From Shamsul Saad
Malaysia and our thought-makers have always been late to the party. We tend to follow Western trends to our detriment, always a decade or more too late. We lack the foresight beyond so-called conventional mainstream wisdom of the day.
Here is the main problem. Our thought leaders and policies tend to be trapped by the narratives of the global mainstream media and opinion-makers, which for the most part have been driven by globalisation and a capital market-driven worldview since the Bill Clinton administration and the formation of the European Union.
At the same time, fired up by Vice-President Al Gore’s climate alarmism and Western Europe’s feverish adoption of such policies, welfarist-socialism and lax immigration, the Western world turned away from reasoned, manufacturing-driven capitalism to liberal socialism fuelled by capital market growth via offshoring to cheaper locations in the developing world.
And with this so-called multilateralism emerged a new economic power, unleashed by Deng Xiaoping’s reforms for China and its entrance into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001.
People forget that China was already an emerging economy prior to WTO; it just went into steroids after. Its GDP in 1978 was US$150 billion and ballooned to US$1.4 trillion by 2001. Now it is US$18.8 trillion.
From a geopolitical standpoint, the world was already in a multi-polar state at the turn of the century with three powerful blocs: the US, China, and Russia. And yet today, decades later, people look at the current geopolitics and claim we are just now in a multipolar world.
My thesis is that this perspective and world view could never be more wrong.
Need to see the change for what it is
Today, the US is unleashing a different kind of American unipolar leadership under President Donald Trump and his administration. And the foundation being laid down today by this administration, coupled with current geopolitical and economic realities of China, Western Europe, and the rest of the world, and the reality of long-term US domestic politics, will ensure this foundation will continue and be built upon over the next two decades, at the very least.
We, in Malaysia, need to comprehend and understand this reality instead of going along with the mainstream narrative of the last two decades. The old US establishment and neo-con world order of post-WWII is being dismantled, and Trump and his version of the Republican Party is dragging everyone kicking and screaming, whether you like it or not.
To understand why, one must truly understand that the global mainstream media has been a natural leftist narrative and in the US, pro-Democrat in leaning — it is anti-Republican, and especially anti-Trump, at its core.
Contrary to popular thought, I believe we are seeing a re-emergence of a unipolar world with US global leadership at its helm.
Western Europe has effectively lost its imperial power of the previous centuries, and its treasures accumulated through capitalism have been squandered on socialist and welfare-heavy policies over the past 40 years.
Its economy, which was bigger in nominal terms than the US in the early 2000s, is no longer. It has been taxed to death in more ways than one. Today the US economy is bigger by about US$9 trillion to US$10 trillion more, for a superpower that was supposedly seen as in decline.
The other supposed polarity used to be Russia. It embarked upon a war with tiny Ukraine which should have ended in four weeks, but has now stretched almost four years. And the only help Ukraine has had is US defensive weaponry. The Russian economy is bleeding, and its war is funded primarily from the purchase of its oil by China and India.
The China story
The big kahuna that is strutting around, especially among the anti-American and pro-Eastern crowd, is China.
China’s GDP is the second largest on earth at US$18.8 trillion in 2024 (compared to the US at US$29.2 trillion). On the other hand, its GDP per capita is only about US$13,000, slightly above ours of about US$12,000. In comparison, GDP per capita in Singapore and the US are about US$90,000.
The fact is that China is not the superpower most commentators seemed to project. It has sustained an economic growth based on a productivity boost, like any developing nation shifting from an agrarian economy to an industrial one since the Deng reformation of 1978. It is not a miracle; it’s been done everywhere that transition occurs, just with almost a billion population to start with, hence the size of its massive economic growth.
The problem is that its GDP-driven KPI for every official, mayor, and regional leader of the one-party state is unfortunately also a reason for its eventual stagnation. Capital allocation is about production irrespective of consumption. You build and build and build at whatever cost, because it is all about GDP growth. You have gleaming buildings and infrastructure with no domestic consumption.
China is unfortunately stuck with these structural and systemic problems in not a good way. For instance, its decision to make their monopoly of rare earth minerals a power-play will have unintended negative consequences.
No seller has ever won fighting its consumers. The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) already tried that and lost big time, and China is about to find out the same.
The American era
So here we are in the middle of a resurgent American economy and leadership. You may not like the swagger, but this is a new era of US global leadership through the prism of a cabinet full of practical business-people and led by one “blue collar” billionaire.
War is not their game, but they will use that military might if they have to. Take that “peace through strength” to heart, because these guys mean it.
In less than 10 months, this Trump administration has hit the ground running and firing on all cylinders on multiple fronts, domestic and international, at break-neck speed never seen before in any US administration, at least in my lifetime.
On the domestic front: former President Joe Biden’s open border immigration has been essentially shut down, tariff talks has yielded a treasure trove of revenue with nary an impact on inflation, on-shoring never thought possible is happening and commitments of investments in multiple trillions that will see their drawdowns and impact as early as within the next 12 months, and in spite of aggressive government cuts, GDP has grown beyond expectation at 3.9% (the biggest key to cut their debt levels) and the stock-market is at record highs.
In the geo-political arena, the global impact is even more pronounced. Multilateralism and globalism is definitely not on the cards for this administration. Their modus is bilateral economic and political partnerships and reciprocal trading. They are playing a highly skilled poker game on a global table of multiple players and they are winning.
Trade and their leverage as the largest global consumer market is the negotiating hand they play for achieving end to wars, ceasefires and economic capitulation.
BRICS is as good as dead with a hobbled Chinese non-consumption economy, a Russia dependent on external assistance and an India that has no capacity to unify its own national economic policy due its disparate regionalism and massive unwieldy bureaucracy.
All of these have handed Trump, and the US, a global condition whose leadership is ripe for the taking. They are seizing it to the hilt with a Middle East peace initiative unimagined a year ago backed by Arab and major Muslim nations. On the energy policy front, net zero carbon initiatives, agree or disagree, is dead in the water as the International Maritime Organization admitted its failure to adopt their proposed framework.
Read the tea leaves, ladies and gentlemen, rather than being led and informed in your opinions by the left-leaning mainstream derision of the Trump presidency. The times they are a-changin’, and we, in Malaysia and our leadership, better know how to navigate this new world order as set by President Trump and his more than likely successor JD Vance.
Shamsul Saad is a former managing director of Perdana Petroleum Bhd and the co-host of ‘The Gutshot Podcast’.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
