Le Monde: The truth is that the United States is losing control of the world

The French Le Monde newspaper published an article by Thomas Piketty on the repercussions of US President Donald Trump’s decision.

Piketty explains that although the United States has been viewed by some as a less trustworthy country since the 2003 war on Iraq, which led to permanent regional instability, the deaths of more than 100,000 people, and the return of Russian influence, exposing to the world the evils of American military arrogance, this is nothing new.

However, Piketty notes that the current crisis is new because it challenges the core of the country’s economic, financial, and political strength.

The United States appears disorganized, led by an unstable and volatile leader who lacks a democratic counterweight.

The article discusses the implications of the current economic situation in the United States, describing Trump as a frustrated colonialist leader.

From a historical perspective, the article notes, the United States’ massive trade deficit (averaging about 3-4% of GDP annually from 1995 to 2025) has only one precedent for an economy of this size: it’s roughly comparable to the average trade deficit of the major European colonial powers (the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the Netherlands) between 1880 and 1914.

But the difference, from the author’s point of view, is that these countries possessed huge foreign assets, generating enough interest and dividends not only to cover their trade deficits, but also to continue accumulating financial claims in the rest of the world.

Piketty explains that rising interest rates could force the United States to pay large interest inflows to the rest of the world.

According to the article, the United States has so far gotten away with this thanks to its control over the global financial system.

Thomas Piketty explains the controversial proposal put forward by Trump’s economists to tax interest payments to foreign holders of US securities, arguing that Trump, more directly, wants to refill his country’s coffers by seizing Ukrainian minerals, along with Greenland and Panama.

The article concludes, “To envision what’s coming, we must grasp the current turning point… If Trump’s supporters are pursuing this brutal and desperate policy, it’s because they don’t know how to deal with the country’s economic decline”.

“The US president wants to maintain Pax Americana by exacting tribute from the rest of the world to fund America’s endless fiscal deficit, but as American power declines, we must begin to imagine a world without it”.