“When the United States pulls back this time, it’s going to tear down the global order with it,” he said. “The only question in my mind is, will it fall apart next year, or will it take a decade?”
The U.S. politically is set for a very serious retrenchment. We’re tired of the wars in the Middle East. We don’t trust the Chinese. We don’t trust the Russians, and we just don’t want to deal with it anymore.
Americans have always had an isolationist streak, but even they can see that when left on its own for the past 8 years by a largely absent and incompetent US leadership, the world has grown particularly unruly. Most Americans would like to walk away from overseas commitments, alliances, and involvements. As the potential for self-sufficiency comes within easier reach for more economic sectors, the temptation to “just walk away” grows ever stronger.
Energy Self-Sufficiency by 2018?
Increasing production of oil and natural gas, along with lower levels of consumption, will allow North America to become energy self-sufficient by 2018, according to a forecast released by BP (ticker: BP). The United States is expected to become energy self-sufficient by 2021, and oil self-sufficient by 2030.
… Production of gas is expected to increase 53% while oil production increases 37%. Total North American production is forecast to reach 29.5 MMBOPD in 2035, the highest level ever recorded, and 20% of total global energy production by the end of the outlook…
… As production continues to ramp up, consumption is expected to remain relatively stable. Total North American energy consumption is expected to increase just 6%, compared to global growth of 34%. Canada and Mexico will see consumption expand 22% while U.S. demand stays flat, growing 0.1% per annum to 2027 before declining through the end of the outlook. __ http://www.oilandgas360.com/north-america-will-become-energy-self-sufficient-2018-bp/
US Trade Shifting from Overseas Partners to Mexico and Canada for Increased Economic Self-Sufficiency
Canada and Mexico Taking More and More Trade from China
Wikipedia
Hundreds of US corporations make products in China for use or sale in the US. But as China’s government grows more militant and imperialistic, continues to steal technology and pirate goods, and as other economic conditions for overseas manufacturing in China deteriorate, US companies are moving production away from China and into Mexico.
A few good reasons for moving operations out of China and into Mexico:
Companies ship from Mexico to the U.S. and Canada quicker, and at a much lower cost, than is possible from China.
Proximity to the U.S. and Canada enables manufacturers in Mexico to make just in time deliveries in North America
While Mexico is once again becoming price competitive for high volume production, there is no better industrial location from which to do low-cost, customized manufacturing.
Being in the same time zones allows U.S. and Canadian designers and engineers coordinate their activities with their Mexican production teams.
Obtaining a visa and enduring a sixteen hour flight is not necessary should U.S. and Canadian personnel have a physical need to be in a Mexican facility.
In addition to transportation expense, a Mexican location also cuts inventory cost. At any given time, companies that produce in China for consumers in North America have significant stocks of goods in transit across the sea.
There are no duties or tariffs imposed upon goods traded between NAFTA signatory countries.
Mexicans, Canadians and Americans are more attuned to and comfortable with each others’ culture than is the case with that of China.
China’s intellectual property (IP) protection laws are notoriously porous, while Mexican IP laws function in much the same way that similar statutes do in the United States and Canada. __ https://www.tecma.com/moving-manufacturing-from-china-to-mexico/
New factories are popping up along the US – Mexican borderlands, Mexican workers are finding jobs easier to come by, and the economic reasons for illegal immigration to the US are beginning to shift.
With labor costs rising rapidly in China, American manufacturers of all sizes are looking south to Mexico with what economists describe as an eagerness not seen since the early years of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s. From border cities like Tijuana to the central plains where new factories are filling farmland, Mexican workers are increasingly in demand. __ NYT
As the US economy increasingly moves out of China, old Europe, and the middle east, economic trade and energy production will shift to North America itself — and to select Anglospheric and Latin American trading partners. At the same time, US military assets are likely to shift away from old Europe and most of the middle east, and more attention will be paid to monitoring long distance nuclear threats from air, sea, and outer space.
China and Russia are Growing Threats to Europe, Free Asia, Oceania, and Latin America
Under the dysfunctional EU bureaucracy, European governments and economies are handicapped by multiple counterproductive — even suicidal — economic, immigration, and energy policies. China has bought the Russian inner circle, and Russia has bought many top government officials inside the EU and specific European nations. Politics in the nations and alliances of the greater Eurasian landmass is becoming one giant circular clusterfoque. It is not likely to end well for Europe, with the US no longer in the picture.
Japan is under threat from both China and Russia. South Korea is likewise under multiple threat from its neighborhood. China’s imperial expansions threaten the integrity of most of Southeast Asia, much of Oceania, India, and the naval trade routes of Korea and Japan.
Latin America’s danger from Russia and China is similar to that of the brain damaged prostitute who cannot distinguish those who are likely to injure or steal from her from those who merely wish to pay for her services in a businesslike way.
Africa is, of course, the perennially hopeless continent of mind-children. Africa’s dictators could not care less how much suffering their people endure, as long as they are richly and frequently paid off.
Throw in Muslim Terrorists and is it Any Wonder that the US Wants to Retire as World Policeman?
The people of the US have never been comfortable with the global policeman role taken on by the US government. Unfortunately, the US government has grown too large and unwieldy for the American people to control. Obama has re-installed the imperial presidency, having been re-elected through thinly disguised election fraud in large city precincts of “swing states.”
The poisoned mix of great power imperialism, religious fanaticism, nuclear proliferation via North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran (all close friends of China, Russia), all combine with the dysgenic demographic population wave to make the world an increasingly dystopian place.
Particular Regions and Nations Will Try to Create Islands of Peace, Stability, and Prosperity
All governments are corrupt. All university faculties are well sprinkled with ideologues who would rather indoctrinate students than to help them learn to think for themselves. All media organisations are funded by and operated by people who lust for the power to shape the thoughts and beliefs of the masses. Almost all activist organisations are driven by greed, destructive ideology, or both. All corporations are insular and short-sighted, with limited and often perverse loyalties.
The task of building islands of stability and prosperity would seem hopeless, given the many obstacles that have been allowed to grow up. Even so, observant individuals should be able to judge emerging trends as they occur across different parts of the world. Most of us will need to settle for relative freedom and opportunity — as opposed to absolute freedom and unlimited opportunity, at least for now.
Thanks to Disruptive Innovation and Creative Destruction, Everything Eventually Comes Into Play
Over the past 50 years, most of the companies on the Fortune 500 list have dropped out of sight, to be replaced by new up and coming enterprises. The same process — driven by disruptive innovation and creative destruction — is likely to continue within economies that function under a modicum of “rule of law,” providing protection of property rights, intellectual property, and contracts. Such protections of civil law allow for pluralism and multiple foci of wealth and power — for as long as they last.
“Power vertical” nations such as China and Russia are largely controlled by a few powerful insiders. Such nations are usually transformed via revolution and/or disintegration. The demographic and geographical forces at work in both of those nations are leading toward powerfully destabilising events that are likely to result in their fragmentation — first Russia, then China.
Both imperial states spend exorbitantly on propaganda and espionage, as well as the financing of destabilisation efforts inside foreign nations. They have to invest in destruction of the prosperity and stability of others — as well as in the wholesale theft of intellectual and real properties — in order to survive as dictatorial and imperial powers.
If the US Pulls Out of Europe and East Asia, Imperial Forces Will Overwhelm
The price to be paid for increasing US North American isolationism and self-sufficiency, is the increased vulnerability of Europe and Free Asia to the power vertical imperialists. It cannot be helped. Europe and Free Asia will be expected to fend for themselves more and more over time. But neither region is prepared to resist the desperate imperial aggressiveness that the power vertical nations are being driven to — by their own demographic shifts.
And so until Russia and China inevitably unravel, they are likely to devastate large areas of the world in their desperate attempts to dominate at all costs. Assuming, that is, that the US proceeds on the course of isolation and self-sufficiency within North America. That is not a guaranteed outcome, but it is becoming more possible.
Bonus:
Science and Innovation Ratings
http://archive.rusbase.com/news/author/benhopkins/infographic-science-innovation/
The image above shows where “innovation” is taking place, but it does not distinguish between “disruptive innovation” and “sustaining innovation.” Disruptive innovation leads to discontinuities and to creative destruction and transformation of societies. Sustaining innovation is the incremental improvement of already existing products and concepts.
In China and East Asia, most of the innovation is of the “sustaining” type. To find true “disruptive innovation,” one must look to where opportunities to innovate — without fear of being imprisoned and made an organ donour for speaking your mind — still exist.
All of this is of crucial importance when one is considering the survivability of civilisations, cultures, and empires — globally, independently, at war or at peace.
al fin next level 