US Economic Decline Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

Sean Starrs’s key points:

1. The global nature of US-led capitalism since 1945, and especially since the 1990s, means that some states can extract vast resources from others.
2. GDP tells us where the world’s production of goods and services is geographically concentrated, but in the age of globalization, it does not tell us who owns and therefore profits from it.
3. Global profit share is a more appropriate measure of national economic power, as it encompasses the global profits stemming from production and finance owned abroad, not just within the home territory.
4. The global dominance of Wall Street (financial services in figure two), for example, helps to ensure that the US dollar remains the de facto world currency.
5. The dominance of American tech firms helps to ensure the continued supremacy of the US military, while the dominance of American media helps to ensure that the US state can shape the ideological narrative (including support for US capitalism and imperialism).
6. The United States can destroy the global prospects of one of China’s most competitive tech companies without China being able to do anything about it, demonstrating extraordinary American power.
7. The US state can leverage the global dominance of US TNCs [US transnational corporations] to contain the further technological rise of the country with the second-largest GDP in the world.
8. States always have more power than individual TNCs, even if many states choose to not use this power.
9. Globalization theorists assume that the world’s top TNCs have owners dispersed around the world, representing a “transnational capitalist class.” This is wrong. What we have actually seen is the globalization of American ownership of the world’s top corporations.
10. It’s useful to distinguish between relational and structural power. The United States has structured global capitalism in such a way that benefits its ruling class and strengthens American hegemony.
11. The capitalist rise of China, along with other “emerging markets” in the twenty-first century, has actually boosted American structural power in certain key respects… So long as China wants to integrate into global capitalism, which remains US-centered, then the Chinese state has no choice but to help fund US imperialism against China itself.
12. Capitalist elites throughout Eurasia will still prefer US hegemony to defend their global interests rather than the Communist Party of China.