> the rest of the world is broke and needs US markets
The rest of the world is disorganised. If India, China, Iran, Russia and the E.U. implemented sanctions on America, not only would our economy crumble but our ability to fight even a single war of attrition would fail.
Oh absolutely. I don’t think we’re seeing Behemoth rising [1].
I’m just pointing out that the structural source of American power is our unity across a continent. Nobody else has that hegemony. Our markets are rich because they’re big, and they’re big because they’re unified.
That bigness also reduces the incentives for others to unify, given they can gain our economies of scale through trade and without the pesky reconciliation (or annihilation) unification would require.
I’m not arguing that Eurasian unification is probable. Just that it’s more likely now than it was before, and that’s a real diminishment of American power irrespective of what the accountants say. (I’d also argue that the aforementioned economies enacting a break with America wouldn’t require long-term unification, just a short-term alliance of the power-balancing types that put America and the USSR on the same side of a war.)
This is becoming less and less true. Trading with the US is unappealing because it is expensive (tariffs) and fraught with uncertainty. New trade deals are being forged as we speak between countries that were not even considering each other before Trump took office.
Nations realign slowly but there is no question they've all begun pivoting away from the US to various degrees, and they're unlikely to go back any time soon.
We just cut a $20 billion check to Argentina. So that they could then undercut our soybean sales even further.
Edit: Guess I should add, now that China will not buy our soybeans, we are propping up a different country’s agricultural market, and are quite likely to soon cut a check to farmers who are struggling because of administration decisions.
Russia doesn't have the demographics to win, and they're throwing what young workers they have into a Ukranian meat grinder. (Or a war-focused economy that's going to leave them uncompetitive in any other industry)
