Question

1. Is the United States and imperialist power?  Has the United States grown rich by exploiting other people? Do American companies engage in fair trade?  Has and does the United States use military and political power to force others to exchange products at unfair prices?  
2. Is imperialism central to the success of American capitalism?

Answer 1

a. Usually, when ruling multiple populations of various languages and cultures, a state is considered colonial and seeks to do so with at least an attempt to maintain harmony throughout the different parts of the land. It creates a network of local trade between the imperial nation and the territories. Usually that's pretty one-sided, inviting competitors to create their own empires, a war recipe that doesn't encourage trade between any of the competing nations or their territories. Things are getting pretty brutal, but for most of the world that was how it worked. The element is the imperialism of the economy. This is a major U.S. criticism, although we don't deserve it, quite frankly. Technological progress brings with it a revolutionary new world system whereby companies are able to operate anywhere in the world, these independent entities designed to ensure their own survival. Wherever it goes, it creates wealth, but not fairly. This means that assets can be dug up in one region, where the multinational corporation functions as a regional oligarch in practice, refined in another where it is basically the same oligarchical framework. Clearly on a fundamental level, the United States is not an imperialist power by this description. Some might argue that the military action of the U.S. throughout the world now and back through the 20th century could be interpreted as imperialist, but I wouldn't call the U.S. an imperialist power in the strictest sense of the term.

Just as cotton, and with it slavery, became a key element in the U.S. economy, it also moved to the center of the world economy and its most important transformations: the development of a globally integrated society, the Industrial Revolution, the rapid spread of capitalist social relations in many parts of the world, and the Great Divergence the moment when some parts of the world suddenly became interconnected.

In a much larger story, the United States was just one nexus that connected craftsmen in India, European manufacturers, and African slaves and land-grabbing settlers in the Americas. It was those links that created an empire of cotton and with it modern capitalism, often over vast distances. A new type of capitalism emerged in the United States and elsewhere after the Civil War. But that new capitalism— first and foremost marked by states with unparalleled administrative, infrastructural, and military capabilities, and wage labor has been created by the income, structures, networks, technology, and inventions that arose from slavery, imperialism, and land expropriation.

Military spending is one area where the public purse can not be replaced by a private solution. No single corporation or group of citizens is sufficiently motivated (or reliable) to assume financial responsibility for the cost of having a military. One of the founders of free-market economics, Adam Smith described society's protection as one of government's primary roles and justification for fair taxation. Its essence, the government acts on behalf of the public to ensure that the military is well-resourced enough to defend the nation. However, in fact, protecting the country stretches to protect the strategic interests of a nation, and the whole idea of "enough" is being discussed as other nations are also bulking up their military.

b. The late 19th century is known as the "Age of Imperialism," a period when the U.S. and other major world powers were increasing their colonial territories rapidly.
American imperialism is partly based on American exceptionalism, the belief that the U.S. is different from other countries because of its specific mission to promote liberty and democracy in the world.
One of American imperialism's most prominent instances was the annexation of Hawaii in 1898, which allowed the United States to take possession and control of all islands, buildings, harbors, military equipment, and public property that had belonged to the Hawaiian Islands Government. Several organizations, like the American Anti-Imperialist League, opposed imperialism on the grounds that it was in contrast with the Republicans ' Democratic ethos and the "governed consent."