It seems like in the last few years, the cracks were really starting to show in American dominance. The bungling of the COVID response, the BRI and BRICS chipping away at US trade and currency dominance, the failure of Ukraine to repel Russia, inflation and shortages in the imperial core, etc.
But it seems like many of these cracks have been patched up this year. I’m not sure how much is just propaganda, but economic indicators show that inflation in the US has cooled, unemployment is the lowest and the labor force participation rate is the highest they’ve been in decades (even accounting for underemployment/gig work), and real wages have increased amongst the poorest and richest alike (albeit unequally so).
US energy prices are dropping. US oil production is at an all time high, and the US is refilling its strategic reserves at a lower prices than it released them for. OPEC can’t retaliate without taking a huge hit to their economy.
Infrastructure, historically a big issue for the US, has been looking better as the Biden administration passed several huge spending packages to improve train networks and other things.
Ukraine is losing but the US has only spent a small fraction of what they did in Afghanistan, and they’ve debt trapped Ukraine in the process. The Israel-Palestine conflict has certainly turned sentiment against the US but it hasn’t resulted in any material change in relations.
China’s economy is stumbling; although there’s not a recession per se, unemployment is sky high, consumer confidence has taken a hit, and investment has slowed. Interest rates are about 3.5% in China while they’re about 5% in the US, which means China has less room to perform expansionary monetary policy than the US.
The US seems to have gained ground in trade relations. Several countries have pulled out of the BRI. Countries like Mexico, which for a while had China as their biggest trade partner, once again have the US as their biggest trade partner. FDI in China has slowed. “De-risking” and “friendshoring” have started yielding results. I know in the long run this will also weaken imperialism as it develops the productive forces of countries like India, Mexico, and Vietnam, but it might take a long time; even highly-industrialized countries like Japan, Germany, and south Korea are still subservient to the US.
People have completely forgotten about the US’ shit COVID response, but Chinese citizens still bear resentment towards Xi and the central gov for the zero-COVID policy, and the uncertainty over lockdowns was a contributing factor towards the reduction in investor confidence in China.
So overall, things don’t look too bad for the US, while they’re looking a bit uncertain for the other emerging “poles” like China, Russia, and the Middle East. I suppose the silver lining is that a lot of these gains came at the expense of gutting the economies of “allies” like Europe and south Korea, which means that the US won’t have as much to easily prey on next time.
What are your thoughts?
I'm not in a place to give a thorough response with high quality sources, so I apologize ahead of time for this. But let me break down my thoughts in a quick manner.
I'm not sure where you live, but regular people in the US do not feel what supposedly is on paper the positive economic effects that are taking shape currently. I'm not sure where those numbers exactly come from, but the vast majority of people have had raises, but their expenses have gone up further than their raises. On average, people are not feeling the bounce-back effects of the economy yet.
Unemployment is still high because they fudge the numbers with gig economy stuff. As well, unemployment only counts the people who are looking for work, and a bunch of people have just straight up stopped looking. I've never really trusted those numbers anyway. That being said, if unemployment is low, that's actually bad for capitalism. If unemployment is high, that means that they can drive down salaries. Trust me, as of right now, people are still competing for the same jobs.
I'll also make a general note here. All you're talking about is economic factors. But economic factors is just GDP and stock prices, and shit for rich people. None of this really affects normal people, except for the unemployment rate.
No notes on energy, but the United States is pretty powerful and has a lot of control over energy anyway, so that's not surprising.
Regarding infrastructure, I believe according to experts, and this is where I don't have sources, sorry about that. We only funded the infrastructure needs by about 25%. We barely stopped the bleeding. The infrastructure costs are going to rear their ugly head in less than 10 years again. At that point in time, they'll be twice as bad. This is literally the definition of short term gain, but long term loss. We aren't doing anything to fundamentally change our system.
The United States does not put a lot of money into foreign wars like Ukraine or Israel. So I agree it's not a good indicator of the United States Being weak or anything. But it's also not news. This isn't anything different or significant.
China's economy is not stumbling. That's pretty much just propaganda. Their unemployment rate is not high. They actually pay kids to stay at home and take care of families. In situations that the United States does not recognize as employment, and so they count that as unemployment. China's unemployment is actually way lower than it looks to the United States propagandists.
I've also never seen anybody spin lower interest rates to be a bad thing, so I guess congratulations?
In terms of foreign trade, this is the thing I'm the least knowledgeable about. So I don't have any specific notes here except to say that short-term gain and long-term loss is probably added again.
I'll tell you who actually does care about the United States handling of COVID. All those people that lost their family members. Also, even people in China can recognize that they probably held on to the new COVID policy for too long. But it beats losing a million people. Again, short term gain and long term loss. In the end, what China did is way better than what the US did, Even if there were some compromises that were reasonable on both sides.
Also, I don't entirely understand people only comparing the United States to China. I mean, the fact of the matter is that the United States is absorbing the economic output of many other countries as well. You kind of want to look at how those countries are faring as well as the United States in order to understand the full economic output. And although they get a lot of stuff from China, the other countries they're going from are not doing so well. The fact of the matter is that China makes most of the stuff that it uses and so their economic system is a lot more. How do you say full circle? So, in theory, if any one part of their economy is doing bad, it shows. Whereas, if some country that the United States oppresses is doing poorly, that doesn't actually reflect on the United States. Think of it this way. There's only 330 million people in the United States, and they're pretty much the richest people on earth. So don't compare the 330 million people and the United States to the 1.4 billion people in China. Compare the 330 million people in the United States to the richest 330 million people in China. China is doing much better than the United States if you compare it that way.
But even then, why are we constantly comparing the economic output of the United States to China? The fact of the matter is that material condition matters much more for the longevity of a country than anything else. Who the fuck cares what the interest rate is this year? Who the fuck cares whether or not China has lower unemployment this month? The United States is a time bomb waiting to explode. China is at least a lot more stable than that.