An Empire (and Economy) in Decline
Image by Pau Casals.
The SCOTUS rejection of Trump’s tariffs changes little. The empire’s decline persists, and with it, its extension to the US economy as a whole. And it will continue whether or not Trump finds another law to use to justify tariffs (at higher, lower, or the same levels as now) and whether or not SCOTUS invalidates it. The tariffs of 2025 exposed the basic decline situation, including some of the costs of having denied and kicked that problem down the road so many times. The SCOTUS decision merely quibbles about the tariffs’ legal justification. Nor is that surprising given the GOP’s domination of SCOTUS. The class that has long dominated the GOP – employers – has always hated and opposed taxes. And tariffs are taxes that fall chiefly on US employers who buy imported inputs and may or may not be able to pass them on to retail consumers.
A deep ignorance is attached to Trump’s imposing a tariff regime in which he irregularly raised, lowered, suspended, and re-imposed tariffs. Such a regime imposed uncertainty by wrapping it around each tariff. That made it irrational for any CEO to take the steps the tariffs were intended to induce. Why spend millions, lose time, and risk a relocation to adjust to a tariff that might be higher or lower or disappear before, during, or shortly after your move? It was much safer for the CEO’s company and for the CEO’s personal career to stay put. Wait and see and conserve resources became corporate watchwords. Manufacturing jobs in the US across the first year of Trump’s second presidency thus fell by over 70,000.
If Trump finds another law to use to justify his tariffs, old or new, it will surely be tested, and the eventual SCOTUS decision may well be the same. Enhanced uncertainty dogs whatever tariffs Trump attempts. If instead he demands congressional action, traditional GOP hostility to taxes there makes it quite likely to suffer the same defeat that SCOTUS just rendered. As uncertainty now hovers over Trump’s use of executive orders, it becomes clear that Trump’s tariff regime took him deep into a dead end.
He could, of course, simply ignore domestic laws, the Congress that writes them, and the courts that are supposed to enforce them. He did that originally by imposing the tariffs via executive order before the SCOTUS decision, and he can continue to do so afterward. Is that not likewise the approach presented by the US government’s summary execution of over 135 persons in boats in international waters (Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean)? The president’s labeling of them as “narco-terrorists” and “combatants” in a “drug war” is an even thinner rationale than what was offered to support tariffs in 2025. Disregarding existing international and domestic laws has become a source of pride. Trump, Vance, and Rubio have rechristened that disregard as the long-overdue emergence of an America First commitment, from subordination to an old “rules-based order.” During that order, we are asked to believe that “trading partners, allies and friends” exploited and humiliated the US. Trump, Vance, and Rubio will now stop all that. Perhaps they borrowed the concept of a period of sustained humiliation used by Xi Jinping for China before 1949, a far more apt usage of the term.
Ignoring laws, too, in the context of a declining empire and economy, only exacerbates uncertainties. They will produce policy failures and reversals in 2026 similar to those the Trump regime suffered in 2025. Already well underway, the decline sweeps away the few obstacles still in its path. Its economic, political, and cultural power already reduced, a desperate US turns on its erstwhile allies, semi-colonies, and remaining trading partners seeking tribute to offset its decline. Only its global military power seems still formidable. Yet there too, the Russian-Chinese alliance and its BRICS allies are catching up quickly.
The last piece of the puzzle, entitled “How will all this end?” concerns domestic conditions in the US. The decline appears to stem from deepening social divisions. Earlier, when less developed, divisions were papered over by the relatively untroubled oscillation between traditional Democrats and Republicans. Now they have become extremely aggravated, producing Trump and his MAGA base. Both of them, in turn, provoke ever more divisions. They battle Republicans decried as RINOs, but also Democratic centrists, Democratic progressives, and those they denounce synonymously as socialists, Marxists, terrorists, radical leftists, anarchists, communists, and so on. Meanwhile, the rest of the world reacts to the trade and tariff wars by retaliating against specific groups inside the US (farmers, energy producers, alcohol exporters, winter wheat importers, and so on). Those groups turn against specific tariffs. From there, it is a short step to questioning the entire global strategy, etc. Trump’s domestic support erodes.
Lastly, there are the self-inflicted wounds of mass disaffection. The ICEcapades in Minneapolis strengthened animosity toward Trump’s government around the immigration issue and how to deal with it. Trump’s transparent efforts to keep the public from knowing the full extent of his (and his friends’ and colleagues’) involvement with Jeffrey Epstein’s horrors are crumpling support. Least recognized but perhaps most important is the growing awareness among all employees – but especially at all government levels – that Trump’s policies threaten jobs. Their unions are striking, and the total US unionized labor force grew by 500,000 in 2025. When several unions joined the people of Minneapolis in organizing effective, mass opposition to ICE, a coalition undertook a renewal that can change US politics.
An old debate stresses that both “objective” and “subjective” conditions must be ripe for revolution to be possible. Empire decline, now abetted by self-isolating economic, political, and cultural policies, is maturing the objective conditions. Subjectively, denial of the decline as official policy in both major parties combines with the demonization of scapegoats (first immigrants, then the expanding numbers of Americans who oppose scapegoating them). What results are fast-deepening social divisions across the US? Ever more of the population senses deepening social problems. Ever more of that population sees mounting failure of dominant political parties and institutions to solve those problems. The need for basic social change becomes urgent.
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