Introduction

by Marc Batko

A trade deficit based on oil and gas isn’t a subsidy. The US doesn’t subsidize Canada; it buys from Canada. No Canadian wants to join the chaos, racism, christofascism, gun violence, misogyny, and contempt for the rule of law seen south of the border.  (QUORA) China doesn’t steal but learns from the US,

This website offers progressive articles and insights for a sustainable economy focused on the common good and not on private profit and enrichment.  Ethics is often narrowed to personal responsibility and public responsibility ignored.  Corporate media is usually wedded to the state and capital is served and unquestioned.

Profit-maximizing is different than profit-making.  The welfare system is the first to be cut when growth declines.  Neoliberal myths prevail and are unchallenged.  CEOs are called job creators and workers are cost factors. Radical systemic change is vital since the people are atomized and commodified when corporations are allowed to enrich themselves through tax havens, tax evasion, stock-buybacks, micro-second betting (casino economy), insider trading and the revolving door.

One day knowledge and information will be free and not locked behind pay-walls.  Unlike a chair, an idea can be shared by a whole people!

An idea, Franz Kafka said, is like an axe that can break the frozen soul!

Immigrants aren’t monsters but human beings.  Jesus had compassion on the people who seemed like sheep without a shepherd.  We are called to have compassion on all people.

Trump who constantly claims to be the victim of the media and culture wars learned from Roy Cohn never to admit a mistake and to blame the weakest.  He is a scaremonger, pathological liar and narcissist who mocks the sovereignty of nations, the rule of law, the global economy and the US economy.  Like Hitler, he frightens people by calling minorities “vermin,” :killers,” and “invaders.”  Authoritarianism or fascism is currently in the White House and is marked by consolidation of power, contempt for Congress, the judiciary, education and protesters, glorification of violence and the military, scapegoating and fear-mongering.

Here is a recent article by Medea Benjamin “The washed-up states of America” that emphasizes Trump’s erosion of democracy:

Negotiation produces peace, not war!

The US is still trying in a grandiose manner to exercise global dominance that it no longer possesses in reality.

All great empires have fallen at some point, and elsewhere a competitor has risen to superior power. Those who are wise accept this law of nature from the outset and do not try to boast about the empty shell of past greatness after their heyday is over. Even during Donald Trump’s presidency, however, “God’s own country” is struggling to accept reality. Instead of wisely adjusting to the relative decline of the US by carving out a new position in the multipolar world, the country’s leaders continue to cling to a fantasy of endless dominance.

by Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J. S. Davies

[This article posted on 5/31/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-abgehalfterten-staaten-von-amerika.]

Not a day goes by without the Trump administration coming up with new horrors for Americans and our neighbors around the world.

On April 22 (2025), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered its forecast for global growth in 2025 from 3.2 percent to 2.8 percent and warned that this would be more painful for the United States than for any other country. Trump’s policies are expected to push US growth down from 2.7 to 1.8 percent.

It is now clear to the whole world that China is the main target of Trump’s trade wars. The United States has imposed huge tariffs — up to 245 percent — on Chinese goods. China has retaliated with tariffs of 125 percent and refuses to even negotiate until the US tariffs are lifted.

Since President Barack Obama announced a US “pivot to Asia,” both political parties have viewed China as the greatest global competitor or even as a target for US military forces.

China is now surrounded by a staggering 100,000 US military personnel in Japan, South Korea, and Guam, plus 73,000 in Hawaii and 415,000 on the US West Coast, as well as enough nuclear and conventional weapons to completely destroy China and all of us.

To put the trade war between the US and China into proper context, we need to take a step back and look at the relative economic strength and international trade relations of both countries.

A country’s economy can be measured in two different ways: using nominal gross domestic product (GDP), which is based solely on exchange rates, and using purchasing power parity (PPP), which is based on the real cost of goods and services.

Economists at the IMF and the OECD currently prefer PPP.

Measured by PPP, China overtaken the US as the world’s largest (national) economy in 2016 and is now 33 percent larger than the US economy — 40.7 trillion compared to 30.5 trillion US dollars.

And it’s not just China; the US share of the global economy is only 14.7 percent, while China’s is 19.7 percent. The EU accounts for 14.1 percent, while India, Russia, Brazil, Japan, and the rest of the world account for another 51.5 percent.

The world is now multipolar, whether Washington likes it or not.

So when Malaysia’s Trade Minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz was asked whether he would side with China or the US, his answer was clear: “We cannot choose — and we will not.”

Trump would like to adopt President George W. Bush’s stance — “You’re either with us or with the terrorists” — but this makes no sense when China and the US together account for only 34 percent of the global economy.

China saw this coming. As a result of Trump’s trade war with China during his first term, it turned to new markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America with the help of its Belt and Road Initiative.

Southeast Asia is now China’s largest export market. It is no longer dependent on US soybeans — it grows more of its own, buys the rest from Brazil, and has thus halved the US market share.

Meanwhile, many Americans cling to the idea that military power can compensate for shrinking economic power. Yes, the US spends more money (on the military) than the next ten military powers combined — but it hasn’t won a major war since 1945.

From Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan, the US has spent trillions, killed millions (of people), and suffered humiliating defeats. In Ukraine, Russia is currently crushing US-backed forces in a brutal war of attrition and producing more shells at a fraction of the cost that the US and its allies could manage.

The bloated, profit-driven US arms industry cannot keep up, and the US military budget, which runs into the billions, is crowding out new investment in education, healthcare, and civil infrastructure, on which the economic future depends.

None of this should come as a surprise. In his classic 1987 book, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, historian Paul Kennedy predicted this.

Every ruling empire, from Spain to Britain to Russia, sooner or later faced relative decline as the tides of economic history changed and had to find its place in a world it no longer dominated. Military overextension and budget overruns always accelerated the decline.

Kennedy wrote:

“A common dilemma for former ‘number one’ countries was that, even as their relative economic strength declined, competing with other countries for their position led them to allocate ever-larger shares of their resources to their military sector, thereby crowding out productive investment.”

He noted that no society can remain ahead of all others indefinitely, but that the loss of empire does not mean the end for former great powers, which can often find new and successful positions in a world they no longer dominate.

Even the total destruction suffered by Germany and Japan in World War II, which put an end to their imperial ambitions, was a new beginning because they shifted their considerable capabilities and resources from weapons development to civilian production and soon were manufacturing the world’s best cars and consumer electronics.

Paul Kennedy reminded Americans that the decline of US hegemony “is not absolute, but relative, and therefore perfectly normal, and that failure to adapt sensibly to the new world order is the only serious threat to the true interests of the United States.”

And this is exactly how our leaders have failed the American people.

Instead of wisely adjusting to the relative decline of the US by carving out a new position in the multipolar world, they are doubling down — with wars, threats, and fantasies of endless superiority.

Influenced by the neocons, Democrats and Republicans alike have led the US into one disaster after another in a futile effort to withstand the economic tides that raise and lower all great powers.

Since 1987, seven US presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, have blindly subscribed to the simplistic and neocon-promoted notion that the US can halt or reverse the tides of economic history by threatening and using military force, contrary to all historical evidence.

Trump and his team are no exception. They know that the old policies have failed. They know that a radically different policy is needed.

Yet they continue to play the same broken record—economic coercion, threats, wars, proxy wars, and now genocide—violating international law and exhausting the goodwill of friends and neighbors around the world.

The stakes could not be higher. It took the two deadliest and most destructive wars in human history to bring an end to the British Empire and the era of European colonialism.

In a nuclear-armed world, another war between major powers would not only be catastrophic — it would very likely be the last. If the US continues to try to push its way back to the top by tyrannical means, humanity could lose everything.

Instead, the future requires a peaceful transition to international cooperation in a multipolar world. This is not about politics, not about right or left or whether one is pro- or anti-American. It is about whether humanity has a future at all.

Editorial note: This text first appeared under the title “Trade Wars:

The Decline of America” at Consortium News. It was translated by Gabriele Herb on a voluntary basis and edited by the volunteer Manova proofreading team.

Medea Benjamin, born in 1952, is an American political activist and author. She holds a master’s degree in public health and economics.

She has been awarded several peace prizes, including the 2012 Peace Prize of the US Peace Memorial Foundation. Her book “Drone Warfare:

Death from a Clear Sky” has been published in German.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher at CODEPINK, and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

Humiliated by China, Harvard, the failure of his tariff policy, and federal courts, Trump may start a civil war against immigrants, many of whom are grandmothers or important workers in agriculture, construction, and health care.  We must stop Trump to save democracy!