For the past three decades our world has known ever-rising volumes of money. Whether from Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, Europe or East Asia, this rising tide of capital at ever-cheaper rates has defined the post-Cold War era. It’s ending. Now. For reasons geopolitical and demographic, the globalization of finance is in its final months just as the overall inflows are dissolving for reasons demographic. This isn’t momentary. We will not return the capital structure of the 2000s and 2010s within our lifetimes. The questions now become how deep the crash will be, which sectors will suffer the most, and what islands will be able to weather the coming financial storm?

Manufacturing is an endlessly specialized and complicated venture, with most manufacturers directly or indirectly sourcing components from around the country and world. But what if the ability to sail components from site to site becomes compromised? What if capital availability proves insufficient to update industrial bases as technology evolves? The successful manufacturers of the future will be those who can command access to raw materials, capital, labor and markets – within defined areas of proximity. Such days are nearly upon us. Differences in COVID recovery and demographic structures are intermingling with failing Chinese relationships to push manufacturing in an entirely new direction.

The concept of countries being able to buy and sell their wares openly on the international marketplace is inviolable. The freedom to sail one’s products around the world is a given. Everything from the transfer of money to the accessibility of energy is sacrosanct. Yet all this and more is artificial: an unintended — if happy — side effect of the American-led global Order. With that Order in its final days, all countries and all industries must learn to operate in a world as unstructured as it is dangerous. Join us as Peter Zeihan lays out how we got to where we are, and what the future holds for sectors as diverse as energy, agriculture, finance, manufacturing and transport.

The Mideast wars have left the United States exhausted and leery. Immigration has become a four-letter word. Shale has severed most of the ties that bind. In sum, the United States has lost interest in the wider world and so is already hip-deep in a decade-long retrenchment. That will change not just the world, but America itself. Such evolutions will make next phase of American engagement not just more thoughtful and surgical, but also more lucrative.

The world of manufacturing is an endlessly specialized venture, with most manufacturers sourcing components from scores of facilities across a dozen or more countries. But what if the ability to sail components from site to site became compromised? What if capital availability proves insufficient to update industrial bases as technology evolves? What if intermediate and end markets become less desirable – or less accessible? All that and more is about to happen, which signals the end of manufacturing as we know it. The successful manufacturers of the future will be those who can command access to raw materials, capital, labor and markets – all in the same location.

In the decades since World War II, everything from computerization to securitization to the rise of the developing world has made the financial sector central to modern economic activity. But never forget that modern finance itself is an outgrowth of revenues generated by the global free trade order. Never forget that the past two decades have witnessed the richest and cheapest supplies of capital in history. A political decision made seven decades ago created the trade order. A fleeting demographic moment created the capital richness. Both have nearly run their course. Very soon we will bid finance as we know it goodbye, and the world will be much poorer for it. A few locations, however, will find the wreckage easier to struggle through than others. For those lucky few, the world will be their oyster.

The global energy sector is as complicated and opaque as it is omnipresent and essential, and it has adapted to not simply the changes in the global economic system, but the global political system. Countries that were weak to nonexistent in ages past now are major players in global energy markets, both as producers and consumers. The system that has allowed this evolution now is under fire, and soon the stability that has enabled the energy sector to create its global webwork will end. What will follow will be a world both more chaotic and poorer, one in which the process of finding, producing, transporting and refining energy will simply be beyond the military and financial capacity of most players. Only the largest, smartest and richest entities will be able to maintain – much less expand – their networks. Far from its final days, the era of the supermajor has not yet begun.

Americans think of themselves as set apart from the rest of the world, and to a certain degree they are correct. But it is not that Americans are ‘better’ or ‘more free’ that makes them different, instead that they enjoy supreme geographic positioning and favorable demography — something that is not currently enjoyed by any other major power. Played as little as twenty years forward, this will result in an American-dominated international system with all of the economic and strategic benefits that such implies. But it is a very different world from the one we now know.

Americans believe that their greatest days are behind them and that a series of new powers is rising up to displace them. On the contrary, America’s best days — militarily, economically, financially and culturally — are still ahead of them. In fact, many of the states that the Americans feel are up-and-comers — most notably China, Russia and India — are merely experiencing a historical moment in the sun courtesy of factors utterly beyond their control. Most of the powers of tomorrow are countries that the Americans either have very little knowledge of. The major powers of 2030 will not based in Beijing or Moscow, but in Jakarta, Buenos Aires, Warsaw, Istanbul and Mexico City.