Remember, nothing is written in stone

I agree with VDH except for the part about being a Creditor nation.  Creditor nations are places that lack sufficient investment opportunities at home that investors have confidence in.  Thus they seek to invest in other places.  The US has almost always been a debtor nation because like the world's people, the world's money wanted to move there for a 'better life'.

If we get our act together we will continue to import capital, just for private, not statist ends.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: With A Whimper, Not A Bang. “The notion that we are doomed and the Chinese fated to prosper is not written in stone. It is simply a matter of free will, theirs and ours. They must deal with a new era of coming suburban blues, worker discontent, unions, environmental discretion and regulation, an aging and shrinking population and greater personal appetites, social protest, and nonconformity — in the manner that industrializing Western nations did as well in the early twentieth century. . . . We in turn can easily outdistance any country should we remain the most free, law-abiding, and economically open society as in our past. A race-gender-ethnic-blind meritocracy, equal application of the law, low taxes, small government, and a transparent political and legal system are at the heart of that renewal. America could within a decade become a creditor nation again, with a trade balance and budget surplus, drawing in the world’s talent and capital in a way not possible in the more inflexible or less meritocratic China, Japan, or Germany. Again that is our choice, not a superimposed destiny from someone else.”