The financial problems confronting incoming US president
The fiscal deficit of the US is something which both presidential candidates have to deal with.
United States Republican presidential nominee, former president Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris both speak as they attend a presidential debate hosted by ABC in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 10, 2024. (Reuters/Brian Snyder)
side from understanding the basics that it takes 270 Electoral College votes for any candidate in the Nov. 5 election to be declared the 47th president of the United States, whoever ends up leading the US is going to have a lot of financial problems of their own making.
The US has not only got itself involved in far too many wars, but domestically it is struggling with an opioid crisis too. With regard to the latter, some of the chemical precursors are made illegally in China, which even Beijing wants to crack down on.
While it is in need of China's collaboration to crack down on the irresponsible entities that export these chemical compounds to be turned into Fentanyl in Mexico, especially to the Sinaloa Cartel, the US is adamant that the world be governed based on its "uni-multipolar" world order.
Within such a system, the US is always above and beyond the United Nations Security Council. Other powers must comply with the dictates of the US.
Yet the likes of Paul Kennedy at Yale University have long spoken of an "imperial stretch", going back as far back as 1988 in his magnus opus The Rise and Fall of Great Powers.
As things are, one way of assessing the plight of the US, amid a tight election, is to comprehend the state of its financial distress. This despite the fact that some of the richest billionaires are in the US.
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One telltale sign of how the rich and powerful in the US, also known as the "donor class", try to game the electoral system, can be seen in the oversized role of Elon Musk. Musk has pumped US$75 million into the presidential campaign of Donald Trump; although Kamala Harris remains the one with the bigger war-chest, due to the incumbency of President Joe Biden.
