Chinese President Xi Jinping addressing both Houses of the British Parliament in 2015.
One of the paradoxes of the Trump campaign and subsequent administration is a promise that may have the opposite effect of the one it intended.
When the president says he wants to “Make America Great Again” he means to return it to a time when manufacturing, mining and other white, male blue-collar jobs were king. The problem with that is that the rest of the world would also have to return to that time.
But the rest of the world will not. Oh, yes, Great Britain is on board, with Brexit. (Yet at the same time, Britain is phasing out coal. So what are its coal miners going to do in a shrinking rather than expansive economy?) Europe, too, is caught between isolationism and globalism.
Not so the Chinese. Their “One Belt, One Road” initiative – which will bring $1 trillion in infrastructure to 60 countries – is a New Silk Road for the 21st century. (It’s also the subject of Sino expert Audrey Ronning Topping’s story for the June issue of WAG, the magazine I edit. Stay tuned.)
Say what you want about China’s President Xi Jinping, but he’s a visionary. And what of America? How can it be great – again or still – if it’s busy yielding global economic leadership to its chief rival, the Chinese? The signals have been mixed. In Bari, Italy, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told the Group of Seven wealthiest nations that America reserves the right to be protectionist – sometimes. But the rest of the Group balked.
According to Reuters, "other ministers from the G7 countries made it clear they did not share [Mnuchin's] view. 'All the six others ... said explicitly, and sometimes very directly, to the representatives of the U.S. administration that it is absolutely necessary to continue with the same spirit of international cooperation,' French Finance Minister Michel Sapin told reporters."
Look, empires and civilizations end, usually destroyed from within. If failure can be a spur to success, success and complacency (to say nothing of fear) can lead to failure. Maybe America’s star is dimming in the Chinese dawn. There are those who think this is already the Chinese century the way the last century belonged to America.
Wake up, America. As I write in my new novel “The Penalty for Holding,” just out from Less Than Three Press, fear can paralyze you or it can set you free. Time doesn’t flow backward. You can’t put the global genie back in the bottle.
Globalism is the only path to keeping America the world’s foremost leader.