits, a phenomenon known as the 
"twin deficit."
The overall share of world trade stood at 10% of global exports and 13% 
of global imports. Today, the US remains the world's leading market for 
many categories of goods, with a sharp increase in imports of capital 
goods, computers, and semiconductors, bringing the value of imports to 
$372.1 billion in February 2026. Although the weight of American 
industry in the world is still very high due to the fact that the United 
States is home to the largest companies in the world by market 
capitalization, production is concentrated in high technology, 
aerospace, defense, electronics, telematics and energy (oil and gas) and 
shows high labor productivity, increased by 50% between 1995 and 2019, 
the country has undergone a significant manufacturing transformation in 
recent decades, the share of US manufactured goods in the world has 
decreased,
for the divestment of entire production chains, positioning the United 
States as the world's second-largest manufacturing power behind China, 
which holds a stable share of around 29%. The US manufacturing sector 
has seen a long-term contraction in total Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 
so much so that while in 1970 it represented approximately 24% of the US 
economy, in 2023 its share fell below 11%. Proof of this is the fact 
that the Rust Belt has expanded and, in addition to including Michigan, 
with the worsening of the automotive crisis, has increasingly involved 
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, resulting in the emptying of 
entire cities and production areas.
Although US GDP has surpassed $29 trillion, representing approximately 
26% of global GDP, and per capita wealth exceeds $73,000 annually (in 
2022 purchasing power parity), poverty in the United States affects 
millions of people. According to available data in 2020, approximately 
37 million people lived below the poverty line, equivalent to 11.4% of 
the population. However, the situation has worsened significantly since 
then, with over 40 million people out of 349 million citizens estimated 
to be poor. The lower-middle class is particularly affected by the 
rising cost of living, particularly housing and basic necessities, 
caused by inflation, labor costs, and the lack of access to social 
services, due to the disappearance of many poverty relief programs and 
healthcare services, given that one of the US system's hallmarks is the 
lack of welfare structures.

Globalization and productive decentralization

The current configuration of the US manufacturing system is the result 
of the United States' stubbornly pursued policy of decentralization of 
production, which has fueled economic globalization and multiplied the 
intersection and interdependence of supply chains. Faced with rising 
labor costs in the United States, American business has found no better 
solution than to resort to massive decentralization of production to its 
immediate neighbors, Mexico and Canada, as well as China and many other 
countries around the world, relocating production to places where labor 
costs are lower and the working class is disorganized and therefore 
willing to accept lower wages. In doing so, however, the US has 
progressively dismantled its manufacturing structure, rendering it 
uncompetitive. It has compensated for the impoverishment of the 
productive system by financializing it, concentrating production on 
high-tech and innovation sectors, and focusing on the control and 
provision of services, especially those characterized by heavy 
computerization and automation, a choice that has led to a significant 
workforce layoff. Accumulation and growth have been fueled by the 
creation of successive bubbles, ranging from the real estate bubble that 
burst in 2008, known as the subprime mortgage crisis , to the technology 
sector bubble, with a strong focus on artificial intelligence (AI).
The use of the dollar as a currency for economic transactions has 
contributed to accentuating the financialization of the system and 
exacerbating deindustrialization in the US.
The Trump administration sought to address these difficulties through 
tariffs, confident that the US market aspired to remain the world's 
largest revenue hub, and hoping to thereby raise the capital needed to 
reindustrialize the country. The cost of this operation would have to be 
borne by the empire's vassals, especially Europe, against whom the 
United States has waged a war that only the empire's foolish servants 
fail to see. Although initially, these vassals were also forced to 
resort to decentralization of production, deindustrializing themselves 
and embroiling themselves in a serious economic crisis. It can be said 
that this process affected the European market to a relatively lesser 
extent, but now the empire has presented the bill by requiring them to 
shoulder the costs of reindustrializing the United States, draining 
capital and forcing them, through tariffs, to relocate production to the 
United States. Thus, the United States' economic objective has become 
the systematic destruction of European welfare, through the 
privatization of healthcare and pension services to siphon off the 
capital earmarked for these purposes and divert it toward investment in 
their reindustrialization. This, in turn, forces its vassals to finance 
their economies through rearmament and the purchase of American weapons. 
This explains the US's satisfaction with the sabotage of Nord Stream II 
and the resulting energy crisis, artfully created through the Venezuela 
operation first, and especially the war against Iran, with the 
subsequent destabilization of the productive sector of the Persian Gulf 
economy.
All this occurred without US strategists grasping the essential, 
structural fact of the United States' productive decline: that of 56 key 
production sectors for innovation and development, China is currently 
the leader, while the United States maintains primacy in only four of 
these production sectors.

The coils of the serpent

The American empire can be visualized as an anaconda. The system it 
supports is built on the US dollar's share of international 
transactions, which exceeds 50% but is decreasing under pressure from 
the BRICS nations, which are increasingly using their national 
currencies for trade, without China aspiring to replace the dollar with 
its own currency.
Trump's actions, launching the war against Iran and destabilizing the 
Middle East's productive system within the global economy, have 
undermined the dollar investments of the Gulf oil monarchies. Faced with 
the destruction caused by Iranian attacks on their countries' 
infrastructure and productive systems, as major investors in the US 
market and holders of dollars, they have asked the US government to 
initiate swaps. These swaps involve the exchange of cash flows in 
different currencies to ensure foreign currency liquidity. This will 
help them overcome the liquidity shortage and avoid having to liquidate 
their dollar investments, both on the stock market and as a reserve 
instrument through holding US government bonds. This is essentially a 
form of quantitative easing (QE), aimed at injecting liquidity into the 
economy to reduce long-term interest rates and encourage lending, with 
the aim of preventing deflationary pressures and stimulating growth. The 
request was made by the United Arab Emirates, but was soon extended to 
all Gulf countries. This is because there is no US empire without the 
petrodollar, and it is therefore essential that oil be paid for in 
dollars and not in other currencies, as these states threaten to do.
The US Treasury immediately agreed to the request, understanding that 
the rest of the world will pay the price, as the United States, to 
provide for it, will simply print dollars, fueling domestic and 
international inflation. However, this bloodbath cannot continue for 
long. It remains to be seen what the interest charged on these 
transactions will be. However, this temporary measure does not solve the 
problem at all, since, faced with rising energy prices, holders of US 
government bonds as reserve currency and those investing in the US real 
estate and financial markets will be forced to divest to raise the 
capital needed to fuel their respective economies. This will inevitably 
trigger a crisis in the US financial system.
It is no coincidence that France, which could have done so as the 
victorious power in the war, withdrew its gold reserves from Fort Knox, 
and that China does not request or seek to have its currency become an 
international currency of exchange, because to sell it to other 
countries it would have to increase its imports, go into debt abroad, 
and mobilize production on its own territory.

Two converging options

The current US strategy for managing this phase is the result of a 
convergence of interests between a nationalist statist component, 
identified primarily with the MAGA movement, which aims to strengthen 
the United States as a leading country. This objective is then 
articulated into multiple, sometimes contradictory, components (for 
example, isolationism, yet simultaneously the full deployment and 
strategic projection of the country's hegemonic power; the strengthening 
of executive and presidential power, and the simultaneous tendency to 
support the privatization of services and a further reduction in the 
role of the state; the rejection of new wars and the expectation of 
Armageddon). These contradictions can be explained by the convergence of 
evangelical movements, or more specifically, by the political projection 
of this cultural-religious component, which hinges on "prosperity 
theology," which in turn serves as a bridge to another 
"economic-philosophical" component, identified with the builders of 
speculative bubbles.
By this we mean the builders of economic bubbles such as the dot-com 
bubble (or speculative-technological bubble) of 1997-2000, which 
culminated in the collapse of the markets in March 2000, or the real 
estate bubble of 2008, known as the subprime mortgage crisis ,[3]or even 
the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble which began in 2023 and is now 
considered by many experts, including industry leaders such as Sam 
Altman and Mark Zuckerberg, to be an "industrial bubble" linked to 
frenetic investments in data centers and AI infrastructures, expected to 
grow strongly in 2026-2027. This bubble hinges on the so-called 
"magnificent 7" (US Tech Stocks), namely those of American technology 
companies (Microsoft, Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Nvidia, 
Tesla) that have driven market growth, reaching very high valuations, 
raising fears of a possible burst in 2026.
The high risk of a financial crisis originating in the US in 2026, 
potentially driven by the collapse of AI valuations and the ongoing 
global geoeconomic crisis, would be covered by a further bubble in the 
genetics sector, which is brewing, characterized by human-machine 
integration. Speculative financial groups are preparing for this, not 
disdaining to associate the scientific and industrial aspects with 
cryptoassets that use bitcoin and other digital assets that have shown 
rapid growth and development dynamics, typical of financial bubbles. The 
best-known "liaison officers" of this latter group who manage the 
convergences of evangelical groups with the theo-technologists of the IT 
industries are Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, leaders of this latter 
component nestled in the companies of Silicon Valley and its surroundings.
Allied in the conquest of power in the United States and in supporting 
Trump's presidential candidacy, these two components of the US political 
landscape oscillate between alliances and conflicts, convergences and 
divergences, fueling both market and geopolitical uncertainties and 
insecurities. Recall, for example, the role given to Musk at the 
beginning of his term, when he was appointed head of the DOGE (Dogeo 
Economic and Political Administration), only to be subsequently dismissed.
The European Union and other states aspiring to be part of a multipolar 
world must contend with all of this, but that's another topic we'll explore.

[1]The term "American" is deliberately not used as a synonym for US to 
avoid implicating other innocent populations of the American continent 
in the role played by US imperialism and colonialism.
[2]UCADI, Analysis of the 2022 phase, Newsletter, N. 163 - September 2022.[
3]Erupted in the United States due to mass defaults on high-risk loans, 
it caused the collapse of the real estate market and, after the failure 
of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, it turned into a global financial 
crisis and the worst recession since the Great Depression.

GC & SC

https://www.ucadi.org/2026/05/23/la-crisi-dellimpero-statunitense/
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