IMPERIALISM IN A NEW PHASE: COERTION, HEGEMONY CRISIS AND IMPACTS TO LATIN AMERICA

Abstract

This article interprets the "Trump era" as an expression of a new phase of US imperialism within contemporary capitalism. It argues that, without breaking with the structural foundations of US imperial power - namely, the financialization of the economy centered on Wall Street; the financial centrality of the dollar; technological and military command; and the preponderance of large monopolies - Trumpism reconfigures the style of hegemony, favoring a more transactional form of domination, albeit with stronger nationalist appeals, and a more coercive one. This reconfiguration combines selective protectionism, trade and tariff war, abusive use of economic sanctions, military offensives, and the intensification of technological disputes. We argue that such a phase deepens the tendencies toward the breakdown of the global capitalist order erected after the Second World War, with more explicit patterns of coercion, in a period that converges with the crisis of US imperialist hegemony. For Latin America, this new phase tends to reinforce the region's role as a strategic rearguard, an instrument of geopolitical containment, and a source of commodity supply. This scenario heightens the risks of technological dependency, reinforces neocolonialism, and exposes external vulnerabilities more acutely. Finally, drawing on the theory of systemic cycles, we propose perspectives for thinking about the slow but continuous disaggregation of US unipolar power and the characteristics of the order on the horizon. Keywords: Imperialism; hegemony; Trumpism; geoeconomics; dependency; Latin America.