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Joshua Scheer
Donald Trump didn’t arrive in Beijing as the leader of a confident superpower. He arrived like a salesman carrying a collapsing empire on his back — flanked not by diplomats or peace negotiators, but by Silicon Valley monopolists, Wall Street vultures, and billionaire oligarchs desperate to keep their fortunes alive. Elon Musk. Jensen Huang. Larry Fink. Tim Cook. Blackstone. Goldman Sachs. The entire spectacle looked less like diplomacy and more like a corporate hostage negotiation staged on behalf of an American ruling class suddenly realizing it may have lost the economic war it started.
In this blistering breakdown, Ben Norton argues that Trump’s China summit exposes a geopolitical reality Washington refuses to admit publicly: the U.S. trade war backfired, China adapted, and America’s corporate elite now need Beijing far more than Beijing needs them. As the war on Iran drives inflation higher, supply chains fracture, and rare earth shortages threaten both Silicon Valley and the Pentagon, Trump’s anti-China rhetoric is quietly giving way to panic, flattery, and desperation. The result is an extraordinary image of imperial decline — an American president openly traveling with oligarchs to plead for access to the very economic system Washington spent years trying to cripple.
The best line of all from Ben may be this: “Nothing screams ‘we are an oligarchy’ more than taking oligarchs instead of diplomats to a diplomatic mission.”
And he’s right. We are living in an oligarchy — one where billionaires ride on Air Force One while working people are left paying for inflation, war, tariffs, and economic collapse. The masks are gone. Corporate CEOs now sit beside presidents like unelected cabinet members, openly shaping foreign policy, trade policy, and even war itself.
As the country barrels toward another election in 2028, the deeper crisis is that most major candidates, regardless of party branding, still end up bowing before the same billionaire donor class. The slogans change. The marketing changes. But the power structure remains untouched.
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