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Highlights:

◾The historical core of the United States, the Mississippi River Basin, has declined in economic importance in the last several decades.

◾Diverse economic drivers create a more robust economic foundation but can also limit the political influence of a single sector or region.

◾With a core pursuing divided interests now shouldering the bulk of the U.S. economy, political polarization is only set to deepen, raising the risk of political volatility and greater uncertainty for businesses.

The death of the American middle class and, with it, large swaths of the American interior, is no secret. Globalization, technological change and other factors have decimated the heartland of the country at the same time as demographic, economic and other trends are beginning to concentrate the country's economic wealth and political influence along the coasts. With the traditional core of the United States no longer carrying the weight it once did, the country as a whole has lost a largely unified center in geographic, economic and social terms. Today, many of the country's growing economic hubs share a similar type of geographical location — a coast — yet they remain geographically, culturally and economically diverse. In this most basic sense, diversity breeds drivers that divide rather than unify, meaning that the continued shift in the U.S. economic core away from its geographic center, alongside other technological and demographic factors, will inflame the nation's social, political and generational divides for some time to come.

Defining the U.S. Core

Many often attribute the United States' modern success to its prize for winning the geographic lottery: the Mississippi River Basin. Stretching from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Appalachian chain in the east, this vast region offers ample fertile land, navigable rivers, access to raw materials and, in more modern times, transport links to manufacturing centers. It's no surprise, then, that this heartland provided the United States with the economic prosperity that laid the foundation for the country to inevitably become an empire.

For all its historical strength, the Mississippi River Basin is no longer the economic core, or "ecumene," of the United States. After all, technology has evolved and the U.S. economy has shifted; the basin's steel belt has become the rust belt, while containerized shipping, globalization and automation have increased the economic importance of the coastal urban centers. Agriculture, which remains concentrated in the Mississippi basin, still carries outsized political weight compared to its meager contribution of less than 1 percent of gross domestic product, yet even that is beginning to wane in the face of demographic shifts and advancing technology. Naturally, any such transition produces winners and losers; in the U.S. case, it has exacerbated a political divide that has only grown in intensity since the 2016 presidential elections

A Ditch, a Dream and the Rising Mississippi

The Mississippi basin did not become the undisputed core of the United States until the second half of the 19th century. The U.S. government had been well aware of the land's promise in terms of resources when President Thomas Jefferson acquired much of the basin in 1803 through the Louisiana Purchase, yet the area remained a sparsely populated wilderness for lack of transport links between the Atlantic coast and the interior. (At the dawn of the 19th century, in fact, many in the young republic even regarded western New York, which was part of the original colonial core, as wilderness.) With the Mississippi not yet navigable in the north and the sea route from New Orleans to the economic centers of the mid-Atlantic and northeastern colonies still arduous, transporting goods, particularly bulky ones, over land was more trouble than it was worth. Ultimately, it was technological innovation that increased the ease and reliability of water-based navigation that ultimately transformed the Mississippi basin into the new country's core.

The disenfranchisement of the blue-collar middle class that helped propel Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016 is not the only thing pushing the partisan divide wide. Numerous other issues are fomenting greater political division — all of which is a manifestation of the country itself metaphorically hollowing out its core. Though the Mississippi basin will remain an agricultural resource base, the effective core, where economic might, population centers and connections with the rest of the world are consolidated, will be centered on the U.S. coasts in the decades to come. With the country's modern-day ecumene located on both sides of the country and the former center seeking to cling to its previous influence, the next several election cycles have the potential to swing widely between poles as the political divide continues to grow. And just as China rises as a global competitor (even amid its own internal geographic divisions), the United States will be forced to grapple with the reality of an urban, coastal core and a potentially restive rural interior that will chafe — potentially to the point of social or civil unrest — at its limited economic opportunities.

More Including Interactive Graphics Etc.

The Winners and Losers of Efficiency

Hollowing Out the Political Middle

https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/how-plight-heartland-could-upset-americas-balance

#Heartland #GeoPolitics #Economics