Donald Trump, and the naivete of his supporters and opponents, is bringing about the collapse of the American empire. From Rome to the Soviet Union in 1991, empires have usually collapsed from within. Now it is our turn.

Obviously, the next global empire is China. It makes more money each year! We go deeper into debt each year! Kind of obvious, isn’t it?

China is using its profits to beat capitalism at its free market game!

My wife just returned from a month in Colombia in South America. She said China’s BYD and Chery electric vehicles (EVs), and the charging stations for them, were everywhere. Why? China has used some of its profits to support the emergence of its EV companies to have them be nearly as good and significantly cheaper than Tesla. How?  Long-term industrial policy, financial subsidies, massive manufacturing scale, complete domestic supply chains, globally low wages, and aggressive export logistics like building nine huge ships where one can carry 9,000 EVs. This is outcompeting the capitalist West at its own game! Their many EV companies have them appear to be a capitalist nation like us, but they are really all divisions of China, Inc.

Earlier they did this with the production of solar panels. They only raised the price when they had captured by far the biggest piece of that global market. They will do the same with EVs. They can use their profits to continue to move on to do this with nearly every product sold in the West and around the world. 

We hear little about this because we think our capitalist system is the best one. We have a mutual blind spot! However, it is now obvious it isn’t. China has come up with a better capitalist system: national competition within the global free market of nations. 

Unlike China, we are a democracy. But, economically, we can still compete in the global marketplace as a nation rather than as separate corporations. If we do not mature into doing the former, it will be saying goodbye to much more than the solar panels and EV markets. It will be “Hello China Empire” and “Goodbye USA Empire.” 

It will not be the result, as in the Soviet Union, of different controlled peoples finding a way to break away. It will be because both individual and national relations are based on trust in each other and the keeping of our agreements. Since World War II, the world had the greatest trust in the USA. That is now ending and ending more each time Trump shouts, “America First,” and being consistently clear he no longer needs to keep the most fundamental global agreement among nations on Earth since World War II: honoring national sovereignty. If we want Canada, Greenland, and Panama, we will just take them. If we do not like the leader of Venezuela, we will take him, put him in prison, and put someone in charge who will do our bidding. If we do not like Iran, we will bomb it to smithereens. 

Also, he has slapped punitive tariffs on every nation and told the American people they will pay for them when the fact is the American people will pay for them. Trump consistently lies and truly believes his lies are not lies. This is now obvious to nearly all. 

The other nations on Earth have no choice but to build trust relations elsewhere. Look how far he has gone toward imploding the USA Empire already and we have three more years of this. 

On top of that he has just started what could easily become World War III. (“Oh damn! We forgot to think more deeply about the Strait of Hormuz!”) And there is no one in the USA or elsewhere to stop him even when he is breaking the law!

Great Britain’s people survived when they were no longer the global empire. So will we. It now looks like we will need to get used to it.

Terry Mollner is founder & chair of Trust Funds for All Children, Inc. in Shutesbury.