Adam Tooze

What do they think the structure of the power competition actually is?

So America was a Davos.

Our message there was, we own this.

We do what we say.

The Chinese were a Davos too.

Yeah.

Tell me a bit about what their message seemed to be and what their configuration was.

Do you buy the theory of Trump that you sometimes hear, which is that Trump and the people around him are correct in sensing, maybe even in some ways diagnosing the end of the old era, the weakening of America, the passing of the, you know, American period, even if they don't know what to do about it, that they're somehow reflective of something real and

even if they are a somewhat pathological response to that thing?

In 03 around Iraq.

One thing that

I have come to believe is that China's been exerting a much larger pressure on American politics and American society for much longer at this point than we give it credit for.

We've conceptualized it in weird ways or just stealing, you know, it's all just low-wage labor.

That's clearly not been true now for some time.

And so when we talk about

End of one order when we talk about transition to another.

Let's start before this Trump administration.

To you, what has China's role been in not just like the world economy, but in America's changing conception of itself?

In the Obama era, I remember a piece, I believe it's by George Packer, then in The New Yorker.

And it's about the Senate and the paralysis and sluggishness of the U.S.