America Is in Big Trouble

Wealth is created by the real economy—sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, mining, energy, and construction. In contrast, trade, professional services, and financial sectors merely support the real economy, extracting value in exchange for their services. They do not generate wealth independently (see Mammonism).

Over the past few decades, the U.S. has undergone severe deindustrialization. Aside from a few remaining high-tech and military industries, most manufacturing has relocated to countries with lower production costs. It is now dominated by financial capitalism that depends on monetary maneuvers to extract global wealth, while its own productivity has long been unable to sustain its hegemony. America’s perceived economic strength is built more on financial mechanisms than on the real economy. Although this economy has grown only 1.5 times in the past 20 years, the annual issuance of U.S. dollars has increased fivefold, national debt has surged sevenfold—exceeding $34 trillion—and private lending has reached another $30 trillion. Much of this money flows abroad through foreign goods purchases, international loans, U.S. bond sales, and debt repayments, as the demand for the U.S. dollar as a world reserve currency remains high. Estimates suggest that over $100 trillion circulates outside the United States.

Such excessive money printing has fueled global inflation, doubling food prices, raising oil prices by 4.5 times, and tripling the price of iron ore. The U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency allows America to manipulate the global economy through monetary policies. By employing monetary easing (reducing interest rates and increasing the dollar supply), the U.S. stimulates borrowing. Conversely, monetary tightening (raising interest rates and restricting dollar supply) causes the dollar to appreciate, prompting capital to return to the U.S. while contracting other economies. This cyclical process enables American financial elites to periodically acquire foreign assets and stocks at discounted prices. Monetary policies are often reinforced by geopolitical strategies such as fostering regional tensions, inciting social unrest, and supporting color revolutions under the guise of human rights promotions to undermine the investment climate in other countries. These tactics allow the U.S. to reap wealth from other nations while profiting from arms sales and conflicts. However, the primary beneficiaries are not the American people but the country’s elite special interests.

From the perspective of developing nations, the current global economic order—established and maintained by U.S. special interests—is both unfair and immoral. To sustain this system, the U.S. has historically sought to suppress rising economic competitors, from the U.K., Germany, and the USSR in the past, to Russia, Europe, and China today. By instigating the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the U.S. aims to weaken Russia while creating a security crisis in Europe. Cutting off cheap Russian energy to the continent has allowed the U.S. to dominate the European market with expensive American energy, triggering severe inflation, raising production costs, damaging European industries, and accelerating capital outflows. This has further eroded Europe’s strategic autonomy, tethering it to American interests in opposition to the rising East. Similarly, in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. is leveraging alliances with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, India, Australia, and NATO’s expansion to contain China.

The American oligarchy’s commitment to maintaining global dominance conflicts with the aspirations of other nations to develop their own economies. Most countries seek a cooperative and equitable international environment conducive to mutual growth. However, the U.S.’s pursuit of unilateral hegemony, its extraterritorial jurisdiction, and its prioritization of self-interest have led to mounting resistance worldwide.

Faced with soaring debt, inflation, and financial crises that a hollowed-out economy must face, U.S. policymakers exhibit growing anxiety. Yet instead of addressing deep-seated structural and institutional weaknesses, they resort to high-handed tactics to externalize their crises. These include continually raising the debt ceiling, coercing other nations into purchasing U.S. treasuries without intent to repay, flexing military muscle, provoking regional conflicts, launching trade and financial wars, imposing unilateral sanctions, freezing and confiscating foreign overseas assets, and exercising long-arm jurisdiction. Additionally, they weaponize the U.S. dollar and the SWIFT system, sabotage foreign infrastructure, and engage in economic embargoes, decoupling strategies, and geopolitical isolation. While designed to suppress rival economies, these tactics also harm the U.S. economy, erode America’s global reputation, weaken the dollar’s credibility, and accelerate global sell-off of U.S. treasuries and de-dollarization, which will ultimately lead to the erosion of U.S. economic dominance.

Compounding these challenges, rampant inflation has forced the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates aggressively, triggering the current wave of bank failures and a global economic downturn, causing turmoil in the financial markets of many countries, especially heavily indebted countries.

For its own self-interest, the United States has become a source of global instability. Its ruling elite remains unwilling to change course, convinced they can sustain their dominance indefinitely through financial manipulation and military intervention. Some think they can harvest others nations' wealth forever just by keeping the money printing presses running. Others are willing to start another world war to maintain their primacy. On the surface, America’s crisis stems from over-financialization, but the deeper issue lies in the ideology embraced by its plutocrats—capitalism, Darwinism, Machiavellianism, the law of the jungle, and the zero-sum game mentality (see Philosophies that Separate Two Worlds). They fail to acknowledge that hegemony built on mounting debt rather than real economic strength is unsustainable. Most tango dancers do not embrace the ideologies of the American oligarchs, I believe, as these ideologies contradict the spirit of tango, but we cannot but be wary of the negative influence of these ideologies on our life and tango.

The world most nations seek is one based on democratic principles, where all countries have an equal opportunity to develop and improve their people’s lives through cooperation and mutual benefit. If U.S. policymakers truly believe in democracy, they must abandon their selfish, coercive, and shortsighted strategies. The American people deserve leaders with greater moral integrity. Otherwise, America will inevitably face the consequences of its behaviors (see The Vicious Circle of Regime Change).

P.S.
The following video provides an in-depth explanation of the American monetary system—from the Bretton Woods Agreement and the decoupling of the U.S. dollar from gold, to its peg to oil, consumer capitalism, vendor financing, outsourcing of manufacturing, job losses, trade deficits, rising inequality, military expansion, perpetual warfare, uncontrolled money printing, increasing debt, and ultimately, the dollar’s devaluation and inflation crisis. The speaker attributes this doomed system to dollar as the world reserve currency and suggests that these will all end when a new currency regime emerges. The key question is: will the U.S.'s elite special interests allow that to happen before their empire collapses?