By Daniel Campos- La Marx International

On April 2, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump announced an increase in tariffs on products from all countries in the world. It baptized that day as "Liberation Day," but The Economist, an emblematic publication of imperialist-capitalism since 1843, baptized the day of Trump's announcements as "Ruination Day," because Trump's announcements unleashed a cataclysm in the stock markets globally.

The announcement caused the collapse of Wall Street and all the stock markets in the world, reflecting the horror of the ruling classes on a global scale. All the indices, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq, the Dow Jones, suffer a collapse showing the largest percentage losses in years and wiping out millions of dollars in value in one fell swoop. Global corporations such as JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and multinationals such as Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, Tesla, Alphabet, Nike, Adidas, Puma, etc., are also collapsing. Oil, precious metals, gold, silver, and cryptocurrencies also plummet.

"It's a temporary fall..." said Donald Trump. But while the Trump administration seeks to sow calm, the reality is that the announcements have caused a global collapse, a panic, and the evaporation of trillions in assets, exposing the reality of the global crisis of capitalism. In no way is this a temporary crisis, on the contrary, it is an epididium of the world crisis of capitalism that has been going on for decades and was unleashed as a result of the bankruptcy of the Global Corporations that dominate the world economy in 2008. Global Corporations are the heart of capitalism, and this same crisis was aggravated by the failure of bailouts and bailouts, the response that global imperialism gave to the crisis.

At the same time, Donald Trump's policy is being massively repudiated around the world, with massive mobilizations on 5 continents. We alert our readers that the rain of analyses and interpretations that is being published in the mass media by "opinionologists" and "experts" are a whole pack of lies, and verbiage that perpetrate every minute all kinds of charlatans for hire with the aim of deceiving the peoples of the world about what is really happening. This is the fundamental reason why a serious Marxist explanation is needed about what is happening with the world crisis of capitalism. Why have Donald Trump's announcements provoked this panic and collapse of the stock markets? What is Donald Trump seeking with the increase in global trade tariffs? Can these measures by Trump solve the world crisis of capitalism? In this article we are going to answer these questions.

The collapse of global capitalism is expressed in stagflation

Let's answer the first question: Why have Donald Trump's announcements caused this panic and collapse of the stock markets? Because Donald Trump's announcements lay bare the prospect of stagflation. What is stagflation? The combination of recession and inflation, the worst perspective that capitalism can suffer. 6 months ago from La Marx International we explained in the article of @Revolución that the global economy is heading towards stagflation as you can read here. Stagflation is the concrete expression and the visible symptom that assumes the collapse of capitalism, but the collapse is not produced by Trump's announcements as the lying "analysts" and charlatans who defend capitalism say.

Stagflation is the product of a long development of crises that has been going on for 25 years since the dot-com burst of 2000, through the bursting of the subprime bubble (2008/09), the bailouts in Japan (2013), the bailouts in Europe of Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus, Ireland, etc. (2010-2015), the "Repo" crisis on Wall Street and the real estate bubble in China (2019). the outbreak of global inflation (2021), etc., among others. That is to say, stagflation, the expression that today assumes the collapse of capitalism, can never happen "suddenly", "suddenly" because Donald Trump announces a table of tariffs. Stagflation is the product of a long process of crisis development that led capitalism to collapse consisting of massive global poverty, inequality, recession, collapse of trade, cutting off the supply chain (global gridlock), destruction of productive forces, unemployment, generalized precariousness, devastation of nature, climate change, bubbles, speculative maneuvers, crack or bankruptcies of global corporations, banks, and pandemics, etc.

What Donald Trump's announcements provoke is to lay bare the prospect of stagflation, and of all the general tendencies of world crisis of capitalism. The fall in the stock markets isthe product of the fear caused in capitalists by this prospect of global stagflation shown by the recession data in the United States, China, Japan and Europe and combined with the inflation data that skyrocketed in the world from 2021 onwards. If you want to read about the skyrocketing global inflation in 2021, click here. This is why Donald Trump's announcements have precipitated the global collapse of the world's stock markets. Now, what is Donald Trump looking for with the increase in global trade tariffs?

They seek to stop the global revolution and overcome the crisis of globalization

The policy of Donald Trump's government has 2 objectives: On the one hand, to stop all the revolutions in the world through "peace plans" and "agreements" to sustain the dictatorships, regimes and governments that are the mainstay of global capitalism. On the other hand, to overcome the crisis of capitalism and bring it out of collapse. That is why since his very inauguration Trump has promoted peace plans in Palestine, Lebanon, Ukraine, etc., while sealing agreements with capitalist dictatorships such as those of Maduro in Venezuela, Putin in Russia or governments such as that of Ahmed al-Charaa in Syria, and after the announcement of the tariffs he reported the beginning of negotiations with the dictatorship of Phạm Minh Chính in Vietnam. The threat forces Donald Trump to take severe measures that, in his view, counteract the trend of global stagflation.

Stagflation is the worst symptom that the crisis of capitalism can have. A term coined in 1965 by the then British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Ian McLeod in a speech to Parliament when he said: "We now have the worst of both worlds: not just inflation on the one hand or stagnation on the other, but both together. We have a kind of "stagflation". (Ian Norman Macleod, House of Commons' Official Report, November 17, 1965). That term, applied to England in 1965, applies today to the entire world. Why is stagflation "the worst of both worlds". Because stagflation is a midwife of revolutions, gripped by inflation that raises the cost of living, and bankruptcies that cause mass unemployment, the people are compelled to take to the streets and overthrow governments by carrying out revolutions. This is what Donald Trump desperately seeks to avoid.

The bankruptcy of global corporations in 2008/09 made it clear that globalization as a regime of capitalist accumulation has entered its stage of exhaustion. From the post-war period to today, capitalism has gone through two regimes of accumulation: the Keynesian one between 1945 and 1975, 30 "glorious" years in which there was an economic "boom", and globalization or "neoliberalism", a regime of accumulation that has led from 1980 to today. As we explained in The End of Corporations (EoC), the Keynesian regime developed around multinationals, companies that dominate a branch of production, trade or finance on a global scale, while globalization around Global Corporations, companies that dominate several branches of production, trade and finance on a global scale. The bankruptcy of the Global Corporations in 2008/09 made it clear that globalization is a regime of exhausted accumulation, for that reason the Global Corporations had to be rescued, so that capitalism can continue to exist. If you want to read FdM click here.

The problem of imperialism is that has not been able to impose a new regime of accumulation that overcomes globalization, because the transition from one regime of accumulation to another is made through a brutal burning of capital, the Keynesian regime or "welfare state" was possible by the burning of capital that was the 2nd world war based in Europe, while globalization was made possible by the burning of capital in Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and China. After the exhaustion of globalization expressed in the bankruptcy of the Global Corporations, imperialism attempted a burning of capital to overcome the crisis of globalization with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but was defeated by the revolution of the peoples of the Middle East, which is why globalization remains in its stage of exhaustion. and capitalism only lives on the basis of an artificial respirator of bailouts and financial bailouts provided by the Central Banks.

The charlatans "analysts" and "opinionologists" claim that "Trump goes on the offensive against the world" and "declares war against China, and the world." Nothing could be further from the truth. Trump's policy is defensive, seeking to change the terms of trade to save the U.S. imperialist economy. save U.S. industry. Eliminate fiscal and trade deficits, lower U.S. inflation. In their vision, both Trump and Elon Musk and their team are trying to save global imperialist-capitalism, and ultimately save Canada, Europe, and Japan, minor imperialist countries or capitalist sub-metropolises such as China or India, which are deeply dependent on the US economy. These are the objectives that Trump is trying to achieve with the measures he has announced.

A defensive policy in the face of the crisis

At this point we must then answer the last of the questions: Can these measures of Trump solve the world crisis of capitalism? Forced by the failure of all the policies applied in recent decades until today, Trump is forced to revive those policies by combining them with other types of measures such as the renegotiation of the terms of trade. However, we must advance that these measures are destined to fail because they do not act to solve the core of the problems that the capitalist-imperialist system is going through.

For Marxists, capitalism works through the interaction of two systems, which are the system of production and the system of circulation. This interaction of both systems is called expanded reproduction or capitalist accumulation, terms that are synonymous. For more than two decades, the policy of world imperialism and Wall Street has been to act on the circulation system with the Bailouts injecting masses of capital or with the QTs restricting the circulation of capital, policies that have been applied globally for almost 20 years by all the Central Banks of the world (Japan, etc.). Europe, England, China, Canada, Switzerland, etc.) following the orders of the US Federal Reserve, the central bank that governs global capitalism. From 2008/09 to today there have already been 4 rounds of rescues called QE1 (2008), QE2 (2011), QE3 (2013), and QE4 (2019). If you want to read about QE or ransoms click here.

It is possible that when he calls for the Fed to lower interest rates, Trump will push for a new round of bailouts and bailouts that would be called Quantitative Easing (QE), which would already be the 5th round, or QE5. Now, whether with QE5, or with trade tariffs, Donald Trump's measures act in the circulation system, the gray globe on the right in the graph of the Expanded Reproduction that we invite the reader to observe. Why do these policies fail and will continue to fail? Because the problem is not in the circulation system, but in the production system, which is where value is generated.

If the reader looks at the graph, governments act on the gray globe on the right, but the problem is not there. The problem of capitalism lies in simple accumulation or production system, that is, in the gray globe of the left, so that, by not acting on the core of the problem, what governments do is like trying to cure a heart problem, acting on the lungs. That is why, when Donald Trump acts with tariffs, he acts economically like a mad firefighter who instead of calming the flames of the crisis, makes them grow.

The problem is in the system of production because capitalism needs to extract value from the toiling masses of the world in order to valorize the colossal mass of fictitious capital that Global Corporations have created. This mass of fictitious capital is paper that has no value, and is calculated at 1000 trillion U$S, called in capitalist financial jargon the "bubble of everything", that is, fictitious capital that encompasses all the economic assets of the world. Imperialism must act in the globe of the left, which represents the system of production, where value is generated by exploiting human labor from where values emerge that are transformed into commodities and money, which then transit through the system of circulation. If capitalism fails to create these values, the mass of fictitious capital is not valorized, which causes the collapse and bankruptcy of the Corporations that have issued it, which forces governments to implement bailouts of Global Corporations.

Value creation thus suffers repeated obstacles. In the first place, the very existence of the capitalist class is an obstacle to the creation of value, because the value socially created by the working class is appropriated by the capitalists by transforming it into profit and capital. Thatis to say, the immense masses of value, instead of being transformed into health, education, wages for the people, becomes profits for a minority of the 1%. This causes terrible inequality because millions who produce wealth cannot enjoy it and sink into poverty. In other words, capitalism is a system that constitutes a daily and systematic robbery protected by armed states to defend the profits of the capitalists.

The second problem lies in the fact that in order to valorize the colossal mass of fictitious capital of US$1000 trillion, it must intervene violently against the workers to impose higher rates of exploitation, and obtain the necessary values by subjecting the workers of the world to relations of brutal exploitation, or to put it graphically; They must impose exploitative relations such as those imposed in China, Vietnam or Cambodia on the whole world. But is it possible for capitalists to impose rates of semi-slave exploitation on European, North American or Japanese workers similar to those in Cambodia or China? It is completely impossible. And the explanation of why it is impossible is not in the field of economics, but in politics, that is, in the field of class struggle.

The crisis is a product of the world revolution

Imperialism attempted the burning of capital necessary to overcome the crisis of globalization with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, but these NATO invasions were defeated by the national liberation revolution of the peoples of the Middle East. That defeat was possible because the struggle of the peoples of Iraq and the Middle East in 2006 converged with the struggles of the people of Europe and the United States, which inaugurated the "American Revolution of the 21st Century", a process in which we are immersed until today. It is this world revolution against capitalism that places precise limits on any attempt to advance in the super-exploitation of the masses on a global scale.

The world class struggle is advancing relentlessly against all of them. The best daily expression of this is the massive mobilizations against Trump and Elon Musk around the world. The reality is that we are living in a world revolutionary situation, led by the most exploited and oppressed sections of society, women, immigrants, oppressed races, youth, the most backward and original nations and peoples, but also by the workers and peoples of the most advanced capitalist nations such as France, Germany, England, Japan and the United States. These revolutions corner all the capitalist governments of the world, from those with more "progressive" discourses to those with more reactionary discourses.

And it is precisely this revolutionary process that puts limits on all attempts to advance in the super-exploitation and defeat of the working class that makes it possible to bring the necessary rates of profit to the capitalists. It is precisely this world revolutionary process that is the basis of the world crisis of capitalism, and ultimately the only serious explanation for the reason for its worsening, with no way out in sight. Since the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, the Pentagon and NATO have not been able to invade any country in the world in more than 20 years, while the global revolutionary process already encompasses 3 revolutionary waves, the last of which includes the 3rd Palestinian Intifada, the revolution in Ukraine, the revolution of the Houthis in Yemen, the Syrian revolution, the Rojava revolution, etc. just to name a few of the most important revolutions and revolutionary civil wars.

It is this process of class struggle that prevents global capitalism from resolving the crisis in accumulation and the production process, which led capitalism to collapse. Bourgeois economists and vulgar Marxists will continue to talk about a "trade war." They will look for analogies with World War I, predict "strong clashes between the powers" and finally make the bombastic forecast that World War 3 is approaching. They will make all these announcements without blushing, despite exposing their tremendous ignorance and political illiteracy. For them, the class struggle does not exist, there are only "struggles between countries": China against the US. or Europe against Russia. The revisionism of the groups of the 99% of the global left, and the corrupt policy of class collaboration with the "progressive" capitalist coalitions have turned them into reformist groups.

These groups that flaunt their analyses as vulgar Marxists. The battles between oppressors and oppressed that characterized all the preceding centuries for vulgar Marxists, Stalinists, reformists and revisionists, no longer exist. They limit themselves to repeating thecharlatanism, and lies spread 24 hours a day by the mass media and social networks, the church, the military, capitalist economists, and officials who seek to hide that capitalism is today a mortally ill old man. The social democrats, Stalinists and reformists who promise a "better capitalism", seek to hide this reality in order to deny that we are facing a global revolution against capitalism, and to carry out their treacherous social democratic policy.

The world revolution faces the domination of the United States. U.S. and Corporations

Donald Trump's policy once again gives a resounding slap in the face of the already failed "Decoupling Theory". These professional tricksters present the issue as a "geopolitical" analysis and speak of a "trade war" as the product of the "clash and confrontation between the powers". as an explanation of everything that happens. They now affirm that we are going "towards a multilateral world", that the United States is collapsing. 

The U.S. and the dollar, with which China, Russia or the BRICS emerge as great superpowers destined to replace it. Nothing could be further from the truth. The collapse of global capitalism brings with it the collapse of the United States. The US, Europe, Japan, a movement that accompanies China and the BRICS in unison, simultaneously.

We are not facing a "multilateral world" but a more concentrated, ruthless, and brutal U.S. domination. and Global Corporations on a global scale. The peoples of the world, ignoring the charlatans of the reformist and global bourgeois left, are already taking to the streets to confront that domination by mobilizing against the Trump-Musk government duo, who are the ones who really decide what is going to happen in capitalism. Bourgeois analysts and opinionologists fail again and again to explain what is happening, making a fool of themselves by failing again and again in all their predictions.

In the field of the leftist groups, the situation is a real disaster. The world's leftist groups flaunt their illiteracy, rupture with Marxism, and theoretical precariousness by repeating the "geopolitical" analyses of bourgeois analysts. Charlatans appear who present themselves as "Marxist economists", as is the case of Michael Roberts, linked to the SWP of England, a group of capitulators who have been part of the bourgeois group Die Linke in Germany, or publish the charlatans of Thomas Picketty of the Paris Economic School, who disguise themselves as "Marxists" to confuse global activism.

The time has come to put an end to capitalism. It is time to impose Global Socialism, a task that the activists of the world have begun to undertake by deciding to turn their backs on the old reformist, social democratic, Stalinist and revisionist leaderships, a global political revolution that opens wide the opportunity to regroup revolutionaries around Marxism. Hand in hand with the revolutionary process that is shaking the world, the material and objective conditions are more than ripe to impose socialism. What is at stake is to build a world Socialist International to carry out this task. This is the invitation we make with this article, to unite to concretize in the coming period the task that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels left us together with their legacy. From La Marx International we offer this analysis of the world crisis of capitalism in order to undertake this essential task in the coming period, and to concretize it.