The Fall of an Empire
Why the U.S. Can't Stop Its Decline, Defend Its Dollar, or Defeat China
The United States stands at a historic turning point. Once the industrial engine and financial master of the world, it is now in an irreversible state of decline. Three fundamental truths now define this moment: the U.S. economic decline cannot be stopped, the U.S. dollar is losing its global reserve status, and the U.S. cannot defeat China economically or militarily. These aren’t opinions, they are hard facts rooted in decades of systemic decay, political delusions of grandeur, and misplaced economic priorities.
In the 1950s, the U.S. controlled 50% of global industrial output. By 2025, it’s down to 12%. This isn’t just a number, it’s the measure of a superpower that hollowed out its productive base in search of short-term profits. Presidents from Carter to Trump all promised “reindustrialisation,” but none succeeded. Why? Because U.S. capitalism is structured to chase profit, not national renewal. Investment flows to war industries, not infrastructure. Corporations are bound by law to serve shareholders, not society. Rebuilding an industrial base requires long-term investment, planning, and state coordination, things the U.S. system is fundamentally incapable of doing.
Trump’s latest “Liberation Day” tariffs were billed as a patriotic push to bring back manufacturing, but they ended up being tax hikes on American consumers. When markets reacted, he backtracked within days. It was a humiliation. The U.S. can’t even keep up in shipbuilding, once its pride, now producing less than 1% of the world’s new ships while China builds over 50%. America’s crumbling railroads and port systems cannot compare to China’s high-speed networks that stretch across continents. The U.S. is outclassed.
Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar, the cornerstone of American global power, is slipping. As Washington prints endless money and drowns in debt, countries are quietly moving away from the dollar. The BRICS bloc, now expanding, trades more and more in national currencies. Nations are stockpiling gold, signing local currency agreements, and building alternatives to SWIFT. The dollar’s dominance is being eroded, not by declarations, but by decisions made daily in boardrooms and ministries worldwide. Once the world stops needing dollars, America’s military bases, sanctions, and debt-fueled economy collapse like a house of cards.
And militarily? The idea that the U.S. could outmatch China, Russia, or even Iran is a dangerous illusion. Military dominance without industrial strength is meaningless. The U.S. can’t even build its own ships without relying on foreign supply chains. China, with its state-backed industries, advanced weapon systems, and massive pool of STEM talent, is playing a different game. It produces ten times the STEM graduates the U.S. does annually. It builds while the U.S. bombs. The U.S. is addicted to military spending, a trillion-dollar budget that props up war profiteers but produces nothing for the nation’s long-term stability.
China and Russia, with different systems and planning models, are showing what strategic thinking looks like. They invest in infrastructure, education, and economic alliances. They’ve ended poverty, built global networks, and positioned themselves as centers of new economic gravity. Meanwhile, the U.S. lashes out with sanctions and tariffs like a wounded beast, only accelerating its isolation. Even small countries like Zimbabwe react out of desperation, dropping tariffs on U.S. goods without strategy, proof of Washington’s fading grasp and local elites’ ignorance of shifting tides.
The American empire is not falling because someone is attacking it. It’s collapsing under its own contradictions. A system built on exploitation, short-termism, and elite greed cannot compete with state-guided development, long-term planning, and coordinated international cooperation. The U.S. cannot win an economic war it’s too disorganized to fight and too arrogant to retreat from.
The world is changing. Power is shifting. And unless America radically transforms its economic system, which it won’t, its decline is not only inevitable, it’s deserved.
@GGTvStreams