I get the sentiment, but using ship building is an unfortunate example with respect to substantiating your point. The US shipbuilders are alive and well (not to the extent they were in WWII era). Military ships, Jones Act compliant commercial vessels, ferries, tugboats, etc. All US made.

Separately, your first paragraph also seems problematic. Let’s take Vietnam and Cambodia as examples: neither has a US military base, port, nor sells natural resources to “Wall St”.

Finally, I’m not sure I follow how that would cause the US to accumulate 50% of the world’s market cap—especially because the vast majority of the companies in the S&P 500 have nothing to do with defense, shipping or natural resources. I haven’t done the math, but I would venture to guess that >50% of the S&P 500 market cap is tech or tech-adjacent.

I decry this misplaced pessimism.

I generally agree.

This bit I see differently, though only with ~ 30% confidence.

> vast majority of the companies in the S&P 500 have nothing to do with defense, shipping or natural resources.

If you were evaluating the impact that a road has, and you looked at all the vehicles that passed over it every day, most of the vehicles you see would be in other industries — retail, industrial, commercial, domestic — very few of them are professional bitumen pourers who make roads. So clearly bitumen pouring only affects a low percentage of the city.