June Market Insights: America at 250
America reaches its 250th anniversary not as a fallen hegemon, but as the dominant centre of global hard power, monetary power, and frontier innovation. It still sits astride the world’s resource base through energy, agriculture, and continental depth; it still issues the reserve currency at the core of global trade and finance; and it still leads the race to build artificial intelligence (AI) as the next digital platform. Yet precisely because American power remains so large, the visible breakdown of the post–Second World War rules-based order has become impossible to ignore.