You correctly identify my British/Irish heritage and DNA. And yes as I grew up the products of British manufacturing were still respected although in decline as US and Japanese competition overwhelmed them. New Zealand was in the process of shifting from being a colony of the British Empire to being a tribute state to the emerging US empire. I will always prefer Triumphs and BSAs ro Harleys! However I would strenuously challenge the implied assertion that US hegemony and wealth was built any less on military might and power projection that the British Empire was. It wasn't. USA first gained hegemony over the Americas and thenwent global after WW2 and the fall of the Berlin wall. Post WW2 Britain grudgingly handed over the keys to the empire to Uncle Sam. The murder of the democratically elected President of Iran, Mossadegh was one of the early stages in the handover. USA has exercised its global military bases and threat of use of force as well as frequent actual uses of force to gain economic advantage. Perhaps even more than the British did. Certainly one fuck of a lot more than China has done to date. To assert that wealth and prosperity are solely derivatives of free and open markets is absurd and history shows it is. Now that China dominates global trade in commodities and manufactured goods it must be able to defend its global assets and investments just as previous empires have had to. The Chinese are building from a base of mercantile- engineering- and have already beaten western capitalism at its own game of producing manufactured goods in the most cost competitive manner. Western factories simply cannot compete thus Trump rolls out the protectionist tariffs. USA is a bastion of crony capitalism and always has been.