Should other countries obey America’s current dictator, Trump, or cut U.S. trade?

16 July 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

Ever since at least Obama’s 2012 Magnitsky Act sanctions against Russia on fraudulent grounds, the U.S. regime has been demanding other countries to comply with America’s illegal (i.e., not authorized by the U.N.) sanctions (against not only Russia but also many other countries that the U.S. and its allies want to absorb into their empire) or else be punished by the U.S. regime for not doing so. It’s just a historical fact (documented at those links) that this is the case, but under America’s current dictator, Trump, it is becoming greatly intensified, by means of his tariffs and other devices, so as to impose America’s “rules-based international order” effectively nullifying and replacing the prior (tenuous) international-laws based order — America’s “rules” replacing international laws.

Obedience to the U.S. regime’s demands would thus effectively nullify the U.N. (the source of international laws) and replace it by the U.S. ‘rules’. What countries (other than current member-nations in the U.S. empire) will want to do that (comply with the U.S. regime’s demands)?

Any that do are participating in this bullying empire even if not (yet) being a member of it. Here is a typical example of what this participation is participating in (complicit with):

On July 13th, imemc.org headlined “Israeli Forces Intensify West Bank Violations, Abductions”, and opened:

Israeli occupying forces escalated their military invasion across the occupied West Bank on Sunday, abducting civilians, including minors and a journalist, while storming homes, damaging property, and sowing fear among residents.

In the early hours of Sunday, Israeli forces invaded the village of al-Mazra’a al-Gharbiya, northwest of Ramallah, in the central West Bank, abducting two 18-year-olds, Mohammad Abdullah Abu Leila and Mohammad Abdul-Mo’ti Ladadwa, after violently breaking into and ransacking their homes.

Later, the town of Turmus Ayya, northeast of Ramallah, was invaded by military vehicles patrolling its streets. No abductions or confrontations were reported, though residents in surrounding villages, al-Mughayyir, Abu Falah, Sinjil, Kafr Malik, al-Taybeh, Deir Jarir, al-Mazra’a al-Sharqiya, Deir Dibwan, and Burqa, continue to endure daily assaults by illegal Israeli paramilitary colonizers and occupying forces.

These invasions involve attacks on civilians, destruction of property, arson targeting farmland, and road closures.

|Saturday Israeli Violations Across Occupied West Bank|

Also, the soldiers invaded the towns of Sinjil and Ein Qinya, establishing a military presence in residential zones. No abductions were reported at the time.

In occupied Jerusalem, Israeli intelligence agents abducted Arafat Najeeb, a guard at Al-Aqsa Mosque, following an invasion of his home, during which they vandalized belongings and handed down a six-month expulsion order from the mosque days earlier. …

Here are the international laws that these actions by the Israeli regime are violating.

The U.S. regime supplies 69% of Israel’s weapons, and its German stooge regime supplies 30%; so, these are U.S. empire international crimes, and are not ONLY crimes by the Israeli regime itself.

This is typical for the U.S. empire. Virtually every product or service that comes from America in international commerce is the further enrichment of U.S. billionaires who own and control those companies and those brands; and this is a major reason why billionaires are flocking to the U.S. — to join in the spoils.

On June 24th, Forbes headlined “Millionaires Are On The Move — Here Are The Countries Winning And Losing Wealthy Residents”, and reported that

• A record 142,000 HNWIs (high-net-worth individuals) — defined as having liquid investable wealth of $1 million or more — will acquire residency or citizenship status in another country this year, according to the Henley Private Wealth Migration Report 2025, with projections climbing to 165,000 in 2026.

• “To have one million dollars in liquid assets, basically money in the bank, generally you’d have to be worth close to $10 million,” Nuri Katz, founder of Apex Capital Partners, a firm that provides investment immigration guidance to high-net-worth clients, told Forbes. …

The biggest influx of billionaires was into UAE because it doesn’t tax them. U.S. was #2, because it gives the super-rich loads of tax-loopholes so they pay at rates far below that of the public, and because they get their businsesses backed-up in international commerce by the long military and diplomatic arm of the U.S. Government to enforce their international-rules based international order, against American billionaires’ non-U.S. competitors.

Oddly, the UK was there reported to have suffered a huge exodus of millionaires after Brexit, but a subsequent analysis by the Tax Justice Network and based on a further analysis of the same data, found that “nearly 100% of millionaires have not relocated to a new country since 2013, if Henley’s estimates are to be taken at face value.” Perhaps if the Henley data had included only billionaires instead of mere millionaires, the post-Brexit exodus from Britain would have been clear.

In any case, the Forbes article reported that,

WHERE DOES THE UNITED STATES RANK IN HENLEY & PARTNERS’ LIST?

The U.S., No. 2 in Henley’s ranking, is expected to welcome 7,500 new high-net-worth arrivals in 2025, mainly through the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program, which has “channeled over $50 billion in foreign direct investment while creating hundreds of thousands of American jobs,” according to Henley & Partners. President Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have touted the work-in-progress $5 million Trump Gold Card visa program as a replacement for the EB-5 program.

BIG NUMBER

Nearly 70,000. That’s how many people Lutnick claims registered for the $5 million Trump Gold Card visa on its website in the days immediately following the website’s June 11 launch. Lutnick has said the Trump Gold Card could attract as many as 200,000 investors-turned-green cardholders, while Trump has suggested the U.S. could "sell maybe a million of these cards, maybe more than that," noting 10 million cards could bring in $50 trillion of revenue and eliminate the $36 trillion national debt. If Lutnick’s claim is accurate, “the vast majority” are likely simply signing up to get more information “and not actual UHNWIs (ultra-high-net-worth individuals) that are waiting to apply,” a Henley & Partners spokesperson said, adding that if the Trump Gold Card provided wealthy individuals with more favorable tax treatment on worldwide income, “we could see a couple thousand gold cards issued every year, but still a lot of unknowns at this stage.” Katz told Forbes that Lutnick’s “math does not add up,” since “I have rarely seen anybody spend more than 10% of their net worth on an immigration program, and generally it's more like 5%. …

In other words: Trump’s plan is to entice so many billionaires to move their wealth to America as to “bring in $50 trillion of revenue and eliminate the $36 trillion national debt.” That plan is consistent with his “Big Beautiful Bill,” which his Congress (virtually all Republicans) voted for and passed and he signed, that increased spending on the Defense Department and on the Homeland Security Department (which latter Department handles border-enforcement and collects tariffs at the border), and slashes spending on Medicaid, Medicare, Education, Health and Human Services, and even on Social Security (by cutting its workforce). So, he is expecting to pay for his huge spending-increases on ‘Defense’ and on ‘Homeland Security’ by his tariffs, which will be paid by America’s consumers whenever they purchase foreign-made goods, and by his huge tax-cuts for billionaires, and ALSO by his “gold card” program bringing in yet more billionaires. Those consumers (all Americans) will also be receiving from ‘their’ (billionaires’) Government reduced services for Medicaid, Medicare, Education, Health and Human Services, and even Social Security. The billionaires benefit, everybody else (including the America people) suffers, from the American system, permanent war, which Trump is bringing to a climax, to increase the aggregate wealth of billionaires in America and decrease the aggregate wealth of all other Americans, and especially of the bottom 50% of Americans.

On July14th,

Attorney General Jeff Jackson and 24 other states sued to prevent the federal government from cutting funds for North Carolina’s schools and educators. Without the $6.8 billion in nationwide federal funds – which Congress has already approved – North Carolina’s schools will lose more than $165 million in public education funding and nearly 1,000 educators across the state will lose their jobs.

Jackson said:

jeffjacksonnc

A post shared by @jeffjacksonnc

We are in a very big fight with the Department of Education. Here’s why: Two weeks ago, North Carolina got an email from the federal Department of Education telling us that a bunch of the education funding that was supposed to arrive the next day would not be arriving. This email went to all 50 states. The total amount will be about $7 billion. To North Carolina it’s about $170 million that’s now frozen. This will mean cuts in after-school programs, STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math] education, adult literacy classes, mental health services for students, and will trigger higher class sizes in grades K-3. It could also mean laying off 1,000 educators in North Carolina, and having that happen just weeks before over a million kids go back to school in our state. This is when school districts are supposed to be staffing up, but instead this Department waited until the last possible moment to pull the rug out. We got the email the night before the money was due. It was three sentences and it said basically, ‘Yeah, that money is frozen. We’ll get back to you.’ So, why am I talking about this as Attorney General? Because it’s totally illegal. Completely, obviously, you-can’t-do-this, illegal. So I’m going to take them to court along with some other AGs to win. We should win. This is no close call. Congress created these programs. Then they approved the funds. Then we hired educators to do the work. Now, if Congress wants to eliminate those programs, they can do that and we can debate whether that’s a good idea. But once those funds have been approved, the Department that’s supposed to give them to the state can’t just go ‘Nah, we’re not going to do that.’ That’s why this is such a straightforward case that I think we should win — and I suspect the Department agrees. I think they know they’re going to lose in court, and I think they’re fine with that. I think they’re looking to score some points with a small group of people who want to see them taking action and being tough and then they get to blame the court when they get blocked.

The way such cases have been treated by the U.S. Supreme Court till now is that it says that the lower court’s ruling will subsequently be considered by the Supreme Court but that the Administration’s policy will remain in force unless and until the U.S. Supreme Court will rule it to have been illegal. By that time, virtually all of the damage will already have been done anyway. This therefore is merely a way for an 8 to 1 fascist Supreme Court to enable the damage to be done but subsequently maybe rule that it ought not to have been done. That’s how they have handled these things till now. In other words: even domestic U.S. laws are no longer being enforced when the billionaires want them not to be enforced.

Of course, slashing STEM education etc. in America’s K-12 education will mean that America’s workforce will become even lower quality (less educated, more sick, etc.); and, so, any additional billionaires’ investments in America will be even less competitive internationally than has been the case till now. But this is what especially America’s Republican Party billionaires want. They have been the ones whose campaign donations placed Republican Party nominees into federal offices.

Any country that cooperates with this Government is cooperating with its growing militarily (and sanctions) imposed global police-state or “rules-based international order.” This “rules-based international order” is bipartisan: both the Republicans and the Democrats in Congress back it by more than 90% in their votes in Congress on the various bills that are parts of it. This is (currently) a two-Party, one aristocracy, dictatorship by America’s billionaires, fronted by people such as Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Charles Schumer, Mitch McConnell, etc. Whereas Palestinians are being eliminated by it, the vast majority even of Americans, are also suffering from it. Only America’s billionaires are not. Intrinsic to this increase in ‘Defense’ spending (at the expense of everything else) is that ever since the Soviet Union ended in 1991, America’s armaments manufacturers — the megacorporations that sell to the U.S. Government and to its allied Governments, not to consumers — have been by far the most profitable of all U.S. corporations, and the billionaires who control them demand (and the politicians that they control also demand) that they continue to be; so, armaments have become the actual basis of the U.S. economy, from the standpoint of America’s billionaires (who fund most of American politics). For this reason — to give one example — according to Politico on July 14th, President Trump is restoring U.S. armaments-supplies to Ukraine though he thinks “Russia is going to win, it’s a matter of how long it takes,” and the reason he’s restoring those sales is that “America First” means dragging this war out for as long as possible, not letting Russia win it quickly (which would mean less profits for America’s armaments-firms). The White House source explained this policy to Politico by saying “The president just wants to stop the killing” (though this decision by him will actually do the exact opposite).

Trump is obviously trying to force all Governments that aren’t yet part of the U.S. empire, to become additional U.S. colonies. American Presidents and Congresses have been, for decades, involved in these efforts, and the results for the people who live in these countries have been catastrophic. For examples, six of the ten countries whose capital cities were ranked as being the world’s most unlivable out of the 173 nations that were rated, had been recent victims of these U.S. efforts: Caracas Venezuela #164, Kyiv Ukraine #165, Karachi Pakistan #170, Dhaka Bangladesh #171, Tripoli Libya #172, and Damascus Syria #173. For examples: Kyiv was the victim of Obama’s starting the war in Ukraine on 20 February 2014. Karachi was the victim of Biden’s 7 March 2022 overthrow of Pakistan’s progressive President Imran Khan. Dakha was the victim of Biden’s 9 August 2024 coup in Bangladesh. All of these were hidden from the public at the time (and still are). And all of the six coups (the one in Syria dragged out for 11 years before succeeding; so, it did the most damage) destroyed those countries. This is what awaits fence-sitters who are hoping to swing a deal with the U.S. empire. (All of them are treated with contempt. And the U.S. empire never ceases its voraciousness; it will try again and again until it finally succeeds and destroys the victim.)

The only way to defeat the U.S. empire (and it cannot be defeated by a nuclear war, which ‘both sides’ and the entire world would lose) is to cut U.S. trade. The U.S. empire depends upon foreign trade. It’s the empire’s Achilles heel. It is the likeliest way that the empire — and all of the billionaires who are a part of it — will finally be defeated and brought down. This is especially so because the U.S. itself exports more than any other nation, and virtually all of its billionaires and political megadonors are highly dependent upon foreign trade. The non-empire nations can organize themselves together to block trade with it, and this would end the empire. The entire non-empire world therefore ought to call Trump’s bluff and test to find whether it is more than a bluff. Because if it isn’t, then the Emperor Has No Clothes and this will force the empire to collapse; and, if it is more than a bluff, then the empire’s economy, in all of its nations, will collapse due to its existing high dependency upon the non-member nations’ (such as China’s) economies. This is, therefore, in either case, finally the time to either “fish or cut bait.” Either plead to join the U.S. empire (as Vietnam recently did), or else cut all trade with the U.S. and its products. Different countries’ Governments will make different decisions on this, but this is the choice, and it must be made, in either case: for, or against, the U.S. empire. The time for a decision has finally come.

Like U.S. President George W. Bush had said on 16 February 2002, thirteen months before bombing and destroying Iraq (entirely on the basis of lies), “Either you’re with us, or you’re against us.” Even more than back then, the U.S. regime punishes any nation that is NOT “with us.” If it hasn’t yet become intolerable, when will it be beyond being tolerated? To cut all trade with the U.S. would be the most peaceful way to say “No” to the world’s international bully. What realistic alternative is there?

Trump said “I run the country and the world.” Biden had said “I am running the world.” Does your country’s Government actually have any sovereignty? Whom does it really represent? Are you satisfied with that?

The time for a decision has finally come.

(Please do all that you can to make this article go viral, because it is written to inform the people in every country.)

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.