Yanis Varoufakis offers a provocative analysis of today’s economic turmoil, reframing trade wars as class wars playing out on a global scale. He explains how the U.S. has uniquely sustained hegemony by exporting its currency rather than goods, enriching global elites while hollowing out its own industrial base. China, for its part, maintains global competitiveness through suppressed domestic demand, creating internal class conflict.
Varoufakis highlights a shift since 2008: the rise of “cloud capital”—platform monopolies like Amazon and Alibaba that extract value algorithmically, not through labor markets. This, he says, is the real battleground of U.S.-China rivalry. China’s tighter integration of tech and state power challenges U.S. dominance, while America remains divided between Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
Looking ahead, Varoufakis warns of two divergent futures: a technofascist West led by unelected tech-finance elites, or a new model in which China’s state-guided digital infrastructure enables more democratic, cooperative economies. Though both parties in Washington want confrontation with Beijing, Varoufakis argues Trump may prefer deals and tariffs over war, while Biden’s containment strategy poses a greater military risk.
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