No chance because the leader cannot lead. He can only raise tariffs and do domestically popular TV shows.
Leaders are only as good as their advisors. Which, if you don't know by now, you will find out eventually.
Which isn't really a statement about the US, it's a statement about China.
Applying 20-20 hindsight to the Great Depression, I have created the Golden Butthead award for dumb public policy moves, and Hoover gets three. One for 1929, stomping on the stock market bubble. One for 1930, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. And one for 1932, doubling income taxes during a depression.
Nobody would really give a flying leap other than us denizens of the USA except for the fact that we had become the hegemon while we weren't looking, and we couldn't sneeze without the rest of the world getting sick. And, because God does not really play dice with the universe, every horrible thing we caused in the rest of the world came back to bite us.
That's the way it works.
If China is ready to step up to the plate and be the hegemon, will there be a Pax Sinensis? And are you ready to be the hegemon?
My guess is no. I think China is at the apex of the triangle I posted earlier in the week, that nobody commented on, I assume because it's a frame of reference you are not familiar with. (Mundell-Fleming). Full capital controls. Full autonomy, full stability, no free flow of capital.
DJ is on the right side. Full stability, full free flow of capital, no autonomy.
The US is on the left side. Full free flow of capital, full autonomy, no stability.
mason.gmu.edu
No stability is the price we pay for full autonomy and full free flow of capital. We can live with it.
Can China?
If not, can you make us change? |
