How the World Sees America, With Adam Tooze

Episode Summary

Executive Summary: The conversation frames Davos 2026 as evidence that the post-Cold War U.S.-led order has ruptured, not merely transitioned. Adam Tooze argues Trump’s America is wielding power through tariffs, coercion, and unpredictability, while China is presenting technocratic multilateralism and industrial scale. The episode centers on how China, energy, and industrial policy are reshaping global politics, climate strategy, and America’s sense of itself.

Main Topics: Davos as a signal of rupture (Priority: 5/5): The hosts treat Davos as a global recognition point where the old American-led order appeared visibly broken, with Trump officials, Mark Carney, and Chinese leaders embodying competing visions. Trump’s view of power as coercive and blunt (Priority: 5/5): Tooze describes the Trump administration as favoring tariffs, intimidation, petro-power, and dealmaking over sophisticated industrial strategy, while seeing America as a loser in globalization. China as technocratic, industrial, and globally central (Priority: 5/5): China is portrayed as the most coherent actor in the room: fluent in Davos-style language, committed to multilateralism, and backed by vast industrial capacity, especially in rail, concrete, solar, and batteries. Energy as the core strategic battleground (Priority: 4/5): The discussion argues that future power competition hinges on electricity, batteries, solar, and industrial capacity—not just oil and gas—and that Trump’s hydrocarbon focus is strategically self-contradictory. The long shadow of China over U.S. politics (Priority: 4/5): Tooze argues China has shaped American domestic politics for decades, from Kyoto and NAFTA to the rise of protectionism, deindustrialization anxiety, and elite fears about U.S. decline. U.S., China, and the limits of simple bloc politics (Priority: 5/5): Tooze rejects simplistic democracy-versus-authoritarianism framing and the idea of a clean U.S.-to-China order shift, instead describing a messy world of overlapping ordering attempts and multiple power centers. Climate and industrial policy as a test case (Priority: 4/5): China’s manufacturing scale is presented as decisive for global decarbonization, while Western politics has failed to organize around the industrial system needed to exploit that capacity effectively.

Key Arguments: Davos functioned less as a policy summit than as a public recognition that the old U.S.-centered world order is gone. Trump’s team understands power in blunt terms—tariffs, threats, hydrocarbons, and visible industrial symbols—rather than as a sophisticated network of alliances and institutions. Mark Carney’s “rupture” language captures a tectonic shift, not just a slow geopolitical transition. China’s message is technocratic continuity: dialogue, multilateralism, predictability, and industrial competence. The real contest is over energy systems, especially electricity, batteries, and solar, where China has structural advantages. The U.S. has been shaped by China’s rise since at least the 1990s; anxiety about China is embedded in American trade, climate, and foreign policy debates. The Biden administration was more serious and strategic than Trump on industrial policy, but still constrained by domestic politics and unable to build durable social infrastructure like national unemployment insurance. The world is not moving neatly from one hegemon to another; instead, it is fragmenting into multiple attempts to create order. China and Russia are linked less by identity than by a shared rejection of the post-1989 order and a common memory of Soviet collapse. Western observers swing between admiration and contempt for China, but both impulses obscure the scale and complexity of its development.

Data Points: High-speed rail built in China: 23,000 miles - Tooze contrasts China’s infrastructure buildout with the stalled California high-speed rail project. California high-speed rail target mentioned: 500 miles - Used as a comparison to China’s rail expansion and the gap in infrastructure capacity. Concrete built in China: More in 3 years than the U.S. built in the 20th century - Illustrates the scale and speed of Chinese industrialization. Chinese housing stock age: About 89% of homes built since the early 1990s - Shows the near-total rebuilding of Chinese urban housing over a short period. Chinese solar deployment capacity: Around 1,000 gigawatts per year - Tooze argues this is central to global climate stabilization and vastly underappreciated in the West. U.S. unemployment insurance system: A hodgepodge across states - Used to argue the U.S. lacks a coherent national social policy architecture. Countries or blocs referenced in power competition: Three major powers: U.S., Russia, China - Tooze says Carney implicitly treats these as the central great powers from the perspective of middle powers. World economy governance model discussed: Multipolar / overlapping orders - Carney’s 2019 framing is revisited as a possible alternative to hegemony.

Pivotal Quotes: "We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition." — Mark Carney (quoted by host / transcript paraphrase): Carney’s Davos speech is used as the episode’s key signal that the global order has broken, not merely evolved. "The old is dying, but the new cannot be born." — Antonio Gramsci (introduced by host): Sets the philosophical frame for the episode’s discussion of global disorder and ‘morbid symptoms.’ "I’m dying on the hill that we’re not even in an interregnum." — Adam Tooze: Tooze argues there is no guarantee a new coherent order will follow the collapse of the old one.

Implications: Listeners should expect a more fragmented, coercive global system where energy, industrial policy, and China’s manufacturing state matter more than traditional alliance rhetoric. The U.S. faces strategic incoherence unless it builds durable institutions and a realistic China/climate strategy.