Martin Suchanek
The expected neck-and-neck race projected by all the opinion polls did not materialise. It became clear early during the night of 5–6 November that the racist, misogynist, right wing populist champion of Make America Great Again, Donald Trump, had been elected US President for the second time. MAGA Republicans now control the Senate and the House of Representatives. With the Presidency this makes what Americans call a trifecta.
The results and the voters
Trump won all the so-called swing states, obtaining 312 electoral college votes, with Harris gaining only 226. He also clearly outperformed Harris in the total of votes received, with 74,650,754 (50.5%), against 70,916,946 (47.9%). All the other candidates fell below one per cent. Jill Stein of the Green Party and the independent Robert Kennedy, who suspended his election campaign in favour of Trump, both managed to secure just 0.5% of the vote.
On the other hand voter turnout fell massively since 2020. Although Trump was able to marginally increase his votes (by 434,600), this was not the reason for his success. In 2020, Joe Biden won 81,268,924 votes. By comparison Kamala Harris lost more than 10 million voters!
This is also reflected, of course, in a shift in the proportions among voter groups. Trump led among men by 13 percentage points (in 2020 his lead was only 8%, and, while Harris still scored a majority among women, at 8% it was significantly lower than Biden’s 15% advantage in 2020. Unsurprisingly Trump won among white voters by a wide margin—a 23% majority among white men, and 8% among white women—virtually the same distribution as in 2020. Among black voters Harris lost support from men (56% compared to Biden’s 60% in 2020), but improved her score among women (84% compared to 81% in 2020).
The really significant shift, however, concerns Latinx voters. Trump was able to achieve a majority among male members of this population group for a Republican candidate for the first time (plus 12%), while the Democratic advantage among females also shrank massively from 39 percentage points to 22.
In general, Trump and the Republicans were able to win over the majority of the white working class with their anti-immigrant and protectionist agenda, as they did in 2016, but also to attract other sections of the underprivileged. For example, those who consider their own economic situation to be poor and people with no school-leaving qualifications were more strongly represented among his voters.
Trump, like many other right wing populist forces, relies primarily on the population in rural areas and small to medium-sized towns, while the metropolises often continue to have a Democratic majority. However, it is also quite clear that Trump was able to win the votes of those who have lost income and purchasing power, making inroads into the big cities, despite recent comparatively high overall growth rates in the US economy.
The reason for Harris’s defeat
The above figures make one thing particularly clear. The defeat of Harris and the Democratic Party was far less due to the mobilisation of Trump and the Republicans than to the Democrats’ loss of over 10 million voters. Liberal and left-wing Democratic commentators like to fall back on the explanation that Trump’s campaign stoked fear, demoralised people, spreading lies and bad-mouthing the achievements of US capitalism under Biden’s recovery programmes.
True the US economy looked to be doing better under Bidenomics; real GDP averaged 3.4% during his first three years; America has low unemployment levels; wage gains have exceeded inflation. US capital is developing more momentum than the weakening European and Chinese competition and the US stock markets are finally attracting capital from around the world again. Yet a large proportion of US voters regarded the economy as a big negative for the Democrats.
It’s just a shame—say these commentators—that a substantial sector of the masses has not registered these successes of US capitalism. Trump’s reactionary demagogy ultimately consists in talking up their long term losses in real income and purchasing power, with the false solution of a racist populist scapegoating of immigrants, variously promising to deport between one and twenty million of them.
In foreign economic policy he threatens a trade war with China and the European Union too, with 60% and 20% tariffs. But the blowback from price increases on imports and losses to US exports due to rivals’ retaliatory actions could hit working class voters as will social spending cuts and the repeal of Obamacare.
But Harris and the Democratic Party’s response was not even to counter the feelings of hardship with a Keynesian programme of redistribution from the wealthy few to the working and middle classes, such as FD Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s. She responded to Trump’s ‘doom and gloom’ by praising the achievements of the market economy and conjuring up the ‘American spirit of enterprise’ that she says made her own career possible in the first place. But the fact Harris could not say what she would have done differently to Biden undermined her strategy of ‘hope’ which had got Obama over the line.
This effect was further intensified by the Democratic Party leadership’s strategy of basing their election campaign on winning over ‘moderate’ Republicans in the swing states. As a result an already lame social programme was further watered down. And of course enlisting Dick Cheney, architect of the Iraq War, and Arnold Schwarzenegger for their campaign also meant making a further promise to all sections of US capital that their interests would be protected under a Harris presidency. This strategy is undoubtedly in keeping with the Democrats’ utterly capitalist and imperialist character. But it also reflects the narrow worldview of its strategists, since the ‘moderate’ Republicans’ proved to be a political mirage.
Mass deportations at the borders, Harris let it be known, would be her policy too. She even accused Trump of blocking funds for 1,500 additional border patrol agents and 100 judges to expedite deportations, even suggesting that Joe Biden had shown a lack of toughness on people smugglers and ‘illegals’.
Rejecting the solidarity movement with Gaza, even after the exit of Genocide Joe, undoubtedly kept many young people at home, as it did environmental, anti-racist and anti-sexist activists, who realised they were no more more than voting fodder.
Despite all this the union bureaucracy, but also the leaders of the reformist left such as Bernie Sanders, the Squad and the Democratic Socialists (DSA) remained loyal to the Democrats and once again tried to ‘sell’ Harris as the lesser evil. The bulk of the AFL-CIO unions, including ‘left’ Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, have once again made it clear how little these apparatuses are willing to break with even the most ailing democratic imperialist party.
Bernie Sanders called Joe Biden ‘the most pro-working-class president in modern American history’ and said his agenda ‘speaks to the needs of the working class’. He also called Biden ‘a good and decent Democratic president with a record of real accomplishment’, who ‘wants to tax the rich so that we can fund the needs of working families’. Of course now, after the event, Bernie is singing a different tune saying, ‘It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.’ The DSA’s so called dirty break tactic means voting for the Democratic candidate as the lesser evil when push comes to shove.
All this makes it clear that the fight for a workers’ party as a political alternative to both capitalist parties must be waged in opposition to these apparatuses. The fight against the incoming Trump administration must therefore combine two things. First, a broad united front of the working class and the oppressed against all his attacks. Second, moves towards a workers’ party, in the formation of which communists must fight from the outset for the adoption of a revolutionary action programme, without making their participation contingent on this outcome.
Trump’s programme
Even though Trump did not present a formal election manifesto, as is usually done in European election campaigns, he and the Republican Party, which he has transformed into a right wing populist party, are entering the new presidency with much clearer ideas than in 2016. In 2023, the arch-conservative Heritage Foundation, a Republican thinktank, presented ‘Project 2025’, which sets out the strategic direction of a future Trump administration and develops key proposals in all important policy areas, both domestically and externally. Of course the new administration will not adopt all these policies, since other important capital interests and other sectors of the Trump movement will have their say, but they do sketch out something of a strategic line.
The core of Trump’s ‘America First’ basically consists of the assessment that the ‘democratic’, multilateral path to the restoration of global US hegemony has failed. Rather, rising enemies like China and self-serving allies like the EU are outpacing the US. International institutions and ‘bad deals’ are imposing draconian regulations on the US, for example in the field of environmental protection. The US is subsidising and underwriting its allies’ armed forces and security, while a weak Democratic president squandered more and more influence in the world. Therefore, everything is getting worse and worse.
Meanwhile Trump’s speeches have included many tropes from rightwing conspiracy theorists. At home a cosmopolitan, ‘woke’, ‘multicultural elite’, a veritable ‘enemy within’ has seized control of the government and the state apparatus (the ‘deep state’), delivering the country into the hands of its external enemies—not only other states, but also a migrant ‘invasion’ from Mexico across the border. According to Trump’s message, these enemies must be radically eliminated at home.
In foreign policy, starting with mass deportations, he claims there needs to be a change of course, away from multilateralism towards unilateralism, and an international policy strictly oriented towards self-interest (transactionalism), which focuses on those conflicts and wars that can be won quickly and does not waste billions on ‘useless ventures’ like the war in Ukraine.
Domestic policy
Trump’s Presidential Transition Project 2025 includes programmatic cornerstones that the newly elected president wants to get off the ground in the first 180 days of his term.
The economic policy measures include the abolition of many regulations that restrict the freedom of capital – especially job security and protection against unfair dismissal, but also environmental protection. The already inadequate Obamacare healthcare programme is to be abolished altogether, while other social spending is to be cut back massively.
The shift towards renewable energies and the ecological restructuring of the US economy, which were already largely illusory under Biden, are to give way to a shift towards the expansion of fossil fuel extraction, especially fracking. In addition, there will be tax cuts for the rich, especially the super-rich. To enable the US economy to compensate for its alleged disadvantage on the world market, Trump also wants to impose massive import tariffs to make the import of goods more expensive and bring more added value into the US (see below for more details).
All of this very clearly corresponds to the interests of important parts of US capital. Trump and his party are closely linked to large monopolies in the energy sector, the media (Google, X Corp), the high-tech industry and US finance capital.
Trump has also announced that he will task Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, with forming a Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory board named after a joke cryptocurrency. This will evaluate the work, structure and budget of all government agencies and associated bodies and make proposals for the restructuring of the entire government apparatus.
This is closely linked to the concept of Unitary Executive Theory. Instead of a separation of powers between the various departments of the state apparatus, it is assumed that the presidency is above all powers. This authoritarian turn, which is also to be accompanied by a purge and reappointment to important state functions, is justified by the claim that an ‘elite’ has seized power and destroyed democracy, which only a ‘strong man’ can save. Even if Trump and his movement do not represent fascism itself, he will massively exacerbate the bonapartist and repressive authoritarian elements of the US constitution.
Trump’s extremely racist and sexist agenda serves as a means of keeping his voters and supporters in line behind a neoliberal agenda, across class boundaries. The threatened deportation war against migrants, who are said to be an invading army, is deliberately intended to create a mood of permanent tension, of an apparent ‘siege’ of the USA – and thus also to further legitimise an internal militarisation and alignment of the state organs.
Migrants and people subjected to racial oppression, women and LGBT+ people will be exposed to a climate of permanent agitation, permanent attacks and reactionary legal restrictions. Police powers will be strengthened and then ‘naturally’ be made available to use against strikes and protests in the event of resistance from the working class or social movements.
Foreign policy
The reaction at home is matched by the foreign policy agenda. The economic policy aims to strengthen US corporations and US capital not only through domestic tax breaks, but also through a protectionist tariff policy. As we said this will probably provoke a destructive pushback. But despite this, it should not be overlooked that Trump’s policy could be quite successful in the short term.
The US is still the largest economic power, the largest market in the world, by far the most important financial market; the dollar still functions as world money. The US economic position has been strengthened, at least temporarily, under Biden. Ironically, this success of his predecessor directly benefits Trump.
In the short term, the US can certainly impose unfavourable trade conditions and deals on its respective negotiating partners because its weaker counterparts fear a permanent confrontation with the US even more than they fear the imposition of disadvantages. While the EU or China still have their own bargaining power, most semi-colonial countries do not even have that.
But in the longer term, Trump’s measures will inevitably intensify the struggle for the redivision of the world. The EU or even China may make some concessions in the current situation, but at the same time they, like Japan or the BRICS countries, will introduce their own countermeasures (protective tariffs, trade agreements, economic blocs). At the same time, they will increasingly put on hold their plans for a free market environmental transition, which in any case are often only on paper.
In short, the struggle for the economic redivision of the world and the tendency towards bloc-building will intensify dramatically.
In the Middle East, Trump’s election means nothing less than a free pass for Israel to continue to commit genocide, to fully expel and marginalise the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and to establish a permanent occupation in southern Lebanon. Itamar Ben Gvir, Minister of National Security and a convicted supporter of settler terrorist organisations, rejoiced in the Knesset: ‘Now is the time for sovereignty, the time for total victory. The time to make the death penalty for terrorists here in Israel law. All kinds of laws that I have no doubt the US president sees as we do.’
Not only the government, but also the opposition in Israel congratulated Trump.
In the medium term, however, his goal is also to re-establish the Abraham Accords Declaration with the reactionary Arab regimes. In return dictatorships and repressive regimes, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey, will not have to fear US criticism of human rights violations. However, the threat of war with Iran will loom over this entire reactionary reordering of the Middle East.
While Israel is set to continue receiving billions in US support, the outlook for Ukraine is bleak. Not only has Trump loudly proclaimed that he would make peace within a day, he has also threatened a massive reduction in US economic and military aid to Ukraine.
But even if Trump does not want to conclude a peace without a ‘deal’ for the US economy, the ‘peace plan’ that, among others, future Vice President J.D. Vance presented as early as spring 2024 effectively amounts to the recognition of the war aims of Russian imperialism. This plan provides for a freezing of the front, negotiations and demilitarisation of a buffer zone. Ukraine would have to make territorial concessions to Russia and commit to neutrality by 2040. This would preclude joining Nato, even if it were to receive some arms—for good money, of course. The question of a possible EU accession remains unclear.
In any case, it will be a thoroughly imperialist peace that will in fact result in the division of the country and annexations in the east and southeast of Ukraine by Russian imperialism and domination of the west by Western imperialism. The right of Ukraine to self-determination certainly plays no role in this deal.
A second break in Trump’s policy compared to that of Biden is also closely linked to Ukraine. The new US president regards the EU and its leading powers, especially Germany, as competitors, not as allies. There is, of course, some truth to this. Germany is, of course, also fighting in the battle for the redivision of the world, with the EU representing a means to an end, albeit a blunt one.
This ambivalent character of the relationship between the USA and the EU is evident in the question of rearmament and Nato. Trump, like all other US governments in recent decades, is demanding a massive increase in defence spending and ‘responsibility’ on the part of the European states. Otherwise, the USA is threatening to ‘withdraw’. At the same time, rearmament is also in the interest of the European imperialist bourgeoisies themselves. But they fear widespread opposition to the reduction in working class living standards that such expenditures would necessarily imply.
In the short term, Trump’s presidency will deepen the crisis of the EU and increase internal contradictions. Already Germany is in its second year of recession, with a broken coalition and a car industry faced with major closures. France too cannot form a government or agree on a budget.
Trump’s pressure, combined with a pacification of Ukraine, could also lead to a reorientation of (parts of) the European bourgeoisie. In the short term, they will swear by the transatlantic partnership, but some sections of the ruling class will also bring an alternative policy towards Russia and China into play again. Above all however, the EU is faced with the question of whether it itself is capable of stronger capitalist unification under the leadership of Germany and France, or whether a multi-speed Europe will emerge.
The real main enemy of the US, however, is the second largest, rising imperialist power—China. The planned reduction of spending on wars and Nato bases in Europe, the demands on these allies to increase their military spending are aimed at freeing up US resources for the main economic, political and military conflict.
The strategic considerations of Trump advisors and conservative thinktanks assume that the US cannot afford to get involved in prolonged military and thus economically costly conflicts in several different places. In this view, the war over Ukraine ultimately weakens the US’s ability to focus on the Pacific and China. The fundamental issue is to stop and contain the expansion of China as an imperialist power in economic and geo-strategic terms.
That is why countries like Taiwan and South Korea play an important role—although there is pressure for them to increase their military budgets and bear more of the costs. For example Project 2025 calls for Taiwan to quadruple its defence budget. In the short term this will not change relations with Taiwan, but it will of course raise the question in the country as to whether there is no alternative to the US alliance in the long term. In any case Trump’s policy will inevitably lead to an intensification of the main global antagonism of the imperialist order, between the USA and China.
On the character of Trumpism
As insane and irrational as Trumpism may appear, it does represent a strategy of US imperialism to halt the long-term decline of its hegemonic position. The rise of Trump therefore also reflects, indeed primarily reflects an internal contradiction inside the US ruling class. To this end, the Republican Party itself has been politically transformed into a populist party, including a populist movement, able to mobilise on the streets.
This includes an alliance of different classes or class factions under the leadership of parts of finance and monopoly capital. To establish and maintain this imaginary, false unity, populism must resort to the opposition between the ‘people’ and the liberal, left-wing, ‘woke’ socialist ‘elite’ which has betrayed the people and seized power. This elite has also conspired with foreign ‘powers’— migrants, China, the old EU, etc.
This reactionary ideology is necessary to present Trump’s supporters with a scapegoat for the massive deterioration of living standards that his neoliberal and protectionist policies will bring to the mass of his voters. This is why there is an intrinsic link between neoliberalism in the US and racism, nationalism, authoritarianism, sexism and religious obscurantism. Trumpism needs irrationalism, but it is not simply ‘unreasonable’, as the bourgeois centre claims, but an aggressive form of pursuing imperialist interests.
Dangers and tasks
The new US government therefore poses an extreme danger to the working class and the oppressed, not only in the US itself but worldwide. To name just a few:
- It increases the chance of completing the genocide in Gaza and the pogroms in the West Bank.
- It increases the likelihood of US sponsored ‘deals’ at the expense of oppressed nations.
- It will intensify the struggle of the imperialist powers for the redivision of the world bringing the dangers of regional wars and a clash between the camps nearer.
- It will foment racism at home, encourage the impunity of killer cops and establish a terrorising border force regime.
- It will encourage white supremacists and fascists, and attacks on democratic rights.
- It will support bigoted ‘religious’ anti-abortion campaigns.
- It will launch massive cuts to federal social aid programmes, attacks on trade union organising and the left.
- It will launch a political purge of federal employees.
Last, but certainly not least, it will lead to an increase in global temperatures and in turn devastating extreme weather events, not least in his beloved Florida.
No serious resistance can be expected from the Democratic Party. Their alternative to Trump is ultimately just an alternative strategy for restoring US hegemony. They are part of the problem, not the solution.
As long as the US left, the trade unions and the social movements do not break the political stranglehold of Democratic Party, they will make no political impact. Only by breaking this can they become a driving force in the struggles against the incoming administration. To do this, they need to pursue a united-front policy, a joint mobilisation in the struggle with all the forces of the working class and the oppressed, especially the trade unions.
This means nothing less than building an independent party of the working class, one that is rooted in the workplaces, in the trade unions, in the neighbourhoods and among all sections of the class, whether ‘people of colour’ or ‘white’, whether ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’. Such a party needs an orientation to the liberation from exploitation of the whole working class. In this regard, cross-class left-populist or green parties do not represent any step in this direction, but rather a petty-bourgeois dead end.
The task of the US working class and the movements of the socially oppressed is to finally and irrevocably break their organisations from the Democrats, especially the trade unions, and found the party of the US socialist revolution. This must start with mobilising against the man to be sworn in as President of the United States on 20 January 2025.