Last week's byelections in the UK were an earthquake in British politics. For the first time since the rise of the Labour Party 100 years ago, the two-party system has been upended. Now, a new contender for power has decisively entered the race: Reform.

Since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine three years ago, a flood of lies has gushed forth from western governments and the billionaire press alike to obscure the real nature of this war.

For the last century, the USA has been the undisputed master of the capitalist world. Now, all that is changing. Today, America is in decline and facing a new contender: China.

Last week, Trump’s tariffs delivered a shattering blow to the world economy, sending stock markets around the world into precipitous collapse. This week, he U-turned and paused the tariffs, with the exception of those on China, which now stand at 125 percent. What does this chaos mean for the world economy?

Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff announcements have set the cat amongst the pigeons in the world market. In France, the hypocritical establishment is celebrating the sentencing of right-wing demagogue Marine Le Pen in court on flimsy charges. Meanwhile in the Middle East, the leader of the PKK has called on its Kurdish guerilla fighters to lay down their arms.

In Gaza, Netanyahu has restarted the genocide. Already, hundreds have been killed by bombs, while thousands more are at risk of starvation. In Ukraine, which has essentially lost the war to Russia, youths are still being kidnapped and conscripted into the army to die in trenches. This is what capitalism has to offer in the 21st century.

Trump’s dramatic return to the White House has thrown the liberals into complete panic and confusion. They have been accusing Trump of being responsible for every ill in the world, and have flung whatever insults they can at him: from semi-fascist, to fascist, to neo-fascist.

The world capitalist system is beset on all sides by crisis. Debt is sky-high, economies are stagnating and society is more polarised than ever. To add to this mess, the tapestry of world relations – the ‘rules-based order’ – is unravelling. Tit-for-tat tariffs that seek to export the crisis threaten to turn into trade wars that will tear up world trade.

This week's row in the Oval Office between Trump and Zelensky served to dramatically underscore the fact that we are passing a seismic shift in world history. The old alliances and institutions are breaking down, and a realignment, reflecting the changed balance of forces, is taking place for all to see.

This week, after claiming victory in the German election, Friedrich Merz declared that Germany would now stand up to the USA, Russia and China and make the EU into a ‘great power’.

This week, Trump went over the heads of Zelensky and the European leaders to embark on peace talks with Russia. At a stroke, the western order that has prevailed for over half a century has fractured.

Lenin once said that there are decades where weeks happen, and weeks where decades happen. We are living through the latter. A new era has begun, one characterised by capitalist crisis, imperialist war, immense turbulence in world relations and revolutionary upheavals.

Trump has been in power for just over two weeks and already he has started to upend the liberal world order. With tariffs, deportations, the halting of all foreign aid, and his plan to turn Gaza into a “Rivera of the Middle East”, ‘allies’ and rivals alike have been thrown into panic.

Storm clouds are gathering over the world economy. Already, it is faced with slowing growth, rising interest and inflation rates, and astronomical debts. Now Trump’s ‘America First’ policy and his promise of tariffs threaten to make all of that worse.

This week’s episode of Against the Stream was recorded just days after Trump was inaugurated as US president. For some, this represents the triumph of fascism, a fear that was stoked by Elon Musk’s Nazi salute at the inauguration ceremony.