Det allt bittrare skyttegravskriget mellan de radikaliserade republikanerna och demokraterna får konsekvenser inte bara för USA utan för hela världen. Ända sen Andra Världskrigets slut har USA spelat huvudrollen med sin mjuka och även sin hårda makt. Men som Jonathan Weisman skriver i New York Times så ökar nu risken för att de institutioner med vilka USA utövade sin mjuka makt helt enkelt kommer att rivas och ersättas av institutioner som inte längre kommer att ha samma liberala inriktning som hittills :At Global Economic Gathering, U.S. Primacy Is Seen as Ebbing

An overhaul of the I.M.F.’s governance structure, negotiated five years ago in large part by President Obama to give China and other emerging powers more authority commensurate with their growing economic strength, has languished in Congress. That, in part, propelled China to create its own multilateral lending institution in direct competition with the behemoths in Washington.

The efforts to secure an ambitious 12-nation Pacific trade agreement, championed by Mr. Obama and recently backed by a handful of key lawmakers, has set off perhaps the biggest fight of his presidency within his own party, with trade unions, environmentalists and liberal activists lining up in opposition to the White House. There is a strong possibility that Mr. Obama could lose the battle.

Even the United States’ Export-Import Bank, a lending agency similar to export financing arms in countries around the world, could be killed in June by conservatives in Congress, leaving would-be foreign customers in the cold and many American exporters at a disadvantage to competitors abroad.

“I’ve been searching for a word to describe it, and the one I use is ‘withdrawal,’ best I can come up with,” said Edwin M. Truman, a former Obama Treasury official now with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “We’re withdrawing from the central place we held on the international stage.”

In Washington, that concern crosses party lines.

En farlig utveckling som kan komma att ge Kina betydligt större inflytande än idag. För USA:s mjuka makt är fortfarande, vad vi än må tycka om det, det fundament på vilken det internationella ekonomiska systemet vilar.