Brilliant analysis! The US simply cannot accept it has only 4% of the world's population, that endless wars and empire building are not an industrial strategy. It is so deeply racist it cannot accept its minority position in the world order.
It was warned by George Kennan after WW ll it was only a matter of time before Asia would emerge as the major world power.
Marco Rubio is nuts when he claims the world exploited the US when it was just the opposite as the US spent the last half of the 20th trying to bully its way to "Full Spectrum Dominance" globally.
It is so utterly ironic to see the aggressor of the 20th Century claiming victim hood in the 21st.
Thirty years ago US historian Chalmers Johnson warned that the US empire was collapsing for many of the reasons as the USSR.
A whole world order is emerging and the present US leadership doesn't have the IQ or the integrity to start making the decisions that have to be made. They are so deeply revanchist it is pitiful.
exactly right about Chalmers Johnson. Johan Galtung predicted the same. So did Emmanuel Todd. Interestingly all these guys predicted the fall of the USSR. The trajectory is almost identical. Galtung even gave a date - 2025 as the timeframe of the collapse of the empire. One thing he said that stayed with me was "the US empire has to die for the American republic to live". The US has stopped being a republic since 1963 when the deep state (CIA+Mossad) took out JFK. The empire had a run for 60 years and it's time for that to end. The only question is whether the republic will survive.
Your blogs are incredibly informative and the analysis outstanding. Two more writers I have to look into! The more I have looked at the sixties the more it becomes the decade of assassinations. Kennedy and King were the most prominent among many. To read their speeches they became prime targets for the war lords. Our failures are in large part the disconnection to our own history and what it tells us. When John Ralston Saul wrote his book The Unconscious Civilization it is the one of the most telling books of our time.
Saul is a very insightful philosopher. I am really glad you like his work. My favorite is Voltaire's Bastard. His critique of faux science/rationality at the expense of morality and humanism is timeless. As for how the deep state took over the west, especially the US, I would recommend Peter Scott Dale, another Canadian historian and erudite thinker. His documentation of the dark side of the national security state, involving drug trafficking, false flag operations, etc., is the foundation work that informs us the nature of the national security state in the west. The targeted killiings of the Kennedys (plural) and MLK were seminal events of US history. The country went off the rail when the perps got away with the crimes.
An often neglected writer is Harold Innis, well worth reading. To give you some idea of his influence, Innis' work formed the foundation for communications theory which Marshal McLuhan built upon.
"Your blogs are incredibly informative and the analysis outstanding."
Agreed. I wander the net in search of intelligent dialogue which can be very frustrating as many of the writers you find are deeply entrenched in a particular viewpoint which accepts no challenges (been kicked off a few sites already simply for challenging the prevailing narrative).
The challenge for us is to see the world as it is. I know I am partisan but most of what I write is based on history. I also have been kicked off a couple of sties which might be a complement? There are a lot of readers who want no more than infotainment. I was on Medium.com for a while and Substack is far superior.
A point I don't often see raised is what to me seems the most likely reason for the USA's rise as an international power. Granted the enterprising spirit of new arrivals played a major role, but the Chinese are no less enterprising - look at the number of Chinese family businesses for example, and the total absence of Chinese homelessness. Chinese take care of their families. The same can be said of India, especially the Sikhs, where their religion is as much an economic system as a spiritual pursuit.
So what accounts for the difference? Europe and Asia had long since exhausted its domestic economies through over-exploitation of resources and constant warfare over same. Two world wars were the inevitable result, not just of British Imperialism but of economic exhaustion and fierce competition for dwindling resources.
America, by contrast was a completely new land, massive in size, rich in agricultural land, mineral resources and fresh water. A wide open field. You only had to move (or kill) a couple of million native people who were still living in the stone age. Add to this the advantage of two great oceans which made it virtually impossible to invade, and you had the recipe for a century or more of economic strength. Canada shared the same advantage to a lesser degree, and the outcome was thus similar.
Anticipating a challenge by comparing N to S America, I would point out that the colonial administration of most of Latin America followed the Spanish (and Portuguese) hacienda system - basically feudalism with enslaved Indians at the bottom, mixed races in the middle, and a white minority with titles of nobility, earned or simply assumed. The USA, by contrast pursued a more progressive policy premised on individual enterprise supported by grants of free land for whoever was willing to farm it. Slavery was practised as well of course, but it was never a major factor in the westward expansion that characterized the growth of the nation. That was a wild free for all compared to the rigid system of elite property ownership inherited from the Spanish.
Makes a lot of sense. Natural endowment played the biggest role in US development, even today - just look at the low US dependency for natural resources on other countries compared with all other countries except Russia. It is like a Saudi Arabia without the deserts, climate, and other liabilities. The governance system built by the founding fathers is vastly superior to the South American feudal system indeed - frankly even today South America seems frozen in the class structure of 17th century Spain. Unfortunately the security of resources and geography has made the US an imperial actor who feels free to roam and cause havocs offshore as no consequences or blow-backs have ever been felt at home. I think this is the fundamental reason why even the average Americans are militaristic and don't care what their government does outside the country, they never have had to suffer the consequence.
Until America rejects it Manifest Destiny legacy, there is nothing that can be done. This mindset won't allow it to treat the world equally and fairly. It'll prevent America from growing it's alliance to match China's numbers and BRICs+. The numbers just don't work.
The Americas should have been something like the EU by now. The racist mindset in America won't allow this. Once the racist mindset is purge, America needs massive human capital and infrastructure investments. Without these foundation, everything America is doing is just a pipe dream.
At the moment America is built to exploit the world. It's a 19 century creation. It's a dinosaur. In the nuclear age this will not work.
Present USA is a 20th century creation, not 19th. All its economic and industrial policy is from the prior century, from the time of Woodrow Wilson who was installed by the British according to the plans of Cecil Rhodes (Rhodes' Round Table group) to bring the Americans into their WWI and reshape its financial and monetary policy completely. Even war policy has almost nothing in common with two centuries ago except colonialism.
EU was formed by non-state globalist power groups two years after the 1955 Bilderberger meeting called for its creation. Józef Retinger was seminal in creating both the Bilderberger group and the EU. It stands for deindustrialisation and finance capitalism because it was architected by the same people who shaped the current day USA.
If you think USA needs infrastructure, skilled workers, or even just a less racist mindset, then the last thing it needs is anything like the EU or the people who formed it and continue to run it. Where China tries to control its non-state power elite with a heavy hand, seeing what billionaires can do to subvert a state's interests in countless foreign examples, USA was completely overthrown by it long ago; EU was made by them, for them.
Sickness (healthcare) is ~18% of gdp in the US. (By comparison, more than double that of China.)
Yet we have worse outcomes than most of the rest of the developed world.
Real estate is another ~18% (14% of that is buying, selling & leasing "services" vs actual construction)
20% of Americans have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives.
(For a moment I thought I was among the fortunate 80%. Then I remembered that when I was 14 my parents started going away for weekends & leaving me locked out in the street. So I had homelessness on a half dozen or so nights, but was not without shelter as I climbed in my bedroom window, lol.)
The idea that the dysfunctional underclass are lacking manufacturing jobs may have been true in the 80’s, 90’s or 00’s may have been true but not anymore. Between recreational drugs, anti-depressant inhibitors and disability, they are completely ruined and not mentally or physically fit for any sort of job anymore. Black OR White, or any one of the other minorities. They are not human anymore, just masses of bio-mass marinated in Jew sauce.
Since you mention Blacks, a look back at Detroit in the 1960s shows a prospering Black community with two parent households living in homes they could actually afford. This was completely undermined by offshoring US auto production and allowing foreign cars to enter the market. There are other causes of Black community disfunction of course, but that was right up there, as Blacks were finally beginning to get some economic traction as full participants in the economy, rather than as mere unskilled labour.
Triffin sounds like a character from Lord of the Rings, right? The basic concept is that if your currency is used as an international reserve, you will by definition run a trade deficit with the rest of the world.
The concept of reserve currency is a bit misleading however, because the $US is not just a stash you keep on hand to defend your currency, but is used for private transactions between foreign parties. As such, there needs to be a large amount of $US in foreign circulation for that to happen. Obviously the way to obtain the dollars you need for international trade is by selling more than you buy from the USA, with the balance serving as a trade currency AND a reserve.
As an example of how far this can go, Ecuador had an economic crisis in 1999 that led to abandonment of their own currency and its replacement with the US dollar. This had the effect that Ecuador could no longer expand its money supply by simply printing it. Any expansion had to be a result of increased productivity. (Jury's still out on whether it worked or not)
Speaking of the printing press, the US enjoys an "exorbitant privilege" in the sense it is the only nation that can issue currency in excess of production without negatively affecting its exchange rate. This is supported by the fact that whenever global economic conditions deteriorate, the "safety trade" is to buy US treasuries as a hedge against one's own currency. You see this effect in the US dollar index:
Given the ability to print without (immediate) consequences, it was only a matter of time before the advantage was abused in the form of excess credit expansion leading to financial bubbles both domestic and foreign and the rise of gold as an internationally recognized form of money which can't be printed at will.
However, the US effectively reneged on its promise to respect the foreign holdings of US treasuries (and other assets) when it confiscated Russian reserves. That did not go unnoticed and is likely the reason that China (second largest holder of US treasuries after Japan) has been a net seller.
What's interesting is that after the Federal Reserve, Japan, China and the UK, the largest holding of US treasuries is in Cayman Island banks, and who knows who owns those, although China no doubt figures large there as well.
China is quietly (as possible) exiting US treasuries now, but if they really wanted to sow chaos they could simply start selling en masse which would affect their own holdings as well, because there would be no way to exit completely without crashing that market. They could do it though as retaliation if actually presented with a credible threat. That's the kind of fire Trump is playing with right now, but I doubt he even understands the problem.
The real problem of course is not Trump per se, but a political system that allows someone like Trump to gain (almost) absolute power via rule by decree. Of course in exercising such power he only hastens the demise of the US dollar as witness the BRICS members moving to a currency swap system, such as between China and Russia, and/or pricing their goods in each other's currency. Even long term "ally" Saudi Arabia is pricing in other currencies now, thus undermining the petro-dollar recycling scheme.
We do indeed live in interesting times, much of which is hard to predict, but the fate of the US dollar is pretty much carved in stone at this point. I believe the international banking cabal recognizes this and is casting about for alternatives as we speak. That's possibly why Trump was elected - to act as the unwitting wrecking ball of US trade relations under the guise of making America great again (as if it ever was, except by accident or virtue of geography).
Michael Hudson laid out the case of US dollar hegemony in his Super Imperialism in the 1970s (by the way, Hudson is by far the greatest living economist in the US today - naturally completely sidelined by the mainstream). The US dollar playbook is well known except to the ignorant in his cabinet (multiple billionaires no less).
I think China is fully aware the risks inherent in holding US dollar assets. It is gradually extracting itself from the decades old arrangement. I am not sure whether China will escape without scath as Trump doesn't behave rationally. Not I have no doubt dollar is going the way of denarius.
Here is a young chap from China who thinks he has a solution. I think it might be the only solution that works - and Prof John Mearsheimer also agrees with him
"the trade imbalance between China and the US is indeed substantial and unsustainable in the long term."
It is no less sustainable than your personal trade imbalance between you and your grocery store, or you and your barber. One might argue that the trade imbalance between the US and Rest of World is unsustainable in the long term, but there's nothing unsustainable about the trade imbalance between the US and China alone.
"Although NAFTA (1994) and China’s entry into WTO (2001) are regularly invoked as key events driving deindustrialization, the US manufacturing employment and GDP contribution has been on a smooth downward trend since 1945."
Coincidentally, other major manufacturing countries were busy destroying each other until 1945, while the US enjoyed peace at home (i.e. lack of destruction of its manufacturing capacities on its soil. Not that it wasn't at war, of course, but it didn't get bombed.). Once other countries stopped destroying each other, they started quickly catching up with the US in terms of manufacturing.
"By 1971, less than 25% of US employment was in manufacturing."
There were so many things in the US that started going wrong with he US economy after the early 1970s. That's when the US abandoned the gold standard. Wealth inequality in the US has been on the rise since then, for example. Permanent budget deficits since the early 2000s only made things worse.
"It is no less sustainable than your personal trade imbalance between you and your grocery store, or you and your barber."
I earn money to pay the grocery store so there is no outstanding debt. How do you suppose the USA can pay its way if its not earning enough? Printing paper dollars?
By exporting more than it imports to Rest of World excluding China obviously. The idea that trade between each pair of countries must be balanced is ridiculous. There is nothing wrong with having a trade deficit with one country if it is balanced by trade surplus with all other countries. That's perfectly sustainable, just as you having a trade surplus with your employer while having a trade deficit with your grocery store is perfectly sustainable.
And, in unique US's case, yes, it can indeed run permanent trade deficits with Rest of World by 'printing' dollars (creating them of the computer). That is not sustainable in the long run if the US overdoes it, but that's exactly what the US has been doing from the early 2000s and it was able to get away with it for now.
The 2000's was just the US stepping on the gas pedal. The "exorbitant privilege" goes back to even before 1971 when the US finally reneged on its promise to pay in gold, which was already in doubt going back to the 1930's, thus the confiscation of domestic gold and its subsequent repricing.
You misquote me. I did not make such a ridiculous claim. The USA does not have such a balance between trading countries, it has a massive overall deficit.
Well, that's why I said "One might argue that the trade imbalance between the US and Rest of World is unsustainable in the long term, but there's nothing unsustainable about the trade imbalance between the US and China alone."
It's true that service export is in surplus but, I saw some figures the other day, it's only about 10% of the merchandising deficit. So yes, I guess the answer is for China to import F35s and some of your other imaginative suggestions..
Yes. China should buy as many F35s as the USA is willing to sell. They could disassemble them and improve their engine tech and perhaps gain some stealth insights, and use the rest of the flying pianos for dogfighting/target practice.
"“The very first flight exposed weaknesses of the Zero which our pilots could exploit with proper tactics … immediately apparent was the fact that the ailerons froze up at speeds above 200 knots so that rolling maneuvers at those speeds were slow and required much force on the control stick. It rolled to the left much easier than to the right. Also, its engine cut out under negative acceleration due to its float-type carburetor. We now had the answer for our pilots who were being outmaneuvered and unable to escape a pursuing Zero. Go into a vertical power dive, using negative acceleration if possible to open the range while the Zero’s engine was stopped by the acceleration. At about 200 knots, roll hard right before the Zero pilot could get his sights lined up.”
Brilliant analysis! The US simply cannot accept it has only 4% of the world's population, that endless wars and empire building are not an industrial strategy. It is so deeply racist it cannot accept its minority position in the world order.
It was warned by George Kennan after WW ll it was only a matter of time before Asia would emerge as the major world power.
Marco Rubio is nuts when he claims the world exploited the US when it was just the opposite as the US spent the last half of the 20th trying to bully its way to "Full Spectrum Dominance" globally.
It is so utterly ironic to see the aggressor of the 20th Century claiming victim hood in the 21st.
Thirty years ago US historian Chalmers Johnson warned that the US empire was collapsing for many of the reasons as the USSR.
A whole world order is emerging and the present US leadership doesn't have the IQ or the integrity to start making the decisions that have to be made. They are so deeply revanchist it is pitiful.
exactly right about Chalmers Johnson. Johan Galtung predicted the same. So did Emmanuel Todd. Interestingly all these guys predicted the fall of the USSR. The trajectory is almost identical. Galtung even gave a date - 2025 as the timeframe of the collapse of the empire. One thing he said that stayed with me was "the US empire has to die for the American republic to live". The US has stopped being a republic since 1963 when the deep state (CIA+Mossad) took out JFK. The empire had a run for 60 years and it's time for that to end. The only question is whether the republic will survive.
Your blogs are incredibly informative and the analysis outstanding. Two more writers I have to look into! The more I have looked at the sixties the more it becomes the decade of assassinations. Kennedy and King were the most prominent among many. To read their speeches they became prime targets for the war lords. Our failures are in large part the disconnection to our own history and what it tells us. When John Ralston Saul wrote his book The Unconscious Civilization it is the one of the most telling books of our time.
Saul is a very insightful philosopher. I am really glad you like his work. My favorite is Voltaire's Bastard. His critique of faux science/rationality at the expense of morality and humanism is timeless. As for how the deep state took over the west, especially the US, I would recommend Peter Scott Dale, another Canadian historian and erudite thinker. His documentation of the dark side of the national security state, involving drug trafficking, false flag operations, etc., is the foundation work that informs us the nature of the national security state in the west. The targeted killiings of the Kennedys (plural) and MLK were seminal events of US history. The country went off the rail when the perps got away with the crimes.
An often neglected writer is Harold Innis, well worth reading. To give you some idea of his influence, Innis' work formed the foundation for communications theory which Marshal McLuhan built upon.
https://oceanofpdf.com/category/authors/harold-a-innis/
"Your blogs are incredibly informative and the analysis outstanding."
Agreed. I wander the net in search of intelligent dialogue which can be very frustrating as many of the writers you find are deeply entrenched in a particular viewpoint which accepts no challenges (been kicked off a few sites already simply for challenging the prevailing narrative).
The challenge for us is to see the world as it is. I know I am partisan but most of what I write is based on history. I also have been kicked off a couple of sties which might be a complement? There are a lot of readers who want no more than infotainment. I was on Medium.com for a while and Substack is far superior.
A point I don't often see raised is what to me seems the most likely reason for the USA's rise as an international power. Granted the enterprising spirit of new arrivals played a major role, but the Chinese are no less enterprising - look at the number of Chinese family businesses for example, and the total absence of Chinese homelessness. Chinese take care of their families. The same can be said of India, especially the Sikhs, where their religion is as much an economic system as a spiritual pursuit.
So what accounts for the difference? Europe and Asia had long since exhausted its domestic economies through over-exploitation of resources and constant warfare over same. Two world wars were the inevitable result, not just of British Imperialism but of economic exhaustion and fierce competition for dwindling resources.
America, by contrast was a completely new land, massive in size, rich in agricultural land, mineral resources and fresh water. A wide open field. You only had to move (or kill) a couple of million native people who were still living in the stone age. Add to this the advantage of two great oceans which made it virtually impossible to invade, and you had the recipe for a century or more of economic strength. Canada shared the same advantage to a lesser degree, and the outcome was thus similar.
Anticipating a challenge by comparing N to S America, I would point out that the colonial administration of most of Latin America followed the Spanish (and Portuguese) hacienda system - basically feudalism with enslaved Indians at the bottom, mixed races in the middle, and a white minority with titles of nobility, earned or simply assumed. The USA, by contrast pursued a more progressive policy premised on individual enterprise supported by grants of free land for whoever was willing to farm it. Slavery was practised as well of course, but it was never a major factor in the westward expansion that characterized the growth of the nation. That was a wild free for all compared to the rigid system of elite property ownership inherited from the Spanish.
Makes a lot of sense. Natural endowment played the biggest role in US development, even today - just look at the low US dependency for natural resources on other countries compared with all other countries except Russia. It is like a Saudi Arabia without the deserts, climate, and other liabilities. The governance system built by the founding fathers is vastly superior to the South American feudal system indeed - frankly even today South America seems frozen in the class structure of 17th century Spain. Unfortunately the security of resources and geography has made the US an imperial actor who feels free to roam and cause havocs offshore as no consequences or blow-backs have ever been felt at home. I think this is the fundamental reason why even the average Americans are militaristic and don't care what their government does outside the country, they never have had to suffer the consequence.
Until America rejects it Manifest Destiny legacy, there is nothing that can be done. This mindset won't allow it to treat the world equally and fairly. It'll prevent America from growing it's alliance to match China's numbers and BRICs+. The numbers just don't work.
The Americas should have been something like the EU by now. The racist mindset in America won't allow this. Once the racist mindset is purge, America needs massive human capital and infrastructure investments. Without these foundation, everything America is doing is just a pipe dream.
At the moment America is built to exploit the world. It's a 19 century creation. It's a dinosaur. In the nuclear age this will not work.
Present USA is a 20th century creation, not 19th. All its economic and industrial policy is from the prior century, from the time of Woodrow Wilson who was installed by the British according to the plans of Cecil Rhodes (Rhodes' Round Table group) to bring the Americans into their WWI and reshape its financial and monetary policy completely. Even war policy has almost nothing in common with two centuries ago except colonialism.
EU was formed by non-state globalist power groups two years after the 1955 Bilderberger meeting called for its creation. Józef Retinger was seminal in creating both the Bilderberger group and the EU. It stands for deindustrialisation and finance capitalism because it was architected by the same people who shaped the current day USA.
If you think USA needs infrastructure, skilled workers, or even just a less racist mindset, then the last thing it needs is anything like the EU or the people who formed it and continue to run it. Where China tries to control its non-state power elite with a heavy hand, seeing what billionaires can do to subvert a state's interests in countless foreign examples, USA was completely overthrown by it long ago; EU was made by them, for them.
Manifest Destiny is a 19th Century thing. It’s still a policy in the guise of Democracy.
"the US has the highest GDP per capita"
Sickness (healthcare) is ~18% of gdp in the US. (By comparison, more than double that of China.)
Yet we have worse outcomes than most of the rest of the developed world.
Real estate is another ~18% (14% of that is buying, selling & leasing "services" vs actual construction)
20% of Americans have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives.
(For a moment I thought I was among the fortunate 80%. Then I remembered that when I was 14 my parents started going away for weekends & leaving me locked out in the street. So I had homelessness on a half dozen or so nights, but was not without shelter as I climbed in my bedroom window, lol.)
Dear Sir,
This article is absolutely brilliant.
luisa & Friends
The idea that the dysfunctional underclass are lacking manufacturing jobs may have been true in the 80’s, 90’s or 00’s may have been true but not anymore. Between recreational drugs, anti-depressant inhibitors and disability, they are completely ruined and not mentally or physically fit for any sort of job anymore. Black OR White, or any one of the other minorities. They are not human anymore, just masses of bio-mass marinated in Jew sauce.
Since you mention Blacks, a look back at Detroit in the 1960s shows a prospering Black community with two parent households living in homes they could actually afford. This was completely undermined by offshoring US auto production and allowing foreign cars to enter the market. There are other causes of Black community disfunction of course, but that was right up there, as Blacks were finally beginning to get some economic traction as full participants in the economy, rather than as mere unskilled labour.
Trump has a bachelor's degree in economics, believe it or not. He must have been off sick the day they studied the Triffin Dilemma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyHyZRl5dyU
Triffin sounds like a character from Lord of the Rings, right? The basic concept is that if your currency is used as an international reserve, you will by definition run a trade deficit with the rest of the world.
The concept of reserve currency is a bit misleading however, because the $US is not just a stash you keep on hand to defend your currency, but is used for private transactions between foreign parties. As such, there needs to be a large amount of $US in foreign circulation for that to happen. Obviously the way to obtain the dollars you need for international trade is by selling more than you buy from the USA, with the balance serving as a trade currency AND a reserve.
As an example of how far this can go, Ecuador had an economic crisis in 1999 that led to abandonment of their own currency and its replacement with the US dollar. This had the effect that Ecuador could no longer expand its money supply by simply printing it. Any expansion had to be a result of increased productivity. (Jury's still out on whether it worked or not)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998%E2%80%931999_Ecuador_economic_crisis
Speaking of the printing press, the US enjoys an "exorbitant privilege" in the sense it is the only nation that can issue currency in excess of production without negatively affecting its exchange rate. This is supported by the fact that whenever global economic conditions deteriorate, the "safety trade" is to buy US treasuries as a hedge against one's own currency. You see this effect in the US dollar index:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Dollar_Index
Given the ability to print without (immediate) consequences, it was only a matter of time before the advantage was abused in the form of excess credit expansion leading to financial bubbles both domestic and foreign and the rise of gold as an internationally recognized form of money which can't be printed at will.
However, the US effectively reneged on its promise to respect the foreign holdings of US treasuries (and other assets) when it confiscated Russian reserves. That did not go unnoticed and is likely the reason that China (second largest holder of US treasuries after Japan) has been a net seller.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/bonds/china-dollar-dominance-dollarization-treasury-bond-yields-gold-buying-spree-2024-5?op=1
What's interesting is that after the Federal Reserve, Japan, China and the UK, the largest holding of US treasuries is in Cayman Island banks, and who knows who owns those, although China no doubt figures large there as well.
China is quietly (as possible) exiting US treasuries now, but if they really wanted to sow chaos they could simply start selling en masse which would affect their own holdings as well, because there would be no way to exit completely without crashing that market. They could do it though as retaliation if actually presented with a credible threat. That's the kind of fire Trump is playing with right now, but I doubt he even understands the problem.
The real problem of course is not Trump per se, but a political system that allows someone like Trump to gain (almost) absolute power via rule by decree. Of course in exercising such power he only hastens the demise of the US dollar as witness the BRICS members moving to a currency swap system, such as between China and Russia, and/or pricing their goods in each other's currency. Even long term "ally" Saudi Arabia is pricing in other currencies now, thus undermining the petro-dollar recycling scheme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar_recycling
We do indeed live in interesting times, much of which is hard to predict, but the fate of the US dollar is pretty much carved in stone at this point. I believe the international banking cabal recognizes this and is casting about for alternatives as we speak. That's possibly why Trump was elected - to act as the unwitting wrecking ball of US trade relations under the guise of making America great again (as if it ever was, except by accident or virtue of geography).
Michael Hudson laid out the case of US dollar hegemony in his Super Imperialism in the 1970s (by the way, Hudson is by far the greatest living economist in the US today - naturally completely sidelined by the mainstream). The US dollar playbook is well known except to the ignorant in his cabinet (multiple billionaires no less).
I think China is fully aware the risks inherent in holding US dollar assets. It is gradually extracting itself from the decades old arrangement. I am not sure whether China will escape without scath as Trump doesn't behave rationally. Not I have no doubt dollar is going the way of denarius.
Sounds like a goodidea to me.
Here is a young chap from China who thinks he has a solution. I think it might be the only solution that works - and Prof John Mearsheimer also agrees with him
https://youtu.be/xmQBMtpiRWk?t=1010 (90 second video clip)
½-wit.
"the trade imbalance between China and the US is indeed substantial and unsustainable in the long term."
It is no less sustainable than your personal trade imbalance between you and your grocery store, or you and your barber. One might argue that the trade imbalance between the US and Rest of World is unsustainable in the long term, but there's nothing unsustainable about the trade imbalance between the US and China alone.
"Although NAFTA (1994) and China’s entry into WTO (2001) are regularly invoked as key events driving deindustrialization, the US manufacturing employment and GDP contribution has been on a smooth downward trend since 1945."
Coincidentally, other major manufacturing countries were busy destroying each other until 1945, while the US enjoyed peace at home (i.e. lack of destruction of its manufacturing capacities on its soil. Not that it wasn't at war, of course, but it didn't get bombed.). Once other countries stopped destroying each other, they started quickly catching up with the US in terms of manufacturing.
"By 1971, less than 25% of US employment was in manufacturing."
There were so many things in the US that started going wrong with he US economy after the early 1970s. That's when the US abandoned the gold standard. Wealth inequality in the US has been on the rise since then, for example. Permanent budget deficits since the early 2000s only made things worse.
"It is no less sustainable than your personal trade imbalance between you and your grocery store, or you and your barber."
I earn money to pay the grocery store so there is no outstanding debt. How do you suppose the USA can pay its way if its not earning enough? Printing paper dollars?
By exporting more than it imports to Rest of World excluding China obviously. The idea that trade between each pair of countries must be balanced is ridiculous. There is nothing wrong with having a trade deficit with one country if it is balanced by trade surplus with all other countries. That's perfectly sustainable, just as you having a trade surplus with your employer while having a trade deficit with your grocery store is perfectly sustainable.
And, in unique US's case, yes, it can indeed run permanent trade deficits with Rest of World by 'printing' dollars (creating them of the computer). That is not sustainable in the long run if the US overdoes it, but that's exactly what the US has been doing from the early 2000s and it was able to get away with it for now.
The 2000's was just the US stepping on the gas pedal. The "exorbitant privilege" goes back to even before 1971 when the US finally reneged on its promise to pay in gold, which was already in doubt going back to the 1930's, thus the confiscation of domestic gold and its subsequent repricing.
You misquote me. I did not make such a ridiculous claim. The USA does not have such a balance between trading countries, it has a massive overall deficit.
Well, that's why I said "One might argue that the trade imbalance between the US and Rest of World is unsustainable in the long term, but there's nothing unsustainable about the trade imbalance between the US and China alone."
It's true that service export is in surplus but, I saw some figures the other day, it's only about 10% of the merchandising deficit. So yes, I guess the answer is for China to import F35s and some of your other imaginative suggestions..
Yes. China should buy as many F35s as the USA is willing to sell. They could disassemble them and improve their engine tech and perhaps gain some stealth insights, and use the rest of the flying pianos for dogfighting/target practice.
https://worldwarwings.com/crashed-japanese-zero-fighter-changed-wwii/
"“The very first flight exposed weaknesses of the Zero which our pilots could exploit with proper tactics … immediately apparent was the fact that the ailerons froze up at speeds above 200 knots so that rolling maneuvers at those speeds were slow and required much force on the control stick. It rolled to the left much easier than to the right. Also, its engine cut out under negative acceleration due to its float-type carburetor. We now had the answer for our pilots who were being outmaneuvered and unable to escape a pursuing Zero. Go into a vertical power dive, using negative acceleration if possible to open the range while the Zero’s engine was stopped by the acceleration. At about 200 knots, roll hard right before the Zero pilot could get his sights lined up.”