In 2020, the man from whom both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama are seeking economic guidance, looks into the future to tell us what our world will be. And the changes Shapiro foresees will be monumental, as four major forces - globalisation, demographics, politics and the status of energy sources influenced by constantly changing quality of the environment - will determine how nations rise and fall. Shapiro thinks we can expect:
- US military hegemony will be a thing of the past while the new superpower rivalry will be between China and the US
- Mexico and Turkey will produce most of the world's cars
- The US will be the premiere source for sophisticated products and services, but our economy will be hostage to foreign lenders for capital to develop these products
- China will be able to offer less-developed countries a new model of political and economic success based on investment-led growth
- Japan and Europe will move to the periphery of world power
In the past, Shapiro's predictions have played out just as he suggested:
In 1992, he predicted that economic recovery that year would not help George H.W. Bush get re-elected because the real incomes of average families were still considerably lower than when Bush took office. This prediction morphed into Carville's famous "It's the economy, stupid" and took Clinton into the White House.
In 1998, when e-commerce represented a miniscule amount of total consumer purchases and there was much uncertainty about consumer response, he predicted the Internet would become a major channel for buying and selling.
Today, e-commerce represents approximately $10 Billion in consumer purchases.
In 2003, he predicted the US would become more dependent on lending from China and Japan. By 2006, China held more than $350 billion in U.S. Treasury securities and Japan more than $670 billion accounting for 50 % of all foreign-held U.S. debt.
In a book as important as that of Thomas Friedman and Alvin Toffler, Shapiro gives us a clear-eyed vision of where we're headed.
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