China Says US Should Revoke Unilateral Tariffs, Russia Attacks Ukraine | Bloomberg The Pulse 04/24 (youtube.com)
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Sorkin raised an interesting point. That the US is number 1, that's a given, China's fine with that, they don't love it but they're fine with it. But it's another thing when you don't just have to be number 1, you also ‘have to win.’ This seems to relate to what we're seeing in a lot of recent news. Trump's made some big plays, some ‘hardball’, but none of that seems to have been effective. US is still number 1, but it's not winning anything. And trying to win in this way, it might take away US credibility or cache.
Sorkin gave another anecdote, that for decades US companies that operated in other countries, people would be proud of working there, at a clearly American company, like ‘I work at Starbucks,’ but now these same companies are maybe downplaying their American-ness and instead trying to be like a local brand, local to that place (I think I wrote about how this is a mis-understanding of the culture in other countries, several years ago). He said he didn't know what that means but it might mean something.