To my mind the US faces THREE major/material systemic issues.
i) The US continues with a deficit on its current account & a deficit in international trade.
In the economic trilemma, this can only be sustained by the control of, or the expansion of money/credit. The policy the US has adopted is, post 2008, to crowd out normal banking, centralise a significant proportion of banking into the FED, and flood the markets with liquidity. This has not achieved its national income goal, but rather forced the prices of all national assets through the roof, buoying bond & equity prices into unrealistic zones.
That the US dollar is at the levels it is, means the rest of the world continues to but American Assets, based on a presumed US strength. But I doubt that there is that structural or innate US strength, it is simply a reflexive strength, that is 'it is strong, because it is seen to be strong'.
The other major economic nations have not helped, and their downwards pressure on currency has meant the dollar is artificially buoyed.
The world stands with the US in a secular stagnation, and the international CENTRAL banking systems (rather than commercials banks) now all stand ready to implode.
The world has never been here before.
US "existential" hegemony stands to be lost forever in the next, SUPER financial collapse.
ii) American jobs. The average working class US household does not have much to show for in realised gains in almost forty years. The high US standard of living is buoyed on borrowings & trivial consumption. Safeguarding the borders, fits within this model.
If Trump wants to build his wall, the greater achievement would be the wall built, not in bricks and mortar, but that built by federal criminalisation of employing illegal immigrants. This is 'bean counter' territory, rather than manning border posts in flak jackets and showy M16 s , and geographical borders.
The age of endless prairies is long gone. America today is as finite as any other country. It can no longer absorb a never ending immigration, an immigration that invariably stresses the social services (as limited as they are). This control gloves in with the domestic War on Terror. Immigration control will sandwich with Trump keeping fanatical Muslims at bay.
This control gloves in well with the 'inversion' of major corporates. Not only the tax savings by inversion, but the inversion of jobs from the US to elsewhere. US technology, designed, researched in the US on American sciences but built in China, Malaysia & often Israel
This control gloves in well as an affront to the perceived 99% ideology. Mayor US industrialists and uber rich US families getting richer and richer off of shoes/shirts/radios/TV's/Cars/Ships made in Seoul, Taiwan & Brazil and ever more and more the profits realised on those foreign shores.
This control gloves in well with America's drug problem, brought in undeniably & largely by the Mexican cartels.
iii) US Defence. The US's expenditure on defence exceeds that of the rest of the world. America's Corporate Taxes to sustain this are now the highest in the free world. This cannot endure indefinitely.
The age of grand Aircraft Carriers is over/history. The age of grand space programs is over.
NATO is American defence writ large with oh! some Europeans invited to pantomime their pitiful phantom war machines.
The US must scale this back. Forget the larger capital intensive stuff, concentrate on the drones, and the US ability to outproduce drones. Americans need the tax break, Americans needs a TRUMP tax break. Let Europe pay & finance its fight with Russia, and with its mass immigration from Turkey & beyond. Europe's military savings are spent on a social infrastructure the Americans don't have. A social structure the Americans pay for.
So concentrate expenditure on those soldiers of the military, navy & airforce who all vote for Trump.
The wars of the future will be hand-to-hand street-for-street, and we saw how effective the Dallas Shooter was eliminated with a drone, in that street scenario. Make those the big SYSTEMS of US capability, and wow factor. The modern 'krieg'
The wars of the future will be fought against insurgents who are free to catch a boat, bus or bicycle and cross borders in mufti, to wreak havoc.
The USA must, like Israel, maintain a large ready suite of offensive attack policy(s) at the ready at any time. Each time Hamas/Hizbollah/Egypt/Lebanon/Iran assaults Israel, the IDF responds aggressively at choice / juicy targets.
"Float like a butterfly, Sting like a bee!"
Intelligence is the key. Israel knows the names of suspects, their brothers names, their sisters names & and their uncles & aunts. If Israel is attacked indiscriminately, they assure the retaliation is focused. As focussed as it can be, given the 'hidden' fold that terror offers brothers, sisters, uncles & aunts.
