The Australian Financial Review on Wednesday published an article titled "The U.S. has started to decline," challenging the country's foreign policy.
The article said "Australia has every interest in remaining a friend and ally of the U.S. but surely none in promoting a fiction of growing US economic hegemony or in claiming more for the U.S. than it claims for itself."
It cast grave doubts on the claim by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer that the United States today accounted for a little over one third of global output.
Using purchasing power parity calculations, the United States today accounts for a little less than one quarter of world GDP, while using a standard reference, the country now accounts for around one fifth of global GDP, the article said.
"Not only has US economic dominance declined, it has also become more dependent on the rest of the world," it said.
Citing figures published in the United States, the author pointed out that in 1960, less than a 20th of the product of American farms and factories was exported and by the time George W. Bush became president, America exported well over a 10th of its production. At the beginning of the 1970s, imports to the United States were equivalent to less than a 14th of American GDP and today they are nearly an eighth.
In 1960, the United States provided capital to the rest of the world, but over the last few years, it has borrowed savings from the rest of the world equivalent to nearly a 20th of GDP, the article said.