The country was in decline for at least a decade before Trump took office.

Well 4 years of that decade was Trump being in office, and 4 other years was the result of people being willing to vote in literally anyone who wasn’t him. So really 8 years of that decade was Trump’s fault, and the other 2 years (before Trump) were so good they made us forget how important good government is.

As for the rest, Trump is cutting funding for research like crazy. That won’t just affect things today, that’s going to make stuff shitty for decades. And that’s exactly the kind of harm that the emotion-laden American news and social media simply won’t cover.

Of course future prediction is hard, so who knows what will happen. But I’m not seeing the path for this to turn around anytime soon. If I have to predict the future, I’d guess the EU becomes the new global leader, driven by relatively high democracy and pro-science policies compared to the rest of the world. This could even occur in a relatively short time frame, like 5 years.