MAY 2026 – David Ignatius wrote a colorful essay pointing out that reports of America’s death are, up to now at least, greatly exaggerated – and that China’s ascent is not guaranteed. “America is Falling Uphill” reads the head of Ignatius’s May 21 column.
America is weirdly resilient. Covid-19 looked like a crippling problem, but China took a harder hit than the United States. Border policy was a mess under Biden, but the public now seems unhappier about Trump’s crackdown than about illegal immigration. And finally, there’s the ever-expanding balloon of the U.S. economy. Despite inflationary tax and tariff policies, it keeps rolling along. The AI companies are so advanced they scare themselves.
All the harbingers of American decline are present, to be sure. Trump himself is a walking symbol of arrogance and corruption that people once would have called “un-American.” But there’s a mysterious self-correcting mechanism at work. Every poll you read says that despite Trump’s electoral machinations, he’s still likely to lose the House of Representatives in November. Trump continues to try to undermine the Federal Reserve’s independence (which would truly be a gift to China), but he keeps failing. And even a Supreme Court packed with Trump appointees has rejected his arguments on tariffs and other big issues.
Ignatius continues to be the leading American journalist on foreign affairs and policy, and he’s one of the reasons many continue to subscribe to revamped Washington Post.