America's role in the global economy inevitably was going to diminish; we're smaller relative to - as China, India, other emerging markets grow.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that as emerging economies grow, the significance of the United States in the global economy will decrease.
Joseph Stiglitz points out that with the rise of countries like China and India, the United States will find its influence in the global economy diminishing. This reflects a broader trend where economic power is shifting from traditional strongholds to new emerging markets, altering the landscape of global economic dynamics over time.
In practice
In a discussion about global trade at a conference, one might use this quote to illustrate the shifting economic landscape.
Free migration within Europe means that countries that have done a better job at reducing unemployment will predictably end up with more than their fair share of refugees. Workers in these countries bear the cost in depressed wages and higher unemployment, while employers benefit from cheaper labor.
I don't think we can have democracies that work where most of the people are not benefiting economically, where most of the people are worried about their job security.
Let me put it very forcefully: No large economy has ever recovered from an economic downturn through austerity. It's not going to happen in the United States, and it's not going to happen in Europe.
What separates developing countries from developed countries is as much a gap in knowledge as a gap in resources.
One of the arguments I make for the failure of the euro is that, at the time it was being constructed, there was a 'neo-liberal' ideology which said that all we need to do to make this thing work is to get deficits low, keep inflation low, and take down barriers, and then everything would be fine.
Trump sees the world in terms of a zero-sum game. In reality, globalisation, if well managed, is a positive-sum force: America gains if its friends and allies - whether Australia, the E.U., or Mexico - are stronger. But Trump's approach threatens to turn it into a negative-sum game: America will lose, too.
Globalisation, for me, seems to be not first-order harm, and I find it very hard not to think about the billion people who have been dragged out of poverty as a result.
If you go back to the really long-run questions that interested me, the big question was why, over the centuries, the millennia, has growth been speeding up?
The thing I've learned most about poverty is how expensive it is to be poor. It's super easy to pay rent every month if you earn enough to pay rent and have a decent job. It's super hard to pay rent if you need a coupon from the state and then need to go find an apartment that will accept that coupon and only that coupon.
It is a [disputed] question, whether the circulation of paper, rather than of specie [gold and silver coin], is a good or an evil I believe it to be one of those cases where mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin.
By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
How can government reduce the frequency and the severity of future catastrophes? Companies that have the potential to create significant harm must be required to pay for the costs they inflict, either before or after the fact. Economists agree on this general approach. The problem is in putting such a policy into effect.
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