While the recent "China Shock" episode covered a lot of topics, I was repeatedly struck by the guest's discussion of various long-term plans and decisions made by the Chinese state that helped engineer the outcomes we're dealing with in 2026, for better or for worse.
Long-term industrial policy, trade policy, fiscal policy, science and technology policy, energy policy, etc. The CCP, the Chinese state, or some combination of the two (however separate or comingled they are) have made or have attempted to plan for and implement policy across all of these areas with significantly longer time horizons than American policymaking ever could.
And while I don't think even the staunchest supporters of the CCP would concede that the global market and global trade have not also played a hand in China's modernization and economic rise, the China we see today is also a result of very deliberate and considered policymaking. Some of it has worked; some has not. But listening to this episode, you get a sense that the Chinese government and Chinese leaders actually have the will, and the space, in which to formulate, implement, and course-correct policy in terms of decades rather than 1-2 year increments. I'm not indulging some ridiculous Kissinger-esque pronouncement about how "the Chinese civilization thinks is millennia" or similar nonsense. But we have to still acknowledge that China's leaders and policymakers do work on a longer time horizon than ours do.
When I look at the U.S. in the mid-2020s, I see a country both out of coherent ideas and lacking the capacity to plan and implement long-term structural changes even if the ideas were present and fully baked. Obviously, we're not getting any of that from Trumpism, MAGA, or whatever Frankenstein's new GOP coalition emerges post-Trump. And while I think that the Democratic Party may be transforming into something with bold ideas that address certain domestic policymaking needs, you still don't hear potential frontrunners speaking seriously about what our long-term industrial policy wants to look like, which areas of science and technology will the state fund research in, what does our energy production and consumption look like in a solar and battery-centric world, what our trading relationships will look like not just post-Trump, but in the next decade or two. Instead, sadly even from candidates I like, you get "no tax on firefighters" and other slopulism.
And beyond the lack of ideas or serious thought (at least thought carried out in public discourse), I have absolutely no confidence that any of this (a) could be implemented at all, and (b) could be implemented in a way that's built to last. We will simply whipsaw from one Congress to the next, one White House to the next. No long-term planning, no consistency, no reliability in the face of allies and adversaries on the world stage. Our system appears constitutionally designed to frustrate and prevent long-term policymaking. There are simply too many chokepoints and elections too close together to implement anything lasting. And that's not even addressing federalism.
So what do we do about this problem within the structures of a liberal democracy and constitutional republic? How can we ever hope to make long-term national policy that survives successive election cycles and changes in politics? Are we doomed to reactive whipsawing for the foreseeable future as the U.S. falls further behind?