#22:America’s Abundance

Heavy snow was falling in New York in late February. My flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport was the final flight to New York that day. While snowfall was light at the time of landing, it intensified rapidly in the afternoon, and by evening Mayor Mamdani had declared a state of emergency. Severe weather alerts were sounding on my Japanese mobile phone. Although all of my meetings scheduled for the following Monday could be shifted online, every flight to Washington, D.C. on Tuesday was canceled. More than half of Amtrak’s services were also suspended, making it impossible to estimate when I might reach D.C. As a last resort, I opted for a limousine service. Despite concerns about icy roads and traffic congestion, the highways had been thoroughly cleared and traffic flowed smoothly, allowing me to reach Washington after a comfortable five-hour drive. It was at that moment that I realized how extensively resources in the U.S. are prioritized toward automobiles.

The purpose of this business trip was to exchange views with experts on key research themes for 2026. These themes were framed around the keywords “AI stack”, “resources and energy”, “finance”, “dual-use”, ”supply reform” and “Japan” —all of which are inseparable from the U.S. A consistent insight that emerged from these discussions was the importance of shifting attention away from "what is happening” in the U.S. today toward “which assumptions are no longer taken for granted.” The role once played by the U.S. as the architect and ultimate manager of the global order is unlikely to be restored. This is not a matter of the personality or ideology of any single administration or individual, but rather the consequence of structural limits reached through the cumulative experience of the U.S. across political, social, technological, and financial domains.

At the political level, tariff policy illustrates a broader shift in governance from institutional authority toward discretionary power. Historically embedded in trade policy, tariffs functioned as instruments of diplomatic negotiation. Today, however, they have become tools for the direct management of domestic politics. Tariffs generate fiscal revenue, provide visible outcomes for political supporters, and sharpen lines of political confrontation. Although institutional checks and balances—most notably through the U.S. Supreme Court—remain operative, they rarely compel a reversal of course; instead, they encourage the pursuit of alternative paths. From a business perspective, the uncertainty surrounding tariffs should be understood not merely as policy volatility, but as the sustained exercise of discretionary power. Rather than speculating on whether tariffs will persist, firms must reassess supply chains, investment strategies, and pricing structures under the assumption that tariffs may shift dramatically at any time.

There is little doubt that the U.S. will remain the world’s most competitive nation in frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence. However, as AI rapidly enters the phase of large-scale practical deployment, competitiveness is no longer defined solely by the sophistication of model outputs. Instead, it is increasingly determined by the robustness of the “AI stack”, encompassing physical AI, models, data, and infrastructure. Beyond computational capacity enabled by advanced chips, this stack entails a wide range of resource requirements, including electricity, data centers, water, labor, and rare earth materials. In addition, the deployment of high-performance and highly reliable AI systems requires “soft infrastructure” such as legal frameworks, public–private coordination, and broad public trust. Given that 58 percent of Americans do not trust AI and 79 percent do not trust companies’ use of AI, it is difficult to argue that the U.S. has sufficiently developed this soft infrastructure.

Financial digitalization faces similar constraints. While stablecoin and tokenization hold significant potential to streamline financial transactions, the pace of their adoption will be shaped less by technological readiness than by legal systems and governance structures. Core issues—such as ownership rights, settlement finality, and liability in the event of errors—cannot be resolved after the fact. Financial digitalization should therefore be understood not as a disruptive revolution, but as a process of redesigning existing systems. As a result, it is more likely to reinforce existing biases within the global monetary system than to overturn them. Rather than undermining the dollar’s dominance, digital finance is likely to strengthen it by further enhancing its convenience. Countries issuing other currencies, including the yen, may need to prepare for scenarios in which financial transformation driven by digitalization and AI triggers rapid currency depreciation or large-scale capital outflows.

At present, the U.S. remains the world’s most powerful nation in economic strength, technological capability, and security provision. Yet even the U.S. lacks the capacity to manage the entire world, a recognition that has increasingly taken hold within the country itself. Since President Obama’s assertion that “America is not the world’s policeman,” this perspective has continued through President Biden’s restraint in military intervention—most notably the withdrawal from Afghanistan—and President Trump’s “America First” doctrine. Nevertheless, the U.S. is now engaged in multiple simultaneous conflicts across Europe, South America, and the Middle East, resulting in a broad and thin dispersion of resources. Domestically, institutional fatigue has normalized discretionary change, making future developments difficult to anticipate. Efficiency has declined, consensus formation has become more challenging, and social divisions continue to deepen. Both hard and soft infrastructure are failing to keep pace: housing, railways, and airports have seen little meaningful modernization for decades. This reality stands in stark contrast to the image of the “shining city on the hill” once associated with the U.S. America that once commanded global admiration was characterized by an abundance of both hard and soft infrastructure. If that condition of “abundance” could be restored, its benefits would extend well beyond U.S. borders to the rest of the world.