America was the world’s leading exporter until it was eclipsed by Germany in 2003, and then China. But could the US regain its status as top dog in exports? Tyler Cowen argues that it’s likely to happen. Highlights include:

• Artificial Intelligence, robots and computers are the present…and the future. Americans are best at producing this and people will demand it across the world.
• Moreover the more that the world relies on machines and thus capital instead of labour, the less it will matter that the US has a relatively high wage rate. Wages simply won’t enter into the equation – machines will.
• America has also pioneered fracking technology and has large shale oil and natural gas deposits. It could soon become the Saudi Arabia of energy thus creating jobs. Other countries don’t have the technology, or, as in areas of Europe, are too population dense to frack.
• As other countries continue to develop economically, there will be greater demand for products produced in the United States.
• This will, in fact, improve Sino-US relations potentially creating a more peaceful world.
• However America’s export dominance might not lead to higher wages for all.

To read much more of what is a long, detailed, and exhaustive analysis of America’s past, present, and future, how society will have to adjust, the joke about a man and a dog in a factory, why Europe and Japan won’t be able to capitalize as much upon the economic development of other countries, the coming two tiers in the United States and just so much more, click here.

Source: The American Interest