President Trump’s appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month was all about showing the rich and powerful who is boss. As his Commerce Secretary made clear at a Swiss resort, “With the arrival of President Trump, capitalism has a new sheriff in town.”
As President Trump ramps up his threats against Greenland in the run-up to the summit, Western leaders are finally forced to realize that behind all the fuss, Trump may be serious about shaking up the world. Taken together with President Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and the ongoing tariff war, the US president’s actions suggest that a new model of capitalism is built on direct state coercion and geopolitical competition rather than market rules.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has eloquently stated that President Trump represents “disruption, not transition.” Mr. Carney argued that although the international rules-based order is riddled with hypocrisy and double standards, this American-led economy still provides some stability to countries like Canada. Today, “this deal no longer works.”
Carney is right. President Trump is leading efforts to transform the international order. And that means changing the way capitalism works.
For decades, we have lived under a neoliberal form of capitalism. In theory, this system is based on free market rules. In reality, it was a highly proprietary system, where important decisions about how we lived were being made by an ever more concentrated group of business leaders and wealthy investors. Such systems have led to historically unprecedented levels of inequality and environmental destruction, and have eroded democracy to the point where it is barely functional.
We’ve been here before. In the late 19th century, the globalized “free market” economy also created massive inequality dominated by a small number of robber baron industrialists and financiers. As these business empires collaborated with nation-states to expand their markets around the world, war became inevitable.
In some countries, fascist leaders have seized power, wiped out democratic opposition to big business, integrated them into aggressive nationalist projects, used the full power of the state to advance corporate interests, and incorporated those interests into a project of world domination. In many ways, fascism was the ultimate expression of monopolistic power. Fascist economics was characterized by the fusion of state power and corporate monopoly, the mobilization of industry for nationalist expansion, and the suppression of democratic economic oversight.
Trump represents something similar. He uses economic and military warfare to get his way, explicitly uses state power to enrich the largest corporations in history, and seeks to raise state subsidies and public protections to unprecedented levels.
But President Trump is not controlled by business leaders. Rather, we want to change the way they function. President Trump frequently clashes with “woke” corporate bureaucrats and bullies them into integrating into his political project, just as fascist leaders did a hundred years ago.
President Trump is therefore interested in intervening in countries in ways that baffle many in the business world. President Trump said the invasion of Venezuela was for oil. Despite this, many oil companies appear reluctant to invest. President Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations said his interest in Greenland lies in controlling critical minerals needed to manufacture military and other high-tech products. But for many in the business world, unearthing them seems too difficult to consider.
Some argue that Mr. Trump is simply interested in enriching the speculators around him. And some of that does exist – just look at the hedge funds that reportedly committed murder when President Trump threatened to intervene in Venezuela. But there is also something deeper. President Trump sees the world as one of great power conflict, and China is the United States’ main competitor, but Europe also needs to know China’s position. Managing resources, even those buried deep underground, is essential to maintaining U.S. dominance, especially since someone could steal them.
President Trump’s plan, although subject to change and applied in highly erratic and sometimes contradictory ways, is for a world in which international law completely replaces bully rule. This, in turn, is a response to unsustainable dynamics in the global economy. Therefore, he is likely to outlive Trump. Therefore, we cannot wait for elections to save us. If you want to defeat Trump’s politics, you need to stand up to him.
Carney suggested something similar at Davos, proposing the creation of a new coalition of “middle powers” to replace dependence on the United States. This is definitely important, but only part of the answer. Carney’s vision for this alternative union centers on signing free-market trade deals with further deregulation that replace one form of globalization with another.
It is time for Western leaders to learn that neoliberalism cannot defeat a fascist economy. We need a truly democratic form of economy. This means building a system where public investment, democratic accountability, and economic sovereignty are prioritized over corporate concentration and speculative finance. And it’s possible. Because by retaliating against Trump and cutting their dependence on the United States, countries can begin to rewrite the rules of their economies.
Retaliation against Mr. Trump should not be viewed simply through the lens of expanding tariffs. Restricting U.S. companies’ access to procurement contracts, refusing to cooperate on intellectual property rules, and regulating finance and technology will all hurt President Trump’s friends while also helping our country develop sovereign economic policies that can center the needs of ordinary people. Remarkably, such policies are explicitly on the table in the debate over the European Union’s so-called “trade bazooka”, which is being threatened over Greenland.
This would represent the beginning of something really different. Trump’s rise is frightening, but it presents an opportunity that should have been seized long ago to transition to a more democratic economy, halt and reverse inequality, and restore the environment. Trump’s politics are not an anomaly, but a symptom of a deep failure in the global economic system. And that is the only way to prevent fascism, because economic systems that concentrate power and wealth inevitably create fertile ground for authoritarian rule.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
