”It’s American conformity to standard imperial history.”

 NC: No, this is the imperial model, which succeeded. It prevented other countries from moving toward independent development, and therefore led to a situation in which U.S. multinationals dominate the world. If they had moved to independent development, we’d see exactly what we’re seeing with China today. It’s moving toward independent development; U.S. is trying to prevent it. The policies, shared bipartisan policies, are to try to prevent Chinese [independent] development. So if China, for example–you know, the mantra is “China’s stealing our jobs.” Is China stealing our jobs? They don’t have a gun to the head of Tim Cook, saying invest here. The U.S. multinationals are losing our jobs. But we don’t want China to develop as an economy.


That’s why the bipartisan programs are to prevent China from doing the things that make the economy successful–like industrial policy, to have a state industrial policy. We see that that’s successful; we want them to stop it. Kind of interesting, because that’s–economists and others, if they believe a word they’re saying, ought to be cheering. According to their theories, if the state intervenes in the economy, it’s going to harm the economy. But everyone knows the opposite is true. In fact, we ourselves have a massive state industrial policy.

That’s why you have things like computers and the internet and so on, it’s mainly public funding. But we don’t want China to have that, because they’ll be successful, they’ll be out of our control; that we don’t want. That’s what the kind of concern was in the fifties. So I think the imperial model has been very successful. It’s led to a situation in which it’s primarily designed for the benefit of U.S. capital, which has succeeded beyond belief.

他国の独立を妨げ、市場を開放させて、アメリカの多国籍企業が儲かるようにする、というのがアメリカの一貫した政策なわけですね。



GAFAMとか多国籍企業は、アメリカ社会やアメリカ人の創造性の象徴のように言われることがありますけど、その実、米国国家的戦略に乗っかってようやく繁栄したんじゃないですかね。

日本が、世界規模に発展する技術を開発するとアメリカが潰しにかかる、というのは、ときどき聞きますよねえ。