The race for the presidency in the United States paints a picture of a divided country in danger of collapse. And despite everything, the economy indicates the opposite and the stock markets are experiencing the euphoria that artificial intelligence arouses.
Historians say that it is a country in the process of political and institutional decay. Investors, on the other hand, have never felt so happy: Wall Street has hit 22 historical daily records in the last quarter. Political scientists speak of a highly polarized society in which the basic consensuses have broken down. Economists, in contrast, rub their hands in the benefits that the manna of artificial intelligence can bring.
Stock markets do not always reflect the real economy. But can a country be subject to such extreme diagnoses? In theory no. But if we talk about the United States, the answer is yes.
Today, the country of the stars and stripes is perceived outside as a tired pachyderm lacking reflexes in international politics, forced to listen to the voice of actors such as China and also middle powers. The decade of the 90s, in which Washington ruled the world alone, is long gone.
However, despite the fact that there are those who view the United States as an empire that is collapsing, the truth is that its soft power has never been so effective. Thanks, in part, to the influence of social networks, which since the 2010s have changed the way the world consumes culture and entertainment. And also to do politics.
The collapse of a social system is sometimes preceded by a great internal division. Joe Biden, an unpopular and fragile-looking president, is today the only obstacle in Donald Trump’s race to a second presidency in the White House. Only a few tens of thousands of votes in some key states will separate the winner from the contender in next November’s election.
Trump has already said what he will do if he wins. In his first term (2017-2020) he caused a first dislocation of the international order with winks and praises to Putin and other autocrats. Now the gap can be bigger. If he cuts ties with Ukraine, as he is announcing, he will leave Europe alone in the face of an emboldened Russia. And it will cause a serious crisis in NATO, an organization that he dislikes because he has always thought that the Europeans do not pay for their defense (and in this, he is somewhat right).
The United States can also abandon agreements such as climate change: Trump is a denier and defender of the fossil industries. The relationship with China will not improve. Finally, he threatens a universal 10% tariff that would change world trade.
Inside, Trump wants revenge and brings to court his political enemies (Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton) and those who served with him but whom he considers traitors, such as Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Heritage Foundation, the think tank preparing Trump’s return, talks about purging the upper echelons of the administration, security and the military and replacing them with loyalists.
That’s the plan if Trump wins. But if he loses, there is no guarantee that he will have to accept defeat and we will not end up witnessing a second version of the assault on the Capitol like the one on January 6, 2021. In other words, chaos and unpredictability are the hallmarks of the house Chaos is the strategy that Steve Bannon, the most similar to his ideologist, prescribed to him when he started doing politics. Chaos is the most coveted gift for Vladimir Putin, who hopes that the United States of 2025 will look a bit like the Soviet Union of 1989, that of the collapse. And, like him, the entire extreme continental right to attack the European Parliament.
Now take a breath. take a breath The country in which such terrible things can happen has, on the other hand, a solid economy. In a better state than the rest of the other major economies. Better than Germany, without a doubt, in a situation of stagnation, and with it half of Europe. Better than China, immersed in a very risky model change. The United States has overcome the worst omens. Employment grows. Wages are growing. And where it was written that a recession was to occur, now there is what economists call a “soft landing”.
The most well-lit showcase of this fortress is a stock market doped with the promise of the Magnificent Seven (the group of tech companies that includes Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla) whose intel… artificial intelligence will inflate their profits and cause a formidable jump in the productivity of the economy.
Artificial intelligence requires huge amounts of energy and water to thrive. And not everyone is convinced: there are those who think that behind it there is more speculation than tangible reality. But nothing scares investors, who are used to living with uncertainty. They have learned to live with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, with a cold war with China, with a demonized geopolitics that causes situations like that of TikTok, threatened by the US Congress. They won’t stop to think if the euphoria over this technology is actually a new bubble.
Silicon Valley is the talisman of American resilience. In the gap that has opened between the economies of the United States and Europe in the last two decades (until 2000, they were very equal) three causes converge. The first is immigration, huge there, turned into a threat here. The second is energy, cheaper there due to fracking, scarce or non-existent in Europe. The third is technology, in which the United States seems to have left Europe behind.
