Over the weekend, former President Jimmy Carter relayed to the public a conversation he’d recently had with President Trump, during which Trump repeatedly worried that “China is getting ahead of us,” and would pass the US as world’s strongest economy as soon as 2030.



Carter had a simple explanation for China’s economic strength, saying it has been a combination of sensible investment and peace. Carter says he pointed out that since 1979, China has not been at war with anybody, ad that the US has virtually “stayed at war.”



Carter added that the US has only had 16 years of peace in its entire 242-year history, saying the US is the “most warlike nation in the history of the world,” while China invested money in high-speed rail instead of military spending.



“If you take $3 trillion and put in in American infrastructure you’d probably have $2 trillion leftover,” Carter noted, “we’d have high speed railroad. We’d have bridges that aren’t collapsing, we’d have roads that are maintained properly. Out education system would be as good as say South Korea or Hong Kong.”



Trump phoned Carter about the matter Friday, but it seems this was all something he already knew. Earlier this month, Trump suggested the US, China, and Russia reach a mutual deal on military spending limits, saying the money would be better spent elsewhere.



Despite this, Trump appears loathe to consider the idea of the US not being in several wars at once, and his spending proposals for the military are just continuing to rise, cutting US domestic spending more to keep casting revenue into the black hole of wars.





Author: Jason Ditz Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com. View all posts by Jason Ditz