The United States wants to be #1, in virtually anything that really matters, and on a lot of very important levels, such as finance, military might, and market capitalization, all of which it is recognized as being the world leader. The problem though, that the United States has, is that the projected economic numbers do not favor their continued dominance into the foreseeable future, so that it can be said, the United States will be surpassed by China as well as India in total gross domestic product, within the coming decades, and in all probability, America will never again be able to fully run roughshod over the entire world, for the world has changed, and America as a country is far too small to be, by itself, the dominant economic force.
The main difficulty that America has to overcome is that even though America is the third most populous nation in the world, they are dominated in sheer numbers by both China as well as India of which each of these countries has over 1 billion peoples. Further, in 1980, the GDP on a per capita basis for United States was $12,576, for China it was $309 and for India it was $276. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) for 2018, estimated the GDP on a per capita basis for the United States at $62,606 or an increase of nearly 400% since 1980; however, for China the IMF estimated their GDP on a per capita basis for China at $9,608, or an increase of just over an astonishing 3000% since 1980; and for India the IMF estimated their GDP on a per capita basis in 2018 at $2,036 or an increase of 637% since 1980. This so indicates the very obvious, which is that China and India are growing their economies at a much higher rate than America, and because their populations are so much larger than America, they will ultimately surpass America in aggregate GDP.
Further to the point, America likes to pride itself on how educated its population is, but again, as provided by the World Economic Forum, in 2016, the recent graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) for America was 568,000, which is only ranked third in the world, and is actually dominated by China which graduated 4.7 million and also by India which graduated 2.6 million. In addition, the working age population of countries is defined by the consort of those peoples in the15-64 age brackets, indicates as shown on populyst.org that in America in 2015, there were 213,219 people in that category; whereas in China it was 1,007,504 and in India 859,994.
America, once had a manifest destiny, to govern this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but it failed to recognize that the numbers of people residing within its territory really does matter. In fact, the population density of America does not currently even rank in the top 100 of all countries, which basically means that the United States has never come close to fulfilling the most meaningful aspect of its manifest destiny, which is to truly populate this country from sea to shining sea in the recognition that there is much strength in large numbers. Instead, America has made it their point to deliberately stymie immigration, not seeming to recognize that without enough numbers of people within this great nation, that it will cede its crown to those countries that do have considerable more amounts of people and are desirous of taking from America what America cares not to defend; for if this country, does not live up to being that golden door to all those yearning to breathe free, its bright light will first dim, before it regrettably burns itself out.