Miguel Afonso Caetano<p>"Obviously, Trump’s strategy is terrible: it’s not even clear what he wants. But a less inept administration would also be struggling. Over the decades, the US’s leverage to remake the global trading system — capital flows, advanced technology and access to its vast consumer market — has weakened relative to China. Barack Obama used to call the US the “indispensable nation”. In trade and tech terms that is increasingly untrue.</p><p>During the post-second world war Marshall Plan, the US created a largely Atlanticist political economy in western Europe. It offered not just financial Marshall Aid but also advanced technology, and access to its growing consumer market.</p><p>Those advantages have dissipated. US aid budgets have massively shrunk relative to China’s, and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has more or less closed down their last vestiges in the US Agency for International Development.</p><p>The US, particularly under Joe Biden, worked hard to deprive China of advanced technology, especially semiconductors. But the failure to match Chinese official and corporate investment, while sending the wrong signals to US industry, mean it’s well behind in much of green tech. If a country wants to adopt solar or wind power or replace internal combustion engines with electric vehicles, including batteries, it will generally get the heavily subsidised kit from China."</p><p><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c2ebc194-790f-4b9c-a1d9-3e0840f0ee38" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">ft.com/content/c2ebc194-790f-4</span><span class="invisible">b9c-a1d9-3e0840f0ee38</span></a></p><p><a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/USA" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>USA</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Trump" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Trump</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Tariffs" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tariffs</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/TradeWars" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>TradeWars</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/China" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>China</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Protectionism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Protectionism</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/GreenTech" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>GreenTech</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/EVs" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>EVs</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/SolarEnergy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>SolarEnergy</span></a></p>