Why are the US and China really clashing? It's not ideology, not the Thucydides Trap, and not cunning politicians. It's economics. America's domestic over-regulation killed its competitiveness, so it turned to protectionism. Ironically, "unfree" China now out-capitalizes the capitalists in manufacturing. The solution? More free trade, not less - because when goods stop crossing borders, armies start. Markets make prosperity; intervention destroys them.