On Monday, January 20, Donald Trump took office as President of the United States for the second time. In his inaugural speech, Trump promised to immediately send troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, declare that there are only two recognized sexes, and boost domestic oil production (climate change-fueled wildfires, unprecedented in scale, continue to devastate Los Angeles). We can expect that the announcements made today will be followed by many more. Today Trump said, “the golden age of America begins right now.” But the truth is that beneath all the phony populism, Trump represents the interests of the same billionaire class that delivered the poverty, oppression, and war we live with today. Only a socialist transformation of society can bring the change that is actually needed.
Trump is a far-right authoritarian who now has major resources and political leverage to enact an agenda which, if even a fraction of it is accomplished, will mean extreme danger for millions of workers, poor and marginalized people in this country and around the world. Trump has promised to begin his program of mass deportations tomorrow. Besides immigrants, transgender people will be a prime target of this administration, along with federal workers, leftists, and ultimately the labor movement as a whole.
Trump posed as an anti-establishment, anti-war candidate who will fight for the interests of ordinary Americans, but he is taking office with the richest administration in U.S. history. It will include thirteen billionaires, and altogether, the group’s net worth tops $380 billion — higher than the GDP of 179 countries combined. He was able to lie so effectively because there is no strong organized left alternative in the U.S. that can provide a genuine alternative to the two corporate parties.
As we have said, this regime represents a clear shift in an authoritarian direction. Trump will seek to purge the state of anyone insufficiently loyal and work around Congress. He threatens to jail opponents, undermine vote counts, and is prepared to mobilize the far-right into violence.
But Trump’s new regime and the attacks that are coming will provoke struggle from below — even potentially massive social struggle and class battles with the power to take the initiative out of the hands of the right wing and usher in an entirely new era in U.S. politics. Democratic rights — like the right to vote, marry whoever you want, or express your gender identity — are rights that socialists fight to defend, and attacks against them can often be a spark that transforms into wider upheavals against reactionary governments and the capitalist system they protect. There is also raging class anger in the U.S., shown by the mass outpouring of public support for Luigi Mangione after his alleged shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. But this anger has yet to be channeled into a fightback effective enough to push back the right wing and the capitalist class more decisively.
Trump is entering office with some of the highest approval numbers from the public that he has seen in his entire political career. A majority (55%) of people approve of his handling of the transition of power, and most Americans (56%) expect him to “do a good job in his second term,” according to a CNN poll. This honeymoon period will likely wear off soon, as the realities of his attacks on the working class set in. If Trump’s threatened tariffs on China and other countries are carried out to anywhere close to their full extent, they will wreak havoc on the U.S. and world economy, including raising inflation.
How We Got Here
To understand how the United States reached the point where a convicted felon and proven sexual abuser, who led an attempted coup in early 2021, has now been reelected by a narrow but clear majority, we need to go back to 2008. That was the height of the biggest economic crisis in the U.S. and globally since the Great Depression. Wall Street was bailed out while millions lost their jobs and homes. This was the beginning of the end of the era of neoliberal globalization. The “center” of capitalist politics, not just in the U.S. but in Europe and beyond, began to collapse, with growing polarization in society and developments to the left and the right. In 2016, the two alternatives that excited huge sections of the working class were Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
While Trump lost in 2020 and his coup attempt failed, his drive to take over the Republican Party and isolate the old establishment continued and succeeded. Tragically, Bernie did not continue the fight but capitulated to the centrist Democratic leadership who managed to lose to Trump for the second time. But what’s to be expected when Biden and Harris continued to insist that the economy was good for working people while the cost of groceries spiked and housing got scarcer and even less affordable, basically gaslighting half the population? Trump gained in all sections of the population in 2024 compared to the last two elections and in different sections of the working class, but especially among low paid workers.
The world has changed in very important ways since Trump’s first election. While in 2016 a large section of the ruling class did not want Trump and most of the capitalist media treated him as an ignorant buffoon, they have now come over to many of his positions as they move in a sharply reactionary direction. In particular, the conflict between U.S. and Chinese imperialism that Trump pushed in his first administration has ramped up, and will get even sharper under Trump this time.
The U.S. has entered a pre-war posture with a global race to secure “strategic” resources, and the ruling class is increasingly stressing nationalism and militarism. Pushing other aspects of reactionary ideology is also part of “disciplining” the population. Trump claimed he was anti-war during the campaign, especially in relation to the war in Ukraine—this is a complete fraud. While it is true that he wants to pivot to focusing on the conflict with China, he and U.S. imperialism will not easily accept a humiliating defeat in Ukraine to China’s bloc partner, Russia. He continues to push European countries to ramp up military spending, which they are increasingly doing. Trump will also claim that he played the key role in securing a ceasefire deal in Gaza, but he will continue U.S. imperialism’s blank check policy to the bloody Israeli regime.
The outcome of all these factors is a shift to the right in society, driven by the ruling class but also affecting sections of the working class. This is very dangerous, but not irreversible. Major class battles between the working class and the billionaire class are looming here and internationally, which will ultimately determine the course of history in this epoch. The multiracial, multi-gender working class, if organized, mobilized and well-led, can turn the tide.
Trump’s International Impact
It is not just in the U.S. that the populist right and far right are making gains. In Europe, previously “unacceptable” parties are now being allowed into government by the ruling class in the new era. In Italy, the ex-fascist Meloni is now leading the most “stable” regime on the continent while both France and Germany, led by corporate centrists, are in the midst of serious economic and political crises and the far right in both countries is gaining strength. Far-right parties are now also in government in the Netherlands, Austria and Finland and in a number of Eastern European countries, and the Trumpist party Reform UK is fast becoming the main opposition to the new “Labour” government in Britain.
The same factors are impelling all these developments as in the U.S., especially the sharpening inter-imperialist conflict. But far-right forces are also receiving direct encouragement from Trump and his odious allies like Elon Musk, who now openly cheerleads neo-Nazis in various countries. Nor is it just in Europe, as is seen with the “libertarian” Milei in Argentina whose regime wages war on the working class with Musk and Trump’s approval. Musk’s role — representing Trump and also the interests of Big Tech with which Trump is now closely allied — has particularly rattled centrist governments whom he seeks to undermine.
Trump’s nakedly imperialist policy concerns even his allies, with threats to seize Greenland from Denmark (because of its resources and strategic location in the Arctic, a new front in global competition) and to retake the Panama Canal, as well as threats to impose major tariffs across the board on all countries. But the U.S. led imperialist bloc will not break up despite its internal tensions. If anything, the global conflict between the two imperialist blocs is accelerating.
However, while the far right keeps making electoral gains in many countries we have also seen a rise in class struggle which could intensify. This is especially true as military buildup will mean massive cuts in social programs in Europe and the U.S. and beyond, as working-class families are made to pay the price.
How Can We Stop Trump?
In 2016, the Democrats failed spectacularly to stop Trump with Hillary Clinton’s status quo, big business campaign. Despite this, back then it was still much more possible for the Democrats to convince working people that capitalist institutions like the courts, or the Democratic Party itself, would protect us from Trump and the right wing. Eight years later, working people have watched court case after court case actually make Trump more popular and fail in any way to stop him. And now, the Democrats have moved further to the right themselves in an opportunistic attempt to get in on some of the right wing’s momentum.
It’s clearer than perhaps ever before to millions that we cannot rely on the Democrats or the institutions of capitalism to be an effective counterweight to Trump. If we want to win, we have to learn the lessons of the past eight years. The only way forward is to take matters into our own hands as workers and young people, to fight in our schools and workplaces and in the streets. That fight needs to be completely independent of the Democrats, who have only ever tried to smother—or co-opt and then smother—our movements. The only things that effectively pushed back Trump in his first term were mass action or the threat of mass action, including strikes.
Our protests need to go much farther than they did in Trump’s first term. The danger represented to working people and the oppressed by this far better organized Trump 2.0 regime is much more serious, up to and including the possibility of this turning into a full-fledged dictatorship. Our demonstrations need to become the basis of a sustained mass movement, develop democratic structures and organization, because working people need to be able to discuss and collectively decide on the most effective strategies to fight back.
We also need the labor movement to play an active and political role in fighting against Trump’s attacks with unity and solidarity on a class basis. We need to not despair and understand that there are major contradictions in Trump’s coalition. We need a left and labor movement and a leadership equal to the task, prepared to seize opportunities to take on the right-wing juggernaut.
Extremely regrettably, the loudest union leaders are not pointing in this direction. Teamsters’ President Sean O’Brien has long made clear his support for Trump’s “America First” rhetoric and his strategy to negotiate with the president. Now UAW President Shawn Fain, who six months ago called Donald Trump a “scab,” says he is “ready to work with Trump.” This reflects both a lack of confidence in workers to be able to recognize Trump’s billionaire allegiances and to fight back, and a total inability to provide the leadership needed to guide workers in this direction. Workers will need to organize pressure from below to force the labor movement to step decisively into the fightback. Above all, the growth of the right wing points to the burning need for an actual left alternative in the form of a mass working-class party that stands against war, oppression, exploitation, and capitalism itself.
Billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos have donated tens of millions to Trump’s Inaugural Fund, demonstrating how the majority of the bourgeoisie are embracing or bending the knee to Trump’s reactionary regime. Zuckerberg, Bezos, Elon Musk, Trump, and their friends around the world are the embodiment of a thoroughly diseased system which must be overthrown.
There will be working-class struggle against this rotten administration and this rotten system. The question now is how we can start getting organized to make that coming fightback strong enough to win. Socialist Alternative members were out in the streets this weekend with tens of thousands of working people across the country, and the fight is just beginning.
