Donald Trump’s top economic advisor Stephen Miran revealed that Washington’s strategy is to use tariffs to force countries to pay the USA tribute to maintain its global financial and military empire. This is the idea behind the so-called “Mar-a-Lago Accord”.

Donald Trump is portrayed as a “populist” committed to average working-class people, but his policies benefit wealthy elites at the expense of everyone else. His administration includes 13 billionaires—including Elon Musk, the world’s richest oligarch—and he is cutting taxes on the rich and corporations while imposing a consumption tax on the poor through tariffs.

At a summit held by a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, U.S. Vice President JD Vance gave a speech about globalization that made it clear that the West wants to keep poor, formerly colonized countries in the Global South trapped at the bottom of the global value chain, through monopolistic control of advanced technologies.

What is the meaning of “multipolarity”? Donald Trump and Marco Rubio say “great power competition” with imperial spheres of influence. China and much of the Global South have an anti-imperialist view: “equality among all countries regardless of size”.

BRICS keeps expanding. As a new full member, it added Indonesia, the 4th most populous country with the 7th largest economy on Earth. BRICS now has 10 members and 8 partners. They make up 41.4% of global GDP (PPP) and half the world population.

Donald Trump’s tariffs will not reduce U.S. public debt. The federal deficit will keep growing, but they will be an excuse to further cut taxes on the rich and to ratchet up the new cold war on China.

BRICS keeps expanding, adding 9 partner countries in January 2025, after admitting 4 new members in 2024. It now makes up roughly half of the global population and more than 41% of world GDP (PPP). It’s an economic powerhouse, with top producers of key commodities like oil, gas, grains, meat, and minerals.

BRICS held a summit in Kazan, Russia in October 2024, where it expanded with 13 “partner nations”, after adding four new members. These are the most important takeaways from the historic meeting.

The BRICS Cross-Border Payment Initiative (BCBPI) will use national currencies, instead of the U.S. dollar. Russia’s finance ministry and central bank released a report detailing plans to transform the international monetary and financial system.

In what it called “China Week”, the U.S. House of Representatives approved 25 anti-Chinese laws over a few days, in bipartisan votes. Cold War Two fervor is reaching fever pitch in Washington.

U.S. Big Tech corporations are like the feudal landlords of medieval Europe. These Silicon Valley monopolies own the digital land that the global economy is built on, and are charging higher and higher rents to use their privatized infrastructure.

The stock market crashed on August 5, in a new “Black Monday”. What caused it? Is the USA on the verge of a new financial crisis? Ben Norton is joined by economist Michael Hudson to discuss the extreme volatility.

China’s state-led economic development model and robust industrial policy has transformed it into what an influential European think tank calls “the world’s sole manufacturing superpower”, making up 35% of global gross production–more than the 9 next largest manufacturers combined.

The world’s richest 1% own 43% of global financial assets, and the wealth of the top five billionaires has doubled since 2020, while 60% of humanity got poorer, according to a report by Oxfam.

The U.S. military has illegally occupied Syrian sovereign territory since 2014, preventing Damascus from accessing its own oil and wheat fields. The Senate voted 13-84, rejecting a resolution to withdraw U.S. troops.

The U.S. government has paralyzed the United Nations, voting against the rest of the world and preventing peace in Gaza by vetoing three different resolutions in the Security Council. Meanwhile, Washington continues giving weapons to Israel.

Russia wanted to sign a peace deal with Ukraine in March 2022, but NATO countries sabotaged it, according to Germany’s former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the parliamentary faction leader of Zelensky’s political party, Davyd Arakhamia.

Israel is ethnically cleansing Palestinians, trying to force them out of Gaza into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The U.S. and EU support Netanyahu’s scorched-earth war on the “entire nation”, and the State Department ordered diplomats not to call for peace, de-escalation, or a ceasefire.

Poverty is rising in one of the world’s oldest colonies: In Puerto Rico, 41.7% of people, including 57.6% of children, live in poverty. This is nearly four times the U.S. rate. And Puerto Rican workers are getting poorer even while unemployment falls.

The gigantic question is, is there a way out? It gets harder everyday with the kind of blatantly divisive social atmosphere which is promoted by the powers that be.