Episode 16- America's Shrinking Global Footprint Under Trump

The global chess board is being dramatically reshaped, and America's position as the dominant player is rapidly diminishing. Trump's second administration has launched what can only be described as a systematic withdrawal from global leadership across multiple domains, creating what critics have termed "MASA" - Make America Small Again.

The evidence is mounting across every sector of global influence. Trump's supposed war on "woke" institutions has morphed into a broad assault on American research and innovation, triggering an unprecedented brain drain as European countries openly recruit U.S. scientists who feel unwelcome in their homeland. This exodus of intellectual capital threatens to derail America's technological edge for generations to come.

Meanwhile, the economic consequences are already visible. Boeing faces the cancellation of hundreds of aircraft orders as retaliatory tariffs make American products uncompetitive. Tourism is plummeting as foreign visitors encounter hostile border policies, including invasive searches of personal devices. Agricultural exports, long a cornerstone of American trade, are collapsing as farmers lose access to international markets. Even in energy, where America briefly gained advantage through LNG exports to Europe, Trump's fossil fuel fixation ignores the reality that global oil prices have dropped below the threshold of U.S. profitability.

Most concerning is China's resurgence. While America retreats from innovation, research, and global markets, China has pivoted masterfully - maintaining political control while unleashing technological advancement. Their leap forward in electric vehicles exemplifies this approach, reimagining transportation while America clings to combustion engines. Traditional allies from Europe to Australia are recalibrating their relationships, no longer waiting for American leadership.

Is this American decline deliberate or accidental? Project 2025 advocates appear satisfied with these developments, suggesting a conscious strategy to transform America from global hegemon to regional power. But in a world that continues to advance without us, can a smaller America ever truly be great again? The stakes couldn't be higher as we witness what may be the voluntary surrender of American exceptionalism.

Transcript

Introduction to the Greenfield Report

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to the Greenfield Report with Henry R Greenfield, your gateway to understanding today's geopolitical landscape. With 50 years of experience across 10 countries, henry shares expert insights on world affairs, offering practical solutions and engaging guest perspectives. Dive into the Greenfield Report for lively discussions on the issues that matter.

Speaker 2 0:24

This is Henry R Greenfield for the Greenfield Report. Is Trump making America small again or massive? Today, on the Greenfield Report, we are going to go through how Donald Trump is systematically not just altering the American economy, but actually taking the US out of key areas in the global economy, ranging from competing with China, where the US is going clearly backwards, according to Ezra Klein and Thomas Friedman and many others, to today's announcement by the EU, france and, of course, previously Canada, as well as Germany, to invite US scientists, who now feel they are being purged out of American universities and research institutes that Trump has been attacking as well as defunding. What does this pattern really mean for the United States moving forward? Is it really the goal of Project 2025 to make the US a smaller regional power and no longer the global superpower and hegemonist in so many areas of the world? Is it true that the bubble has burst for the United States, and what does that mean? By that? Of course, we are looking at the United States no longer having the lead and the control of everything from financial markets to, of course, their waning industrial might, even in areas such as aviation, where Boeing and previously McDonnell Douglas, lockheed and so many others had such a fantastic and decades-long lead on startups like Airbus, even Boeing no longer can compete. Ryanair just today said that they are thinking of canceling 300, repeat 300 737 MAXs if Trump goes through on his tariffs, which would make those Boeing aircraft far too expensive for Ryanair, a low-cost budget airline which has changed the face of air travel in Europe and forced so many competitors to cut their prices and pave the way for such companies such as Wizz Air and others throughout India and in China. Ryanair itself, being the most stalwart and absolute committed Boeing customer, is now talking about taking on Airbus and even Comac, a Chinese low-cost airline copy of Airbus and Boeing, which is not even yet certified on the continent.

Speaker 2 3:05

Throughout the world, what we see is with Trump, in effect, with his tariff policies, his anti-research, anti-education and his attacks on what he calls woke, when in fact, actually his attacks are broad-based attacks on science, attacks on research, attacks on innovation, while at the same time, his what they call the bro oligarchy or bro-larchy. However you want to say that malarkey, as Joe Biden would put it, those folks are just sitting on their technology the Facebooks of the world, the Googles, microsoft, on and on it goes, including even Apple, the Googles, microsoft, on and on it goes, including even Apple, all playing the game with Trump, the game of corruption, special deals, no innovation, nothing taking the Justice Department away from investigating any of them for their monopolistic practices. So, in the end, what we are going to talk about here today on the Greenfield Report is exactly what is Trump doing and how will this affect the US beyond his first 100 days, on everything from military leadership to leader of democracy to, of course, as what we're focusing now, on economic areas, including finance, where the US dollar is so shaky now that, regardless of what the fake and I mean it, the fake market is doing on the stock market in the US, the US dollar is down. Why is that? And we will talk about that the US bond market and how it is now costing the US government more to finance its debt than ever before, and it's not going to change Part one.

Speaker 2 4:58

So what do we mean about NASA? To make America small again? Why, in fact, would that be the case? Why would Trump want to do that? Well, nobody can really figure out exactly what Trump is thinking because in his current situation I mean today he was talking to Kristen Welker and he was talking about not paying attention to the US Constitution. So no one can sit there and just say, well, trump's policy is this or that. But we do know the effects on Trump's policy. We do know people like Kevin Roberts has been on NPR and made it very clear that he's extremely happy with what's happening in the economy, which is what this focuses on today, not on the loss of rights, not on any of the other attacks that Trump is making on. Even Greenland, which again he's saying he may invade to take.

Speaker 2 5:49

Trump is clearly at this point out of control and there is nobody who is going to be able to stop him until the midterms. In fact, actually, today's reports, if you listen to them, are they're trying to get Brian Kemp to run in this upcoming election against Oscoff, who is up for re-election. And why is that? Because they don't want to lose the seat or they want to regain the seat in Georgia so that Trump cannot be successfully impeached in the second half of his second term. So, all in all, in the United States there's going to be a lot of chaos that's going on in politics, but right now, masa is a very, very big and looming situation for the United States to deal with. What are some of these areas that are going to actually contract as we move forward?

Speaker 2 6:39

Well, first of all, tourism. The United States was, until Trump, the second largest destination in the world for tourism. Now, you might think that the declining US dollar would make it cheaper for people to come to the US. That's true. However, as Klein, friedman and so many others have noted and this is anecdotal, let's be honest there are so many people being stopped now when they enter the US and being asked can I look at your phone? Give me your phone. I need to check and see who you have texted. What is on your phone. So these could be random people, they could be academics, it doesn't matter. What matters is the US is closing down for foreigners. I can tell you, in the 40 some years that I went to China, I have never had anybody ask me to look at my phone in China. In other words, the US is really no longer a free and open place for people to come in, and we're talking not about people that are criminals. We're talking about people who are randomly selected as they come across the US border. So tourism is now clearly down. People do not want to go to the US and be involved with that type of chaos. So that's what we would call one of the areas.

Speaker 2 7:58

Tourism is of soft power. In soft power, there are several areas that Trump is attacking, such as today. He said he's putting 100% tariffs on foreign movies. In other words, let's cut the US off from any kind of foreign movies, as no one can afford 100% tariffs. What does that mean for China? China slapped also equally those kind of tariffs on US movies, including the mega blockbusters. Remember when John Cena apologized to China in order to make sure that his Marvel movies were not affected and all the Fast and Furious guys and everybody from the NBA all bowed down to China? Those days are over, because China can cut you off and they will cut you off this soft power, as the US culture, being the dominant culture in the world, is not a small thing to throw away.

Speaker 2 8:51

On the social media side already, as you know, china has blocked all of the US platforms from being in China, and everyone can talk about you know people having VPNs. That's rubbish. The average person is not going to use Facebook. They're not going to use any of those platforms. They're not going to use WhatsApp. They're going to use WeChat. They're going to use the Chinese platforms Weibo, all of the rest of them. So the reality is the US culture is being cut off from China, the second largest market in the world, and under Trump it looks like it's going to become the largest market in the world In the US.

Trump's Impact on American Economy

Speaker 2 9:26

What does that mean in terms of loss of tourism and soft power? What about the restaurant markets? What about the hotels? What about food and beverages? Remember all that? No tax on tips for Trump. Well, who's going to be paying those tips? You're not going to have foreigners coming into the US, and we're talking 70 million. 80 million were projected to come in to the US. A drop of 10, 20 percent is not out of reach. At the same time, we have to know what is going to be the effect on airlines and flights. Right now, the United States, under Biden, was undergoing a massive renovation program well needed, we might add on all infrastructure, including the airports in the US. With Trump trying to cut off all money to be invested in the United States, that means no infrastructure improvements. Newark Airport is considered one of the worst and is rated last in the United States, regardless of what they seem to be able to do for it. So we're going to have fewer passengers, especially international passengers, going through all of the major cities of the United States.

Speaker 2 10:34

Well, let's move on to a couple of other areas where the US feels that they are so powerful, including agriculture. Us farmers right now have a higher cost and they are losing their markets. As we all know, the US farmers were able to dump their product into USAID. Some of this was controversial, including in places like Haiti, where they put in so much rice from the United States that Haitians were no longer actually growing their own rice. So there's a lot of crazy things that happened, but let's make it very clear of crazy things that happened. But let's make it very clear, the US agricultural sector was buoyed by US AID and other purchases, which then went to countries in Africa, in the Middle East and also, of course, in Central America, as well as the Caribbean. So now that's not going to happen anymore. They will be, of course, replaced. We all know the soybean story between China buying either from the US. Well, they now can switch over to their BRICS friend, which is the category of the Brazil, russia, india, china and others. Now they can buy that cheaper from Brazil. Let's keep going on agriculture.

Speaker 2 11:47

We have already spoken about this on the Greenfield report on how to solve the immigration crisis. Trump is actually doing nothing. Initially he talked about several options, including his infamous stipend idea, but instead he's actually doing nothing more than just picking up and deporting people, sometimes to El Salvador, but in general, just pushing them back over the border, which means that we will have a shortage of people in the agricultural sector. And regardless of how many times we want to talk about the guest worker program and how this could work, trump is not thinking about that and he's ignoring it. So, therefore, the price of everything in agriculture is going to go up in the US and the international markets are down.

Speaker 2 12:30

We might like to also put in here this is extremely important to note that 90% of the exceptions on the Trump tariffs in his first term, 90% of the money that the US government paid out, went to subsidize US agricultural exporters. What does that mean? Where is that money going to come from? So Trump is going to give what? Another $50, $100, $200 billion to US agricultural exporters, who no longer will have any markets. As we listen to many market reports over and over, they're saying hey, we cannot grow vegetables here in Nebraska, what we're good at is growing corn, or what we're good at in other places is growing soybeans. If we don't have those international markets, there is nothing that we can grow. We have put our business models together over the last 25, 30 years, based on exports, based on global markets. If Trump is going to take those away from us, what are we going to do? And in this case there's no COVID or any other reason. In this case, this is nothing more, as in all of these cases of Trump deliberately destroying US export markets.

Speaker 2 13:41

Let's move on to energy, one of Trump's favorite topics Today. The cost per barrel of oil has gone down to $60. It doesn't take a genius to let you know that that is below the cost for Texas or any other oil coming out of the United States to compete internationally. Biden had a very good and delicate balance going where he was the drill, drill, drill guy, 30% more than anybody else, while he battled it out with MBS in Saudi Arabia which were holding back their production. But what was the reality? The reality was the US was winning. The US was selling its LNG converted, of course, from natural gas LNG to Europe as a substitute against Russian natural gas, which was cut off from the Nord Stream pipeline. Rotterdam put in all kinds of new terminals for US LNG and processing and sent it all over Europe. Biden was winning this one and Europe was not happy, but they had nothing to do but to buy because they had to support Ukraine.

Tourism and Soft Power Decline

Speaker 2 14:44

What is Trump actually doing? Trump is actually destroying I want to repeat, destroying the US energy markets. This is yet another area, because the US cannot compete when the per barrel price gets below $60 and below. So in the case of energy, yeah, you're going to have cheaper gas in the United States Congratulations America but all your export money is gone in the United States congratulations America, but all your export money is gone. And also in the United States. That's great to keep having more production, but what does that really mean? What it means is the US is not going to be competing in the areas that Ezra Klein and Friedman note for a very large part of their recent interview with each other, and that is in EVs. Evs, as we all know, whether Trump likes it or not, is the future, and gas guzzlers is the past. I come from Detroit and I'm telling you that a lot of people in Detroit are all thinking, wow, we really need to go back to those gas guzzlers. Sorry, that's not the way of the future.

Speaker 2 15:44

What the Chinese did was they jumped the chasm. Several of my friends were in Shanghai recently for the annual Chinese auto show and it was dominated by 30 companies or more in the EV sector. What China has done, as Friedman points out, is actually taken their mobile phone companies, like Xiaomi, and they've turned them into EVs. What does that mean? As Friedman points out, you can sit in the car, plug in your laptop. It's an automated vehicle, so a self-driving, autonomous vehicle, while you sit there and do your work. These are actually like personalized little capsules that are going around, and they're not cars in the traditional sense. They're not, you know, muscle cars or any of that kind of nonsense. That is over in China. China is moved to the next generation. There's also, by the way, the Americans keep saying long as we're talking here about China, which is a big part of this moving forward.

Speaker 2 16:41

China is leaping the chasm on several areas. It is not just Europe that is going to take away the US scientists and, as we already noted, macron, wanderlain, germany all of these countries are now offering to the US scientists and researchers please come to Europe If you don't want to stay in the United States. If you are being attacked by Trump, you don't have to stay there. So, literally thousands and thousands of researchers are now leaving the United States and taking away the next generation of innovation and leadership. And where are they going? Not just to Europe, but they're also going to China, and also they're going to places like Huawei, which Friedman points out Biden had on the ropes, but let's talk about that at a different point.

Agriculture and Energy Markets Suffering

Speaker 2 17:29

Before we move on to actually just a little bit on China, let's talk about what Trump is doing on the university's research and science areas, which is basically destroying them. I'm not sure exactly how anybody in Project 2025 or anyone else can be happy with this, but Kevin Roberts says he's thrilled, and what is he thrilled about? Well, he's thrilled about cutting the funding to so-called woke universities. Well, these woke universities are actually being cut in the funding in the areas of research, innovation, science all of the areas that the United States is leading in or was leading in. This is one of the strangest things of all, because in China they are a dictatorship, but they are moving forward on research silence all the areas that Trump is cutting. If Trump wants to cut his woke or fight against DEI, that's one thing, but why is he actually cutting research? This is one of the strangest things.

Speaker 2 18:28

Where, actually, friedman and Klein say that Trump is the Manchurian candidate, in other words, a plant, because they can't figure it out. Why would Trump want to throw away the US global leadership? So all of these scientists that used to come to the United States, all of these PhD students, they're now going to China and they will also be going to Europe, uk and even Australia in the future. Trump, by trying to cut out DEI, he's also cut out R&D. And what about our friend RFK Jr? That guy is cutting research also because he's anti-vax Again, another person in what? Another Manchurian candidate to destroy US research because RFK Jr doesn't like vaccinations? And what about the rest of their curriculums? There are, of course, cuts in scholarships, cuts in green cards, all of that kind of thing.

Research Exodus and Chinese Advancement

Speaker 2 19:24

The flip side is for China. They are inviting all of them in. So the United States is going backwards on all of these areas and China seems to be solving a lot of their problems. So let's now talk just a moment here before we wrap this up. What is China actually doing. The conventional wisdom with China during the Biden era was that Biden had won, which seemed to be true. Biden opened up earlier than China. Xi Jinping kept the economy closed in China. Xi Jinping was attacking all of the tech entrepreneurs, everyone from Jack Ma right on down, and it looked bad for China. China had a very high unemployment rate for its youth and so during the Biden years, again, the conventional wisdom was Biden was investing. Biden was doing all the right things reshoring chips, making sure that Taiwan was not the only place to get those high-end chips. He got Nvidia to come back. He got TSMC to come back. $60 billion facilities all under construction. This is all under Biden.

Speaker 2 20:28

What happens when Trump comes in? Trump immediately says well, he's doing the same thing, except he's not doing the same thing. And in fact, china has not been standing still, and that's the critical part. It's not just that Trump is against innovation, trump is against research. China has turned itself around. For five or six years there have been, as Friedman notes, almost no Americans in China. I have not been there in five years. I do have a few friends that are there and even then they have noticed that, while China was really slow during 20, 21, 22, even 23, china's begin to come roaring back. At the same time, with Trump, we're now having an inflection point. What's that inflection point? Well, basically, here's what's happened. An inflection point. What's that inflection point? Well, basically here's what's happened.

Global Rejection of Trump's America

Speaker 2 21:20

Biden had a big lead on China, but Xi Jinping figured it out that his way was not going to work and that he needed to go back to the innovation way. But he wants, of course, to keep control on the politics side, and he's done that. And I don't want to be against democracy, I am so pro-democracy but at the same time, xi Jinping has said to them listen, you can innovate all you want, you just don't do anything. That is against us and the Chinese Communist Party. That is the rule in China. Now, if Trump was saying that in America, hey, long as you don't challenge me, donald Trump, and my anti-DEI or whatever else he wants to do, he probably could get away with that. But he cannot get away with and this is what the point of this entire Greenfield report is today is that, by destroying the US technical advantage, destroying the US research, destroying the NIH and so many other research institutes and calling them woke, what he is actually doing is giving the future to China. And finally, let's close by saying this the rest of the world is also not standing by. This report could go in many directions. We can talk about the fact that Australia, in February, albanese and Labor had a 3% chance of winning and it looked like a slam dunk for the Conservatives, who were supporting Trump. Instead, what happened was it was a wipeout of the Conservatives, where even Dutton, the Liberal candidate meaning Conservative in Australia lost his own seat after 20 years. That means a complete rejection of Trump there. His own seat after 20 years. That means a complete rejection of Trump there.

Speaker 2 22:57

Canada Mark Carney, the new PM. He ran on an anti-American, anti-trump platform. Us exports to Canada have plummeted and Canada is seeking other relationships, as is everybody else. When Trump told Australia do not sell any more to China, they simply ignored him. Why? It represents 35% of the Australian revenues. So the rest of the world, no matter where you go, they are, in fact, actually dropping America, dropping Trump.

Speaker 2 23:27

So the Americans, and especially the MAGAs, can sit there and say we don't care the heck with the rest of the world, we don't need them. I'm sorry to tell you, you do need them. You cannot bring back supply chains. You cannot bring back automobiles which, by the way, are mostly robot made, as everybody knows. You are not going to bring back coal or any of the dead industries, and if you do, you're only going to make America polluted again.

Speaker 2 23:52

So we can conclude by saying what is MASA? Masa is Trump's attempt to make America small again. He wants to go back to 1900. 1900, the United States was not on top, as we have spoken about many times on the Greenfield Report. In 1900, the US was a regional power. It was trying to become imperialist, just like Trump is trying to re-become imperialist. Except this time, what Trump is doing is making America smaller, not making America larger. So Project 2025 can win all they want, but the rest of the world is the one that is actually winning and the United States is losing, and they are losing fast. This is Henry R Greenfield, for the Greenfield Report, reporting on how Donald Trump is making America small again, with perhaps no way forward in the future for the United States ever to recover.

Speaker 1 24:49

Thank you for joining us on the Greenfield Report with Henry R Greenfield. Thank you for joining us on the Greenfield Report with Henry R Greenfield. We hope today's insights into the ever-shifting geopolitical landscape have sparked your curiosity and broadened your perspective. Stay connected with us for more in-depth discussions and expert solutions. Until next time, keep exploring the world beyond the headlines.