Chinese Billionaire Says US Wasted Trillions on Wars and Wall Street
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Wednesday, Chinese billionaire Jack Ma accused the United States of spending too much money on foreign wars and risky financial speculation and not enough money "on your own people."
The founder of the world's largest retailer, Alibaba, was addressing a question posed by CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin about the U.S. economy in relation to China.
In response, Ma said the U.S. should stop blaming other countries and look at its own spending priorities:
"It's not that other countries steal jobs from you guys," Ma said. "It's your strategy. You did not distribute the money and things in a proper way."
He said the U.S. has wasted over $14 trillion in fighting wars over the past 30 years rather than investing in infrastructure at home.
Ma said that when Thomas Friedman published the 2005 pro-globalization tribute The World is Flat, taking advantage of the world economy seemed like "a perfect strategy" for the U.S.
"We just want the technology, and the IP, and the brand, and we'll leave the other jobs" to other countries like Mexico and China, he said, according to Business Insider. "American international companies made millions and millions of dollars from globalization."
"The past 30 years, IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, they've made tens of millions—the profits they've made are much more than the four Chinese banks put together," he continued. "But where did the money go?"
"The money goes to Wall Street. Then what happened? Year 2008 wiped out $19.2 trillion in U.S. income," he said. What's more, he added, "In the past 30 years, America had 13 wars spending $14.2 trillion...no matter how good your strategy is you're supposed to spend money on your own people." ...