The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond

by George Friedman

That is the process that we are living through at the moment. The Reagan era has reached its limits and can’t sustain the economy. The failure is in the process of creating a new set of competing social classes. This is reflected in the intensifying political crisis of the Trump presidency, in which the new social forces begin battling each other. This crisis will last through to the 2020s. In 2024, a new president will emerge who represents the values of the declining era. The failure of his presidency will bring to power the rising class who will impose a new economic orthodoxy. And finally, in the 2030s (following the storms that began in 2016), a new cycle will emerge. Over the following few years in the 2030s, the political confrontation, social tension, and economic dysfunction will be solved. The cycle will have created a new era, different from the past but built on the same foundation of invention, and it will endure for another half a century.