This work proposes an alternative interpretation of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency of the United States, through a rereading of Karl Kautsky’s concept of ultra-imperialism. For this, the work is supported by the Marxist literature on imperialism, on Antonio Gramsci’s and Robert Cox s theoretical contributions, and on the concept of Transnational Capitalist Class. It undertakes a historical analysis of the development of the US empire in its domestic dimension – the emergence of a hegemonic bloc around the New Deal – and external, the expansion of the hegemonic model to the world order. It is observed, through a historical and ideational analysis, the role of conservatism and neoliberalism, inside the US, in the formation of the new bloc that achieves world supremacy from the 1980s onwards. This bloc has a globalist orientation, that is, its objective is to integrate all national economies to global capitalism. It is argued that the bloc is led by transnational capitalist classes that employ state power to advance this integration, while the articulation between conservatism and neoliberalism legitimates the process. In this context, the US empire assumes the role of leading state in a cartel of advanced capitalist countries – the ultra-empire – promoting uneven integration and the persistence of relations of dependency. The contradictions of this arrangement, added to the contradictions of the globalist bloc, contributed to the rise of Donald Trump, who was able to articulate, in the elections, a challenge to the globalist agenda. In the conclusion, it is argued that the permanence of these contradictions will result in new phenomena like Trump, in the future.