The giant sucking sound of US profits is leaving Asia dry

FOR all the talk of a multipolar world, Asia’s export engines are discovering that they have not broken free from American hegemony; they have merely been repurposed to it.

Chalk it up to just how much more profitable US companies have become compared with most of the developed world – and increasingly emerging markets – since the end of Covid-19.

To some economists, the widening gulf in corporate fortunes is a central facet of American exceptionalism, with its fallout being keenly felt across Asia, a continent that not long ago was synonymous with economic boom.