The Future Brief: The Next Global Standard — Who Writes the Rules After America?
The world won’t be ruled by armies or GDP—but by whose culture defines the rules.
As we have discussed many times, the age of American dominance is over. But what is often missed is that this change is deeper than just who has power, controls trade, and dominates diplomatically. The central question of the next world order is not who has the biggest military or economy, but whose culture will define the global rules.
What’s Happening
Trust in US leadership is eroding. Allies have watched Washington walk away from climate accords, tear up trade deals, and reverse foreign policy. Meanwhile, the European Union, China, and the BRICS bloc are advancing their own independent frameworks on trade, finance, technology, and diplomacy. For the first time in decades, nations in Africa, Latin America, and Asia have real alternatives to US led institutions.
Pattern
Every global order has been shaped by the cultural perspective of the nation in power, exporting its institutions, shaped by its worldview.
Spain and Portugal spread a culture of Catholicism, rule by force, and racial separation.
Britain spread Protestant commerce, common law, and class separation.
The US spread individualistic capitalism, universal rules, and separation by income
Now, as American authority fades, new cultural logics are pressing forward: European consensus, Chinese Confucianism, and BRICS pluralism. The change is not just economic or military; it is cultural.
Timeline of Transformation
1945: The Bretton Woods agreements lock in American norms, free markets, dollar dominance, and individualism.
1991: US “unipolar moment” reinforces American-style globalization.
2008: Global financial crisis shakes faith in the US model.
2016–2020s: Trump and the Republican dismantling of global trade, abandoning alliances, international organizations, climate, security guarantees, supporting dictators, and establishing a fascist dictatorship in the US, collapse US power and influence.
2020s: EU, China, and BRICS gain power and push their agendas, filling the vacuum of the former American hegemony.
What’s Likely Next
2030–2032: First effects
Companies will build products to meet the strictest standard - EU standards. This will be less expensive than creating different models for each product to meet different standards.
China scales clean tech (EVs, batteries, solar, grid gear), pushing prices down worldwide; reliance on Chinese supply chains grows.
The US stays innovation-first with mixed state/federal rules.
2033–2036: Clear split
The EU extends safety, sustainability, and privacy rules to more sectors; trade partners copy them to keep market access.
China sets practical standards for clean-tech hardware and many smart devices in Belt-and-Road markets; data flows stay more closed.
Online platforms diverge: the EU pushes interoperability and transparency; China keeps tightly managed ecosystems; the US remains mixed.
2037–2040: Everyday changes
In Europe, energy bills steady or fall as efficiency and storage scale; products last longer and waste less power.
Work differs by region: the EU adds protections and benefits; the US keeps more gig/contract options with more income swings.
Payments fragment: a digital euro spreads in the EU; e-CNY grows in China-linked trade; BRICS payment sysetem expands, SWIFT and other US systems shrink. People and firms juggle more payment systems.
2041–2045: Two Cultural Standards
The world runs mostly on two standards:
The EU: more rights, safety, sustainability, and interoperability, plus more consent and verification steps.
China: lower hardware costs and faster infrastructure with greater censorship and data control.
Switching between standards gets harder (chargers, apps, IDs, payments).
The US remains a frontier innovator; its influence depends on aligning with one standard or bridging between them.
Bottom line
By the mid-2030s, EU rules shape how products and platforms work; Chinese coordination shapes what key technologies cost and how fast they spread. What you pay, the jobs you find, your online experience, and device compatibility will depend on which standard you live under.
The Cultural Perspective
The Cultural Perspective
For nearly 80 years, the world has operated on an American model, individualism, universal rules, competition, and mastery over the environment. A blend of the Visionary-Power seeker (North), ambition and big bets, with the Scholar (West), knowledge, innovation, and institutionalized expertise. That model is rapidly fading
The shift moves in two directions.
Toward Europe, with a cultural perspective of consensus, sustainability, and collective responsibility. Power is shared and negotiated first, then locked in by institutions. The Bridge Builder (Middle), orchestrating agreement across differences, paired with Dedicated Rule Imposer (Blue), codifying that consensus into durable, enforceable rules.
Toward China’s Confucian cultural perspective of continuity, hierarchy, and long-term orientation. Policy adapts to preserve balance while pursuing national projects measured in decades. This reflects the Connector (East), relationship-centric coordination, and the Visionary (North), cohesive, forward-planned state strategy—underpinned by the Dedicated Rule Imposer (Blue), which codifies and enforces alignment.
The operative question is which of these cultural perspectives/archetypes will dominate or will regional blocs develop?
Why It Matters
The EU’s consensus and rules model culture changes the policy toolkit. Carbon pricing, safety, and privacy baselines such as the General Data Protection Regulation and the Digital Services Act, and product interoperability and repairability will affect prices, jobs, and products. The near-term effects may include higher compliance costs and more permissions to ensure transparency. The medium-term effects often include lower energy use, longer product lifecycles, better worker protections, and more stable planning for firms and households.
The shift toward China’s continuity and coordination model channels state-backed scale into targeted sectors. The result will be cheaper clean-tech hardware (EVs, batteries, solar) and faster diffusion of strategic infrastructure, with trade-offs: tighter information control, data localization, and greater dependence on Chinese supply chains and standards. For consumers, that can mean lower prices and greater availability for some technologies, but censored content and restrictions on cross-border data and services.
As these changes take hold, the simple question is: which set of rules applies to you? That choice shapes everyday things, what you pay and what protection you get, whether work is flexible gig jobs or steady with benefits, what you see online, and whether your chargers, apps, and payments work everywhere or lock you into one system.
What’s Next This Week
Wednesday — Global Profile: Josep Borrell EU High Representative (2019–2024)
A key player in cementing the EU as a regulatory empire and setting the stage for Europe as a world power.
Friday — Core Brief: What Is EU Culture? What Is American Culture?
If the EU does become a global force, what cultural imprint will it have and how is it different from American culture?
Saturday — Prime Brief: Who writes the next global rules?
What does this all mean? Synthesis of the Future Brief, Borrell profile, and the Core Brief; maps the two dominant “rulebooks” (EU vs. China) and shows practical trade-offs for consumers, firms, and states.
Join us for more cultural persepctive on TikTok and YouTube
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