The leading US corporations remain highly profitable and are expanding into China, Latin America and other emerging economies. They are no longer unchallenged, but they have not been unchallenged for a long time, not since the postwar revival of Europe and Japan almost a half century ago. Together with the Europeans and Japanese, they are now faced with a wave of new competition from rising capitalists outside the OECD. But they also now enjoy greater access to foreign capital, labour, management, and consumer markets then at any time in their history. Their relative power may have declined, but the absolute power and profitability of the Walmarts, Exxons, Fords, Caterpillars, Microsofts, Intels, JPM Chases, Blackrocks, and other leading US corporations have increased apace with the expansion of global capitalism. In time, US capitalism may lose its still dominant position, but for now US firms continue to outnumber those of any other country in the Fortune global 500, US capital markets are the deepest in the world, and the USD is remarkably still seen as a refuge in times of crisis, even one centred in the US.
On the other hand, the US industrial working class has been savaged. This has also been apparent for some time, but less well known perhaps is how its decline has accelerated in the wake of China's explosive industrial growth over the past decade. Richard McCormack, the editor of Manufacturing and Engineering News, writing in the American Prospect, December 21, 2009, noted that "the U.S. manufacturing sector never emerged from the 2001 recession, which coincided with China's entry into the World Trade Organization. Since 2001, the country has lost 42,400 factories, including 36 percent of factories that employ more than 1,000 workers (which declined from 1,479 to 947), and 38 percent of factories that employ between 500 and 999 employees (from 3,198 to 1,972)."
The much larger US service sector has partially compensated for the loss of US manufacturing jobs, but for how long it can continue to do is uncertain, given both increasing competition from overseas, including at the highest skill levels, and the knock-on effects of an eroding manufacturing base. McCormack reminded those taking solace in the growth of the service sector that that "when a factory closes, it creates a vortex that has far-reaching consequences...Close a manufacturing plant, and a supply chain of producers disappears with it. Dozens of companies get hurt: those supplying computer-aided design and business software; automation and robotics equipment, packaging, office equipment and supplies; telecommunications services; energy and water utilities; research and development, marketing and sales support; and building and equipment maintenance and janitorial services. The burden spreads to local restaurants, cultural establishments, shopping outlets, and then to the tax base that supports police, firemen, schoolteachers, and libraries."
As for US military power, I subscribe to the notion by Kennedy and others that it follows economic power. Here, too, the US has a large lead, but in a multipolar environment where cost considerations are increasingly affecting its spending decisions on US operations abroad and on advanced weapons systems.