What the World Owes America — and What America Pretends It Does Not Receive.
In the fevered mind of the Trump administration — and under the economic gospel of Stephen Miran — the United States is a global Atlas, shoulders buckling under the weight of ungrateful nations, free-riding allies, and predatory competitors. The world, they argue, is bathed in the prosperity of American generosity: protected by U.S. aircraft carriers, stabilized by the almighty dollar, enriched by access to U.S. consumers. And what, they demand, has America received in return? Nothing, they say. Worse than nothing — they claim America has been robbed.
But this accounting — repeated from White House podiums to Hudson Institute pulpits — is a myth. A myth of victimhood wrapped in imperial delusion. Because if one dares to flip the ledger, if one looks beneath the bluster of trade deficits and defense budgets, a very different story emerges — one of empire masked as martyrdom, and of a system not draining America, but feeding it, empowering it, enriching it beyond historical comparison.
‘You Can’t sell a theory of dollar hegemony and global rent extraction to a voter in Ohio who just want the factory back --- so, instead, you give them a villain, slap on a tariff, and call it justice.”
This is the story of what America receives from the global system it built — and still dominates — even as it demands rent from the tenants of its own empire.
I. The Global Dollar — The World’s Drug, America’s Syringe
Let us start with the so-called burden of the U.S. dollar. Miran and Trump argue that the dollar’s reserve currency status hurts American workers by making exports too expensive. It is a clever sleight of hand — reframing the crown jewel of U.S. global dominance as a liability.
But in reality, the global dollar system is America’s golden goose. Every central bank in the world must hold dollars. Every major corporation must transact in dollars. Every commodity — oil, wheat, copper — is priced in dollars. This gives the United States a perpetual buyer for its debt, a bottomless pool of demand for its currency, and an invisible imperial tax it levies on global commerce.
The U.S. borrows cheaply because the world needs Treasuries. It can run deficits that would sink any other nation. It can sanction enemies not with soldiers, but with denial of dollar access — a financial kill switch embedded in the very architecture of the global economy. This is not a burden. This is power. This is tribute, dressed as a currency.
II. Wall Street: The Empire’s Bank
Every time a German automaker floats bonds, every time a Singaporean firm IPOs in New York, every time an Argentine hedge fund buys into U.S. tech — Wall Street wins.
America’s capital markets are the deepest, most liquid, and most trusted in the world. Trillions of dollars pour into U.S. equities, bonds, real estate, and private capital from every corner of the globe. Foreign investors are not doing the U.S. a favor. They are paying a premium for access. And American finance charges its toll: underwriting fees, management fees, spreads, commissions — the quiet machinery of empire.
If the global trade deficit matters, why doesn’t the capital account? The U.S. may import more goods than it exports, but it exports capital dominance, and it earns handsomely from it. Yet this inflow of wealth, these rivers of global investment flowing into American vaults, rarely feature in Trump’s speeches or Miran’s equations. Why? Because they shatter the illusion of victimhood.
III. U.S. Multinationals: The Global Rent Collectors
Apple sells more iPhones in China than in the U.S. Microsoft licenses its software in nearly every country on Earth. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Pfizer, ExxonMobil — these are not just corporations. They are planetary toll booths, collecting economic rents from billions of people, backed by U.S. intellectual property law, global market access, and military protection when needed.
Every U.S. firm with operations abroad extracts value made possible by the very system Miran wants to charge rent for. But again, this income — offshore profits, foreign royalties, transfer pricing games, repatriated cash — is never mentioned as part of the “what America gets” side of the equation.
It should be. Because these firms do not just profit from the U.S. economy — they profit from America’s empire of rules, from the legal systems and trade routes Washington helped build and still dominates. It is not simply that the world benefits from the U.S. — the U.S. feeds off the world it shaped in its own image.
IV. Soft Power, Hard Profits
From Hollywood to Harvard, from the NBA to Netflix, from Elon Musk to the Marvel Cinematic Universe — American culture is a global export machine. It shapes aspirations, influences politics, and sells everything from ideology to iPhones.
This soft power is not trivial. It translates into global demand for American products, services, and ideas. It gives American companies brand dominance and pricing power. It builds influence where tanks cannot go. And while the Trump administration decries the cost of foreign bases and global policing, it fails to recognize that every military base is also a cultural embassy, every aircraft carrier a symbol of brand America.
Is this free? No. But is it a loss? Absolutely not. It is a strategic investment — and the returns are immense.
V. The Hypocrisy of Selective Accounting
So, what does all this mean?
It means that when the Trump administration claims that the world “owes” America — for defense, for trade, for the dollar — it is cooking the books. It is presenting only the cost side of the ledger, ignoring the vast and diffuse benefits that flow back into U.S. hands — not just to Washington, but to Wall Street, to Silicon Valley, to the S&P 500, to the institutions that anchor America’s global dominance.
Tariffs, in this framework, are not tools of fairness. They are tools of selective memory — punishing others for winning at the game America wrote the rules for, while ignoring the windfall gains the U.S. reaps by simply being the house in a casino it owns.
VI. Conclusion: Empire in Denial
The tragedy of Miran’s burden-sharing thesis — and Trump’s tariff tantrums — is not just that they are wrong. It is that they are deeply unserious about the actual architecture of global power.
They ignore the nuanced truth: that the U.S. built the global system not out of charity, but self-interest — and it has profited handsomely. That the system is unequal not because America gives too much, but because it takes invisible rents the rest of the world barely recognizes.
This is the paradox of empire: it must convince itself that it is the victim — that tribute is compensation, not extraction. But the rest of the world is watching. And in 2025, as tariffs bite and alliances fray, the cost of this self-deception may finally come due.
Because eventually, even empires must settle their accounts.
John Adams, US founding Father and 2nd President….. “Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.”
John Vidas
April 25, 2025