Thailand announces tariffs strategy

[reader]

 

Thailand, which imposes a 72% tariff rate on goods imported from the US, today announced its strategy in response to Trump's imposition of a 36% rate on Thailand: cut tariffs on US goods and purchase more US imports.

This begs the question: why didn't both parties choose to negotiate this well before instead of waiting for push to come to shove?

Extracted from Pattaya News

In response, Commerce Ministry Permanent Secretary Wutthikrai Leeveeraphan held an early morning press conference, outlining Thailand’s strategy to mitigate the impact. The government is preparing aggressive trade negotiations and considering measures such as reducing import taxes on U.S. goods and increasing purchases from the U.S. to balance trade.

https://thepattayanews.com/2025/04/03/u-s-president-imposes-10-percent-base-tariff-thailand-hit-with-36-percent-rate-in-trade-crackdown/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[bkkmfj2648]

2 hours ago, reader said:

This begs the question: why didn't both parties choose to negotiate this well before instead of waiting for push to come to shove?

And furthermore, what I don't understand is the following:

Trump states that he will eliminate the IRS and replace it with the ERS - which will collect all of these tariffs for the USA Treasury.

But, if every country follows the path of Thailand and Vietnam to reset their tariffs on incoming USA goods to ZERO --> then the ERS gets nothing.

Please explain how this strategy will work if every country on planet earth will reset their tariffs on incoming USA goods and services to zero.

What happens then?

[vinapu]

1 hour ago, bkkmfj2648 said:

 

Please explain how this strategy will work if every country on planet earth will reset their tariffs on incoming USA goods and services to zero.

What happens then?

start with the obvious - it will never happen. Some countries will try to accommodate USA demands while other will find other channels to purchase what they need or even may start at looking for way of producing it themselves.

[omega]

3 hours ago, bkkmfj2648 said:

And furthermore, what I don't understand is the following:

Trump states that he will eliminate the IRS and replace it with the ERS - which will collect all of these tariffs for the USA Treasury.

But, if every country follows the path of Thailand and Vietnam to reset their tariffs on incoming USA goods to ZERO --> then the ERS gets nothing.

Please explain how this strategy will work if every country on planet earth will reset their tariffs on incoming USA goods and services to zero.

What happens then?

That's not how tariffs work.

Tariffs placed by the USA on incoming goods are paid the by the person or company in the USA who is importing the goods. That additional cost will be added to the total price of the goods. The people buying the goods... US Consumers... ultimately pay the tariff. Americans will pay more for imported goods.

Thailand reducing their Tariffs on US goods means that it becomes cheaper for Thai importers to import US goods. Thai consumers will pay now less for things imported from USA.

Trump is trying to use the tariffs to effectively make "Made in the USA" products cheaper, driving up demand for them, and encouarging more manufacturing in the USA.

He may or may not be successful.

But it is going to be a painful process to transition to this new global order for trade. The "old" global supply chains meant that components for cars, airplanes, electronics and other advanced manufactured goods, would be sourced from all over the world. Those components are now subject to tariffs... making even products "made in the USA" more expensive, until supply chains can be adjusted to minimise costs in Trumps new world.

Americans are not the only ones hit of course. These tariffs, and the increased prices American consumers will need to pay, means demand will drop, and other countries will take economic hits.

[bkkmfj2648]

12 minutes ago, omega said:

That's not how tariffs work.

I think that my point was missed.

So, Thailand reduces its tariffs to zero on incoming goods and services from the USA.

Trump reciprocates and lowers the tariff for goods coming into the USA from Thailand to zero.

What will be the impact of this NONE tariff new world ?

[omega]

8 minutes ago, bkkmfj2648 said:

I think that my point was missed.

So, Thailand reduces its tariffs to zero on incoming goods and services from the USA.

Trump reciprocates and lowers the tariff for goods coming into the USA from Thailand to zero.

What will be the impact of this NONE tariff new world ?

He won't go no tariff.

Even with countries like the UK, with whom the US has a broadly neutral trade balance, are subject to 10% tariffs.

[PeterRS]

With many countries like China, Japan and even Germany having diversified their manufacturing to a number of different countries using part of end products actually made in more than a few, how does the USA plan to implement the detail of tariffs? Are Nike shoes made in Vietnam, China and other countries treated as American products or products from Asian countries?  

How will tariffs affect the price of cars in the USA where Mercedes, for example, have several factories? Will a Mercedes made in Thailand become more expensive than one made in the USA?

How about the Boeing 787? It has 28 key parts made outside the USA. Will these parts be subject to tariffs?

[bkkmfj2648]

2 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

How about the Boeing 787? It has 28 key parts made outside the USA. Will these parts be subject to tariffs?

It's mind boggling.

I've read that his goal is to get the USA back to its pre-1913 = pre Federal Reserve Bank days, when the then federal government was funded by tariffs instead of today's model of being funded by the USA global citizenry via the IRS and global tax collection.

[Travelingguy]

14 hours ago, reader said:

Thailand, which imposes a 72% tariff rate on goods imported from the US, today announced its strategy in response to Trump's imposition of a 36% rate on Thailand: cut tariffs on US goods and purchase more US imports.

Thailand does not impose a 72% tariff rate on all goods imported from the US.  I believe the actual number is in the single digits.  I believe that Trump used trade imbalance as the proxy for determining what tariff to impose.  A 72% trade imbalance makes perfect sense.  The average Thai cannot afford to buy most of the products that the US exports. This is why the tariff rates that Trump came up with are disproportionately high with regard to low income countries. 

[PeterRS]

5 minutes ago, bkkmfj2648 said:

It's mind boggling.

I've read that his goal is to get the USA back to its pre-1913 = pre Federal Reserve Bank days, when the then federal government was funded by tariffs instead of today's model of being funded by the USA global citizenry via the IRS and global tax collection.

Trump seems to forget that this is 2025 - not 1913. Interconnected supply chains are everywhere now. They were not then. Besides, in 1913 the USA had just become the world's strongest economic power. It remains in that position, but add China, Japan, Germany and India as one block and you have an even greater economic power. Granted, these four countries all have their own economic problems at present.  But together they are in a position to create a trade war that will likely end with either US consumers paying a lot more for many products which ultimately will hurt his electoral base - or Trump will once again be shown as the emperor with no clothes when he has to withdraw or significantly reduce his new tariffs.

He also seems not to remember that the Chinese think in the long term - not in four year electoral cycles. 

[PeterRS]

Trump's 44% tariff on Myanmar is absolutely outrageous! I could say the same about the tariffs on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, but at least they have not been fighting a multi-decades long civil war with a junta that cares nothing about the lives of ordinary people. Nor have their countries suffered the most devastating earthquake in years which Trump's policy has resulted in aid from the USA being held back. Shame on him!

[reader]

7 hours ago, Travelingguy said:

Thailand does not impose a 72% tariff rate on all goods imported from the US.  I believe the actual number is in the single digits.  I believe that Trump used trade imbalance as the proxy for determining what tariff to impose.  A 72% trade imbalance makes perfect sense.  The average Thai cannot afford to buy most of the products that the US exports. This is why the tariff rates that Trump came up with are disproportionately high with regard to low income countries. 

What are the actual numbers and goods that Thailand applies to US imports?

[reader]

Schedule of Thailand tariffs on US imports:

https://th.usembassy.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/90/Import-Tariff-Table_Thailand-Update-June-2024.pdf

 

[macaroni21]

The issue is much bgger than tariffs, and no amount of tinkering with tariff rates will begin to address the real problem. 

Essentially what has happened is that the US has flipped ideologically, and wants to be:

(a) an isolationist power that nevertheless wants to remain the leading military power in the world, yet without getting entangled with alliances ("fortress America");
(b) a self-sufficient economy - because it sees a self-sufficient economy as critical to maintaining its strength and freedom of action.

The two aims are not achievable in combination, but the US does not realise that yet.

But I shall stick to the economic side in this discussion, which will mostly be about trade flows, reserve currencies and exchange rates.

 

It is not normal for the US Dollar and Western currencies to be so strong

We take it for granted that developing countries' currencies should be weak vis-a-vis the USD and western countries' currencies, such that Americans and Europeans end up with huge purchasing power relative to Thais, Brazilians or Vietnamese. It's an abnormal state of affairs that came out of an abnormal period in human history. The West industrialised between 1850 and 1950, while (partly through colonialism) other parts of the world remained agrarian, with a few places becoming mainly diggers of minerals.

The West didn't have much need or use for the agricultural or even many of the mineral products from the non-West. Or if it did, then through the power assymetry of colonial empires, it kept the output of the non-West cheap relative to the metropolitan countries like Britain and France. Even during the post-colonial 1950s to 2000, the non-West had healthy demand for products of the West - industrial goods, consumer goods, cultural goods (movies, music) status goods (wines and Porches) and also services from the West (banking, higher education, aviation) - whereas the non-West produced little that was of interest to the West (rice, anyone? coconut, anyone?). This imbalance of desire led to high demand for Western currencies (with which to buy western goods) and low demand for non-Western currencies among westerners. Westerners had no need to hold bahts, pesos, dinars, when they had little of interest to buy things from baht-cuntry, peso-country or dinar-country. As a result Western currencies became high-valued relative to non-West currencies.

At the same time, since so much of trade was directed towards to the West (rather than a non-West country trading with another non-West country), holding on to a buffer of Western currency was useful, not only to facilitate the buying of Western goods, but also as a mutually acceptable medium of exchange between 2 non-West countries. The West's aversion to holding rupiahs, rupees, reals, rials and ringgits also meant that even when the West bought stuff from a non-West country, the trade was almost always denominated in a Western currrency. Because of political stability and independent Central Banks in western currencies, there developed trust in the stability of the value of Western currencies. And thus, these trade-accrued buffers of western money held by non-West countries (sometimes indirectly through commercial companies) came to represent a store of value, i.e. reserve holdings.

Buffers are not in themselves bad. They lubricate trade, both with the country of the currency, but also with third countries.

Of course, the most desired reserve currency (which used to be gold and the Pound Sterling) came to be the US Dollar in the 2nd half of the 20th century. Just about every country in the world holds a buffer reserve of USD.

 

Oh shites, the agrarian countries industrialised

The present crisis owes its origins to decades back when several agrarian countries industrialised. Japan led the way, even before 1950, but post-WW2, we can add South Korea, Taiwan, many Latin American countries and many Asean countries as well. India too, though India seems disinclined to participate in the global trading system as much as the others. And of course, there's China. Not only did they begin to produce industrial and consumer goods, many of these countries produced them at far better price-value points than factories in the West.

Trade patterns changed. Today the West has a huge appetite for the industrial and consumer products of the non-West. Over decades, the US began to import huge volumes from countries like China, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, while these countries (as they developed their own domestic industries) had less and less demand for US and Western goods (in general). In certain sectors, US goods still had the competitive or technological edge, but in sector after sector, the US has lost it. 

These non-West countries were soon selling far more to the US than they were buying from it ---> the trade deficit.

Yet, because of the trust in the USD, these non-West exporters were happy to receive payment in USD. But because of the chronic trade deficits year after year, the amounts of USD held by the non-West grew and grew. And for a long while, the US government was happy with that, because they could run a budget deficit and simply borrow China's dollar holdings, Japan's dollar holdings, Singapore's dollar holdings, to finance their budget deficit. 

 

Breaking point

You guessed it. We're now at breaking point. Borrowings cannot grow indefinitely. Interest paid out to China, Japan, etc keep growing. Somebody somewhere sees the de-industrialisation of the US as a serious threat to its future as a world power. So we see this ideological change: WE MUST RE-INDUSTRIALISE!

Trump's tariffs are meant to serve this purpose: to shut down imports into the US. To close the US market off from foreign producers/exporters so as to motivate re-industrialisation. I therefore do not think any tinkering with Vietnam's or Thailand's or Brazil's tariff regimes wil truly mollify the US now. 

 

But it won't work, at least not without other consequences

Economists are nearly unaminous that the goal of re-industrialisation will not work the way Trump and MAGA imagine. I can think of three big reasons:

1. So long as Trump's and succeeding administrations flip and flop policy-wise (the most likely scenario), no investor will be confident enough to invest/build factories to the scale required for the US to get anywhere near self-sufficiency.

2. In many industries, the US does not have the knowhow to manufacture to the same quality at the same efficiency as producers in other countries, notably Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea. Or Germany for machine tools. In specific sectors, Brazil and Mexico too. Think EV cars, solar panels, robotics, any number of products you find on Walmart or Target stories. Now think about AI in which China just pulled an upset. 

3. Even if American factories manage to produce these goods which the US hitherto has imported, they will be produced at a cost that is uncompetitive on the world stage (US wages being one of the reasons... more on this later). So, the US-factories will not be able to sell abroad, thus, not reap economics of scale that spring from serving a larger global market

In short, either the aim of US self-sufficiency will not be attained, or it will be attained in a way with a closed market like India's: domestic manufactures for the domestic market, with American consumers paying much higher prices for their US-made equivalents than what people in the rest of the world pay for the best Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Czech, Chilean, Turkish, Brazilian, German, Canadian products.

 

What are the other consequences?

If the US becomes more like a closed market with imports strongly inhibited, then countries like China, Germany and Japan that have hitherto accummulated huge USD surpluses held in the US as reserves, will soon stop growing their reserves (since their trade surpluses will vanish). They may even wind them down because the unpredictability of US policy (e.g. after seizing Russian reserves) makes it risky to hold so many US dollars. There is also a real prospect of serious depreciation of the USD.

Consider this: the value of a currency vis-a-vis other currencies (i.e. the exchange rate) is a matter of supply and demand. If countries, because of their reduced trade with the US, no longer see the need to hold so much in buffer (since there is less trade to lubricate), if countries fear their reserves being seized, then they will want to offload whatever USD they have down to a safe amount. The offloading (a.k.a. selling pressure) will have an effect on the price of the USD (i.e. the exchange rate versus other currencies).

This then becomes a vicious cycle. Imports desired by Americans first have their prices raised because they now come with a 25% (insert percentage here) tax (also known as tariff) payable to the US government. Then as the USD falls in value versus other countries, imports become even more expensive to Americans. If the effect of expensive imports is to reduce trade into the US further, then countries like China, Japan, will want even less to keep holding US dollars. Which then cycles back to downward pressure on the USD.

What about financing the US government's deficit? Well, as China's, Japan's and other countries' USD reserves shrink, the US government will have fewer lenders to help it bridge the deficit. Meanwhile the tariffs are going to be such that imports will likely shrink, thus not raising as much revenue as hoped for (at the same time, more Americans will find themselves buying less since they cannot afford imported goods as much as before). Economists have pointed out that even in the best scenario, revenues raised through new tariffs will not be anywhere enough to close the budget deficit. 

If the US government cannot fund its deficit, it will necessarily have to slash expenditure. Military expenditure. Social spending. Infrastructure maintenance.

But won't there be a point when US-made products become competitive on the world market? Yes, in theory. But costs in the US will have to fall very far to get there. Labour cost has to match what factory workers earn sewing Nike shoes in Indonesia, packing corned beef in Brazil, assembling umbrellas in Vietnam and making knock-down furniture in China.

Let's use an example that we're familiar with: paid sex. Today, the US has a trade deficit in paid sex. More Americans buy sex from the non-West than non-westerners buy from America (they can't afford it!). In order for a trade balance to be restored, the rentboy in the US has to cost roughly the same as the rentboy in Asia or Latin America since the rentboy in the US probably does not offer any qualitatively better service. I think currently, the price differential is $250 vs $60? i.e. roughly 4 to 1. Probably more. So, to restore trade balance, the USD has to fall to a quarter of its current value before US products/services become as attractive as non-west products/services. In other words, trade balance in paid sex will be restored when the USD is worth 8.50 baht, or 1.40 Brazilian Reals.

At that point, we will buy Nike shoes sewn in Massachusetts, hang up Christmas lights made in Arkansas, and fly over to North Carolina for two weeks of debauchery. Mind you, we might stll be flying over in a Chinese-made airliner, watching made-in-Japan holographic movies en-route on our foldable phone made in Syria by a Vietnamese tech company.

[NIrishGuy]

Great post there Macaroni21, I was about to say did you copy and paste that from somewhere - until I reached the last paragraph re the rent boys ( which explained the situation in the best way possible for me at least 🙂.  The only point I'd add there is even if the American rent boy model drops their costs to a quarter of their current costs i STILL will be opting for the Asian model as we know it just operates SO much better and gives much better short and long term (time) service !   

[vinapu]

22 hours ago, PeterRS said:

 

How about the Boeing 787? It has 28 key parts made outside the USA. Will these parts be subject to tariffs?

initially 29 until they realize they goofed again

[PeterRS]

The new, but already desperately late, 777X is as bad. Parts of the exclusive GE engines are made in Italy, the folding wing tips in Germany and France, the doors in Vietnam, parts of the landing gear in Japan, the UAE some of the composite parts, the horizontal stabilizer in China, the company responsible for the interior layouts and seating has 150 sites in 25 countries including the UK meaning many arrive just in time for assembly in the USA. Rudders for Boeing jets have been made in Australia for many decades. A tariff bonanza for someone!!

[Travelingguy]

16 hours ago, reader said:

What are the actual numbers and goods that Thailand applies to US imports?

Schedule of Thailand tariffs on US imports:

https://th.usembassy.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/90/Import-Tariff-Table_Thailand-Update-June-2024.pdf

 

Various sources on line cite 3 to 4% overall.  The list that you cited from the US Embassy covered various food products with varying tariffs.  Interestingly, none of those tariffs were more than 60% on any particular product.  And only products that had import tariffs where listed.  The list is fairly short and there are no zeros.

But more to the point, Trump’s tariff decision has zero to do with Thailand or any other countries tariffs.  It is strictly related to balance of trade.  

 

In 2024, the United States had a goods trade deficit of $45.6 billion with Thailand, with Thailand's exports to the US exceeding US exports to Thailand. 

Here's a more detailed breakdown:

US Goods Trade with Thailand (2024): 

Total Trade: $81.0 billion 

US Exports to Thailand: $17.7 billion 

US Imports from Thailand: $63.3 billion 

Trade Deficit: $45.6 billion 

Thailand's Trade Surplus with the US (2024): 

Trade Surplus: $45.6 billion 

 

If you take the trade deficit ($45.6 billion) and divide by US Imports from Thailand ($63.3 billion), you get  72%.  This is where he got his number.  This applies to the rest of the countries as well.

 

Don’t fall for the BS that the White House accounted for tariffs and non tariff factors to come up with their estimate of “reciprocal” tariffs.  There was no thoughtfulness put into this policy.  Trump isn’t really capable of thoughtfulness.

 

[PeterRS]

14 hours ago, macaroni21 said:

The issue is much bgger than tariffs, and no amount of tinkering with tariff rates will begin to address the real problem. 

Thank you for a fascinating investigation of the real issues. In the late 1980s I read what was then a new book by the Yale University economist Paul Kennedy. "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers : Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 To 2000" looked in detail at which countries had been "great" powers during that time and the reasons why they ceased being "great".

Kennedy's essential premise was that as any country becomes larger and larger, particularly through colonialism and military might, it has invariably found the cost of that military might becomes too great for the country to afford through taxation of its people and those in its overseas colonies. Military overstretch is the term he uses. As other countries have developed their own military strength, so then has it become necessary for the "great" power to continue to invest more and more of its tax revenues in new and more modern military equipment. "Great" is not a given. It is a term relative to what other countries are doing or are capable of doing.

Only if the overall tax revenues increase can the country continue at the top of the international tree, as it were. With the USA having reduced its relative tax revenues over the years by not taxing the rich at the levels paid by ordinary folk and yet at the same time devoting more and more funds to increasing the size, capability and international reach of its armed forces, Kennedy concludes that its term as a great power must inevitably wane.

The fact is that the USA's national debt has increased massively since 1960. Only during President Clinton's Presidency did it fall significantly, particularly during the last four years of his term in office when the USA's GDP was actually in surplus. In those years the deficit to GDP ratio also fell to under zero. Instead of building on that, one of George Bush II's first actions was to give away - mostly to the already rich - all the savings under Clinton. Trump 1's final year in office showed a more than tripling of the debt and a similar increase in the debt to GDP ratio (although in fairness it has to be pointed out that this was the first year of covid). 

In the fiscal year 2024 (i.e. the year ending September 30), the US government spent $1.18 trillion more than it received in revenues. The country's national debt then stood at $35.46 trillion, or 125% of GDP. That amounts to $271,577 of debt for every tax payer and that debt has to be serviced through issuing government bonds. (The figures just quoted are from the US Monthly Treasury Statements).

In October 2024, Maya MacGuineas, president of the [non-profit group] Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said that is equal to borrowing about $5 billion a day . . . We’re borrowing nearly double the amount we borrowed annually before the pandemic, and this is projected to grow indefinitely,” she said. “This is no way to run a country. In fact, the way we have been running the country is we don’t pass budgets; we don’t pay for new policies; we don’t address our major entitlement programs, which are facing insolvency; and we tolerate the two major presidential candidates competing over who can promise to give away more.”

Kennedy's book has some flaws, but not many. For example, he failed to predict the end of the USSR, as did most economists of the day, but does outline the huge problems it faced. In general, though, his analyses are spot on! If the USA is effectively to reduce its National Debt, its existing military outreach has to be addressed. Were that to happen, it would be a much greater shock to the world than any number of tariffs. In our part of the world alone, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan would just be some of the countries to become massively concerned!

It really would be a great service if Kennedy could update his book to cope with modern day realities.

[reader]

Many good points made above. In the end--if there is one--it will be settled in the age honored custom: on the trading floors around the globe. There's only one motive there: maximize profits. Unlike in the news media, it's non-political or idealistic. It's greed on steroids but the only way to take the other even less altruistic motives out of the equation.

 

[macaroni21]

23 hours ago, PeterRS said:

In the late 1980s I read what was then a new book by the Yale University economist Paul Kennedy. "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers : Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 To 2000" looked in detail at which countries had been "great" powers during that time and the reasons why they ceased being "great".

I read that book and I remember it well. Paul Kennedy's analysis was an eye-opener.

However, I would not imply that the US will not remain a great power, at least for the rest of this century. Very likely it will be one of two powers in a bipolar world though if (post-Trump) it fails to repair its relationships with Europe, Canada and other democratic countries, it will get increasingly isolated to the point of irrelevance. Even if it tries to repair those relationships, I fear permanent damage has been done; there will never be the same level of trust again.

Foreign powers are smart enough not to imagine that this is just a Trump-and-Vance phenomenon. They know that the agonies the US is suffering right now arise from systemic factors (more below) including cultural and ideological ones. These agonies will remain long after Trump and Vance, and to that extent, the US will continue to eat itself.

I was born when the British Empire had just crumbled. Like so many here, I witnessed the fall of the Soviet Union and the re-arrangement of the world order from the bipolar world it represented. While both empires fell relatively quickly; we should not assume that the US empire will vanish as quickly. I think the difference may be that the British and Soviet empires had their economies hollowed out to a much larger extent than the US' today, and so when they collapsed, it was more complete. The US economy is still relatively strong so even if its political influence wanes (mostly due to self-inflicted damage) it will remain an economic force to be reckoned with. 

The British empire

My understanding is that the fall of the British Empire was a classic example of military overreach, but a fiction of military might still have been sustained for a century more if not for Kaiser Germany and Nazi Germany. The two World Wars accelerated the humbling of Great Britain by draining it of precious resources. Also - and we often forget - by the beginning of the 20th Century, Britain had lost the technological edge  and industrial might to the USA. So, by about 1915 or 1916 when Britain was struggling in the trenches in France, dependent on supplies from across the Atlantic (attacked by German submarines) the writing was on the wall. There was still much political pretence of power in the 1920s and 1930s (King George V's extravagant visit to India for example), but the economic troubles and electoral upheavals of that period further hollowed out the UK. The Second World War was the coup de grace; after that it could be nothing but retreat after retreat from imperial status after 1945.

So, even as I speak of a fast collapse of the British Empire, it still took about 30 years from 1915 to 1945, and then another 20 years to 1965 before decolonisation had more or less run its course..

The Soviet empire

The collapse of the Soviet Union, in my estimation, took about 25 years, which is still remarkably long considering that the Soviet empire was only built on military mght, never on economic might. The Soviet empire came about because its armies were victorious over the Nazis across large swathes of Europe. There was enough industrial prowess to support a powerful military but Russia never developed a well-rounded economic engine to deliver prosperity and a better life for the peoples it had conquered. Starting from 1956 in Budapest, merely 10 years after the establishment of its sphere of influence, it had to use military power to suppress a revolt. This would be repeated every decade.

Unlike the decline of the British Empire which was all over the newspapers even as it lurched from one crisis to another through the 1920s and 1930s, the fiction of a powerful Soviet Union was kept up through the 1960s and 1970s such that its weak foundations and gradual hollowing out were largely invisible to the Western public. Sure, the Soviets engaged in propaganda making themselves look great, but even more so, the invisibility of Soviet weakness was also due to American propaganda which needed a fear of a powerful adversary to justify its military-industrial complex.

@PeterRS's hope for an updated Kennedy book is seconded by me. I think it will reach quite different conclusions when taking the Soviet example into account. Although the Soviet empire was engaged in several proxy wars plus a direct intervention in Afghanistan through the 1980s,they weren't particularly costly (except maybe the last one), Instead the already weak economy behind the Soviet empire was further weakend from the 1960s onwards through rigidity, over-centralisation, inefficiency, and the idiocies of ideological blinkers. The stiff, aged Brezhnev only symbolised what was happening throughout its economy. Maybe there was a dose of corruption too, but nothing like the scale of what was to come from the post-Soviet Yeltsin years on. In other words, the fall of the Soviet Union and its empire was primarily an economic event in my opinion rather than a matter of military over-reach. It was very different from the collapse of the British empire.

And the US empire?

Of course it is too early to be writing about the fall of the US empire. However, when it is written, I think it will be a different story again from the collapse of the British and Soviet empires. In its heyday, the US had trememdous economic, technological and military might, and so it resembled the British empire at its late 19th Century apogee. Unlike the British empire which had a relatively tiny population in its metropolitan country compared to the population sizes it dominated, the US home population (and economy) was also relatively large. It was an empire with far stronger footings than the British or Soviet empires.

So how does an empire of such solidity collapse?

In short: because it was stolen. It was a case of larceny on an epic scale.

Eh?

The American ideology of trickle-down economics created a relentless and accelerating enrichment of the 1-percent at a cost to the 99-percent. And it's not just ideology, it is also culture-with-a-religious-fervour. The American culture over-prizes freedom over responsibility; built into it is a distrust of the role of government. The American myth is about escaping the clutches of authority (into the untapped potential of the Wild West frontiers, for example), where "government" is synonymous with regulation and taxation (King George III and successive US administrations in Washington) rather than shared security, pooled resources and wellbeing.

Leveraging this myth, the 1-percent essentially stole the American economy with the consent of the American electorate. "Tax cuts" is a winning slogan. It helped when the opposition neutered itself by engaging in arguments about (1) adding more letters to LGBTQIA... (2) slavery reparations (3) defunding the police, etc.

If we look back, we can see the symptoms of this Grand Larceny from decades ago. Among developed nations, the US is striking in how impoverished its people are relative to its economic headline numbers. The cost of healthcare compared to other developed countries is well known. And yet, Americans' health is arguably worse than in most other developed countries. The US has a perpetual housing and homelessness crisis. It has a perpetual, endemic drug problem. Don't even get me started on guns and the public safety issues (and costs) these create. It incarcerates a relatively large percentage of its population (at a cost to the State, and a cost to its social fabric). Higher education leaves Americans with a ridiculous debt burden that is seen in no other country. People in the US have to buy cars and pay for gas or take flights even for short hops to a degree that people in other countries do not, because of a failure to invest in public transport and fast rail.

For a country of its wealth, its failure to provide public goods - public health, public housing, public safety, public education, public transport - and a decent social safety net is quite astounding.

Not so obvious: Americans are so influenced by status culture that they spend disproportionate amounts of money on status goods that do not yield much return in real terms (and status culture is a result of almost unregulated media freedom, promoting celebrities).

Is it any wonder that the average American has reached breaking point? He is now frustrated and lashing out. At the same time, he is also trapped by his own culture (freedom!) and the American myth, so that he cannot see that the way the US organises itself is the fundamental problem. Blaming foreigners is much easier. 

So, this is not just a Trump phenomenon. The inherent contradictions of the US model are what's at work here.

[PeterRS]

One of the most perceptive, hugely intelligent posts ever seen by me on this forum. A great big thank you!

[Keithambrose]

2 hours ago, PeterRS said:

One of the most perceptive, hugely intelligent posts ever seen by me on this forum. A great big thank you!

I second that. How nice to see an erudite post rather than some of the petty back biting that is sometimes seen!

[vinapu]

5 hours ago, PeterRS said:

One of the most perceptive, hugely intelligent posts ever seen by me on this forum. A great big thank you!

+1

[PeterRS]

Digesting @macaroni21's comments, I can see how he comes to the conclusion re the USA maintaining its importance geographically perhaps through the end of this century. The same was to a certain extent true with Britain.

It seems to me a fact that the end of previous 'empires' has almost always resulted from a rot starting from within. But whereas China, the Ottoman Turks and to a certain extent Russia, for example, had all collapsed largely because of their inability to adapt to a changing world, Britain had to give up its empire for a variety of reasons with the rot starting 70 - 80 years prior to World War II. And I think from @macaroni21's post it is clear that the rot has surely already started within the USA. How long it can maintain its international status no doubt depends to a large extent on the mass of its own peoples and what other empires might rise as the century progresses. I suspect we all agree that, even though it is presently tackling some pretty horrendous economic problems, China has the ability to become the world's only superpower. Whether under President Xi's successors it will wish to take that role, though, is in my view doubtful.

Put as simply as possible, the British ruling elite had for centuries been the land owning aristocracy. Thus parliament was elected from the votes of only a few hundred thousand land owners, all of whom felt they had some divine right to rule and were themselves very rich as a result of their huge land ownership. With the industrial revolution and the wealth derived from colonialism on a grand scale (at one time 25% of the known world was effectively British), the new mercantile class allied to massively increased urbanisation wanted its voice heard in the country's governance. Through a series of laws and taxes introduced over the middle 50 years of the 19th century, the wealth of the aristocracy was seriously diminished. Parliament had reduced the property thresholds required for elections thereby increasing representation from other classes in society. Britain still  remained rich but relatively less so.

There is a famous quote from the hugely wealthy British mining magnate, Sir Cecil Rhodes, who had moved to South Africa towards the end of the 19th century and after whom Zimbabwe and Zambia were initially named as Rhodesia: "To be born British at the end of the 19th century is to win the first prize in the lottery of life." The times, though, were already changing. By then only 18% of Britons had the right to vote. In the new century, the electoral franchise was extended to cover all males over 21 and soon all women. The First World War soon wiped out a large proportion of the aristocracy's first sons, those who historically inherited the family landed estates. Many of these were subdivided amongst other siblings, thus reducing their wealth. The income from estates fell and the death of so many during the war resulted in a major shortage of servants vital to running their massive country houses. It was a slow nail in the coffin for the aristocracy. Many stately houses were pulled down between the wars, their owners simply unable to earn enough from the land and to pay estate duties when passed from fathers to sons.

To cap it all, Britain had to  borrow massive amounts to finance its participation in the two World Wars. By 1945 Its debt exceeded 200% of GDP. Throughout the 1950s and 60s Britain had a tiered system of taxation and many paid a top rate of 97.5% on a large portion of their income. Financing an empire was totally impossible, although the wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill believed part of it could be saved. 

What might have happened without the two World Wars, we can only take a wild guess. But it's a silly question because the pieces on the international chess board were moving in a way that made those wars inevitable.