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Larry Wilson: White House wrecks America’s place in the world

April 11, 2026

“Marketplace” radio host Kai Ryssdal was talking with economist Mohamed El-Erian, a professor at Penn’s Wharton School, on Wednesday about how the war in Iran, among other things, is wearing down confidence in the U.S. and its “ability to inform and influence outcomes.”

Ryssdal asked the professor for his thoughts on the global economy during war.

“We’ve had a massive shock,” El-Erian said. “More inflation in the pipeline” because of soaring oil prices with some countries facing … “demand destruction. … We are looking at a world in which the U.S. outperforms the rest of the world,” with other nations, especially in Asia, heading for recession. “Let’s not celebrate our relative outperformance because ultimately it’s the absolute performance” of the world economy “that matters, especially for those in the lower tiers” of the economy.

“The U.S. is still at the core of the system, but that role is being eroded. … And this war is eroding it further. The good news is that there’s a long runway, with no one else to step in.” Still, “We used to be respected for two principles: the Washington consensus” about the rule of law and the need not to interfere with the central bank. “We also led on the globalization process. … Now we have some kind of globalization lite.”

“America should beware of economic hubris,” El-Erian has previously written. That’s because, no matter how many times cult members chant “America first,” we live in a complex world of trade with others. Lose those relationships and we literally grow poorer.

But hubris might as well be the middle name of the White House run by Donald Trump. And that’s why, especially thanks to this lousy war, powers elsewhere are either sitting back silently laughing at us. No one has gained more in international standing than Russia and China have in recent weeks, or just beginning to operate without us, as in the unprecedented meetings of European leaders about the war without an invitation to the American administration.

As individuals and as entities, organizations, businesses, we don’t have to give up on most of the rest of the world. We will do our best to hold on to our friends and relations abroad. But our federal government has already given up.

It’s a small foot placed wrong in the ongoing bad dance of this American demise, but a symbolically important one: In February, abruptly and without giving any reason, the Central Intelligence Agency stopped publishing the CIA’s World Factbook, which for more than 60 years had been a free reference guide with regularly updated data on economics, populations, government and geography.

At first, in the early 1960s, the Factbook was classified, used only by the spooks themselves in order to better navigate and understand the world. But by the 1970s, when the agency was best known for shenanigans such as drugging American citizens in mind-control experiments and for helping to overthrow governments around the world, the CIA rightly figured it could use a little good PR.

First, in 1971, it began the public print edition of the Factbook, which became cherished by librarians and academics around the world for being “an objective source in an increasingly subjective information ecosystem,” as The New York Times put it. Then, in 1997, it went online, available to anyone in the world who had an internet connection.

“As We Bid a Fond Farewell” is the weird headline over an article on the CIA website about Factbook. Like Radio Free Europe and other unbiased information sources, the relatively cheap publication paid off in spades for the American image around the world. But of course the White House has defunded the radio stations as well. It’s almost as if they want everyone to hate us, just like in the good old days.

Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.

Orange County Register

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Larry Wilson: White House wrecks America’s place in the world

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