According to President Donald Trump, America, the world’s wealthiest country, has long been financially abused by virtually all other nations.
While announcing his protective tariffs on “Liberation Day,” the President asserted:
“For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike.”
History, however, reveals a very different narrative — that the United States has often overthrown democratic governments for financial gain.
1953: Iran
The United States and the CIA carried out a coup in Iran in 1953 that overthrew popular Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh to protect British and U.S. oil interests. With approval of the Iranian parliament, Mosaddegh had nationalized the Iranian oil industry. Iranian oil had been controlled by the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later BP).
After the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was reinstated as authoritarian ruler, he signed over significant portions of Iran’s oil fields to U.S. companies.
The coup ended Iran’s first experiment with democracy and resulted in over two decades of dictatorship under the Shah. His regime was notorious for human rights abuses conducted by the secret police (SAVAK), which was trained by the CIA.
Mohammad Mosaddegh: “Yes, my sin…is that I nationalized Iran’s oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world’s greatest empire.”
1954: Guatemala
The United States conducted a coup in Guatemala in 1954 to overthrow democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz. Árbenz had implemented land reforms that threatened the United Fruit Company (UFC), a powerful U.S.-based corporation to which U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA Director Allen Dulles had financial ties.
Árbenz resigned on June 27, 1954, ending Guatemala’s decade-long democratic revolution. Castillo Armas assumed power and quickly reversed Árbenz’s reforms, outlawing unions, and returning land to UFC.
The coup marked the beginning of decades of authoritarian rule, political repression, and civil war in Guatemala, with thousands of Árbenz supporters arrested, executed, or tortured.
Jacobo Árbenz: “Our crime is having enacted an agrarian reform which affected the interests of the United Fruit Company….Our crime is our patriotic wish…to win economic independence to match our political independence. We are condemned because we have given our peasant population land and rights.”
1960: Congo
Patrice Lumumba was the first democratically elected prime minister of independent Congo. The United States helped to overthrow Lumumba because it feared that Lumumba’s government would align with the Soviet Union and give the USSR access to Congo’s vast mineral wealth.
The Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK), a major Belgian mining company, was particularly concerned about losing control over Congo’s mineral resources. These corporate interests were supported by the Belgian government and groups within the U.S. and Great Britain.
The CIA, under President Eisenhower’s direction, launched covert operations to destabilize Lumumba’s government, including plans to assassinate him. Lumumba was eventually captured and killed by Congolese rivals with Western support in January 1961.
Belgian police dismembered Lumumba’s corpse and dissolved it in sulfuric acid to prevent the creation of a burial site that could become a shrine of symbolic resistance.
Patrice Lumumba: “The colonialists care nothing for Africa for her own sake. They are attracted by African riches and their actions are guided by the desire to preserve their interests in Africa against the wishes of the African people.”
1973: Chile
The United States helped to overthrow the democratically elected government of Chile in 1973. Socialist President Salvador Allende, elected in 1970, pledged to nationalize the copper industry, which was dominated by U.S. corporations such as Anaconda and Kennecott Copper.
President Richard Nixon had instructed the CIA to prevent Allende from coming to power. Nixon ordered the CIA to “make the economy scream.” Edward Korry, the U.S. ambassador to Chile, wrote, “Once Allende comes to power, we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty.”
The culmination of these efforts was a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet quickly reversed Allende’s reforms and allowed U.S. corporations to regain control of key industries. The coup ushered in a brutal dictatorship characterized by widespread human rights abuses, including the imprisonment, torture, and the disappearance of thousands of Chileans.
Salvador Allende: “This financial stranglehold of a brutal nature…has resulted in a severe limitation of our possibilities to purchase equipment, spare parts, supplies, food and medicine. Every Chilean is suffering the consequences of those measures, which bring suffering and grief into the daily life of all.”
An important lesson that can be drawn from these U.S. violations of national sovereignty is that, as countries develop, they often experience periods of great fragility. If during the American Civil War, a world power had weighed in on the side of the Confederacy in order to preserve the highly selective economic benefits of slavery, the United States of America might not exist today.
Although Donald Trump is playing the victim card regarding international trade, his words and actions, much like these historical events, reek of empire. In his inaugural address, Trump declared:
“The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation — one that increases our wealth, expands our territory…and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.”
Trump plans a 6,000 soldier military parade on his birthday.
In fact, Trump refuses to rule out using the military to control Greenland. He wants to make Canada the 51st state, not Washington, D.C. or Puerto Rico. And he views the destruction of Gaza as a real estate opportunity that requires the exodus of Palestinians.
Of course, an empire needs an emperor, and Trump relishes this role. In posts on X, the White House has portrayed him as both king and pope, and cabinet meetings require participants to lavish him with praise. Many see Trump as “the chosen one.”
Ardent MAGA supporters could benefit from the lesson assigned to Bart Simpson, at the beginning of an episode of The Simpsons during Season 3. Young Bart stood at a chalkboard, repeatedly writing, “I will not carve gods, I will not carve gods…”