Trump isn’t restoring American greatness—he’s dismantling the imperial core to recreate Global South conditions at home, using austerity, surveillance, and shock therapy to reposition U.S. labor as a cheap resource in the twilight of empire.

By Prince Kapone, Weaponized Information

Implosion as Strategy

Trump is not mismanaging the U.S. economy—he is deliberately detonating it. Beneath the buffoonery, beneath the white nationalist bravado, Trump’s economic project is as ruthless and calculated as any IMF structural adjustment program ever imposed on the Global South. This time, however, the target isn’t Bolivia or Ghana. It’s Michigan. It’s Mississippi. It’s middle America. The empire is coming home to roost, and its new colony is you.

The Crisis of Imperialism

The post-WWII world order—built on Bretton Woods, NATO, and unchallenged U.S. supremacy—is collapsing. U.S. imperialism, once global landlord of the capitalist world-economy, is now overleveraged, overstretched, and overexposed. The contradictions of empire have turned inward. The dollar’s dominance is being challenged by BRICS+ de-dollarization. The U.S. military can’t even occupy Haiti, let alone reassert dominance over the Middle East or Eurasia. Meanwhile, China is building high-speed railways and trade zones while America debates banning TikTok.

This is what we at Weaponized Information call the Crisis of Imperialism—the unraveling of the U.S.-led capitalist world-system. And Trump, far from resisting this crisis, is riding it like a cowboy on a burning horse, steering America into the abyss on purpose. Because for capital, crisis is not tragedy—it’s opportunity.

Trump’s Imperial Recalibration

Trump’s strategy is a recalibration of empire by other means. If the U.S. can no longer rule the world by consensus, then it will do so by coercion. Exit the façade of multilateral diplomacy. Enter trade war, sanctions, and tech bans. Exit the NGO and enter the drone. Exit the State Department and enter BlackRock. This is a scorched-earth foreign policy doctrine: withdraw from global institutions, sabotage China’s rise, and consolidate a fascist base at home to crush dissent.

Trump’s economic nationalism is not about protecting American workers—it’s about breaking them. His trade policies are crafted not to protect domestic industry but to punish China while using the ensuing chaos to justify massive tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks, and the handover of public infrastructure to private capital.

Domestic Recolonization: The New Structural Adjustment

Here lies the heart of the matter: Trump is recolonizing the United States. He is applying the same logic that U.S. imperialism used to break the back of the Global South—debt, austerity, deregulation, surveillance—but now he’s applying it to Cleveland, Bakersfield, and Birmingham.

This is structural adjustment for the empire’s core:

• Slash environmental and labor protections
• Privatize schools, water, transportation, and housing
• Destroy unions and public services
• Militarize police and surveillance to preempt rebellion

Capital is preparing to reinvest—but only under the right conditions. The goal is to recreate the conditions of the Global South—low wages, minimal rights, and zero accountability—right here at home. The MAGA voter thinks Trump is bringing jobs back. In reality, he’s bringing the maquiladora model to Indiana.

Technofascism and the Infrastructure of Repression

This is not your grandfather’s fascism. This is technofascism: the fusion of monopoly capital and the state, administered by big data, enforced through algorithmic discipline, and optimized for labor exploitation. Think Elon Musk’s robot workforce meets ICE raids. Think Palantir’s predictive policing meets Amazon warehouses. Think Peter Thiel’s surveillance capitalism meets the Pentagon.

Trump’s regime is building an AI-driven austerity machine to manage collapse and convert the U.S. into a secure investment zone. It’s Silicon Valley fascism dressed in cowboy boots.

Multipolarity and the Threat to Empire

What truly terrifies the U.S. ruling class is not China’s rise alone—but what it represents: the end of Western supremacy. The BRICS+ bloc is building institutions, trade corridors, and digital systems that bypass U.S. control. Latin America is turning left. Africa is pushing back. The Gulf is drifting eastward. Even Europe, in its own way, is beginning to hedge.

The multipolar world is not utopia—but it is a threat to U.S. imperial monopoly. And Trump’s scorched-earth response is to burn it all down—at home and abroad—if America can’t own it.

The Weaponization of Decline

We are not witnessing America’s revival—we are witnessing the weaponization of its decline. The technofascist regime emerging under Trump 2.0 is a final stage mutation of imperial capitalism, where the last profits are squeezed from a collapsing empire by turning its own people into a new internal colony.

It is no longer just Haiti or Honduras that must be made poor to preserve Wall Street’s dominion. It is also Pennsylvania. It is also rural Texas. The U.S. working class is being stripped, subdued, and offered up to capital as a final sacrifice in a desperate attempt to remain a relevant node of imperial accumulation.

And unless we build a revolutionary alternative, Trump’s race to the bottom will drag us all there—chained, surveilled, and told to be grateful for the job.