My feeling is that while governments may compete hard with each
other and at times be angry with each other, those actions and
sentiments don't usually reflect what is happening at the every day
people level.
For the most part, people are people the world over. They want to live their lives, raise their families, be healthy, live as comfortably as possible and be left alone.
On the other hand, governments ostensibly want to protect their people but seem to believe that to do so means that they must gain as much economic power and influence as possible...the natural result of which is that governments compete with other governments....and sometimes in ways that is painful to people.
Where does that leave us...ultimately there is usually a recognition of mutual need. As an example, China doesn't produce much oil, not that they couldn't, but they do produce a lot of rare earth metals. The U.S. on the other hand does produce oil but has given up production of rare earth metals. So, we each produce what we are good at and then trade at fair value....or we each try to produce everything, including what we are not good at resulting in higher cost to both. Time will tell how well we figure this out.
