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Just a few years ago, many of us would probably have imagined this 250th anniversary of the United States very differently. Two and a half centuries after the Declaration of Independence, the original thirteen colonies have become fifty states, multiple territories, and a nation of more than 340 million people – shaped by extraordinary political, economic, social, and technological transformations of historic scale. A story not only to admire, but also, in many ways, to learn from. From innovation and entrepreneurship to science, technology, culture, and global trade, some of the most transformative ideas of the modern era were born in America before spreading across the world through that powerful force called globalization – a phenomenon the United States has long embodied and continues to symbolize today.

Key Messages

• 250 years after the American Revolution, the United States continues to reinvent itself: capitalism may change shape, but it preserves its original strength – freedom, innovation, and the ability to adapt.
• From AI to Big Tech, the real divide between the United States and Europe today is cultural: less bureaucracy, more risk-taking, greater trust in private initiative, and stronger confidence in individual growth.
• Global competition: while Europe debates rules, compliance, and redistribution, the United States continues to build ecosystems capable of attracting talent, capital, and innovation.

An Unrecognizable Nation

One of the key forces behind the extraordinary evolution of the United States has been the dynamism of capitalism itself: a fundamentally free economic system capable of constantly reinventing itself, even after the deepest crises. In many ways, its greatest strength lies precisely in its ability to adapt to social change – and sometimes even anticipate it.

If the Founding Fathers were to return to America in 2026, they would hardly recognize the country before them. Yet they would also notice something else: values once considered self-evident are no longer taken for granted. On the contrary, they are increasingly questioned, criticized, and openly challenged. And perhaps this is the most striking difference between today and 1776.

It reflects a profoundly different mindset from the one that shaped the Declaration approved in Philadelphia on that “fateful” Fourth of July – a vision rooted in liberty, individual responsibility, and confidence in human progress.

The Metamorphosis of Economic Thought

Yet today’s America seems no less capable of surprising the world. The so-called “Liberation Day” of April 2025 made global headlines when the announcement of sweeping tariffs on Washington’s trading partners triggered panic across financial markets – with serious consequences for American savers themselves.

And what about the growing idea that the U.S. Treasury should acquire even a minority stake in the leading artificial intelligence companies? One cannot help but wonder what the Enlightenment thinkers behind the American experiment would have thought. Benjamin Franklin and the intellectual generation inspired by the French philosophes hardly believed that political power should direct innovation or shape the course of progress. If anything, they feared exactly the opposite: that government influence could become an obstacle to the freedom, creativity, and experimentation on which progress depends.

Paradoxically, parts of the United States now seem willing to reject the ultra-regulatory approach of the “new Europe” by leaving artificial intelligence relatively free – which, in many ways, may be a positive choice – while simultaneously reviving the old statist tradition of Europe, where governments hold stakes in companies deemed strategic.

This reflects the long transformation of American economic policy, a process that accelerated after the stabilization of the Union as a 48-state nation with Arizona’s admission in 1912, before Alaska and Hawaii joined in 1959. Those years were already marked by a rising wave of political populism, often hostile to large corporations and industrial concentration.

Soon came the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, followed by the steady expansion of federal power under Woodrow Wilson, and later the New Deal – introduced to confront the Great Depression of the 1930s, but ultimately becoming the starting point of an uninterrupted expansion of the public sector at the expense of private initiative. A trajectory that would continue through decades of growing state intervention, culminating in the extraordinary measures adopted after the recent global financial crisis.

The other Great Transformations: Society and Foreign Policy

Beyond economic issues lies the great theme of migration, which once contributed to shaping a shared national consciousness around the proud idea of the Civis Americanus, regardless of where a person was born or raised. One can think of a famous passage from Reagan’s speech accepting the Republican nomination shortly after the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, when the United States appeared strong and successful precisely because of its multiculturalism. Today, however, that same issue has become a source of intense political conflict and social tension – perhaps more than ever before.

Then there are all the issues tied to innovation itself, its impact on fundamental individual rights, and the growing power of a handful of market players – the so-called Big Tech companies. After setting aside the antitrust spirit that dominated the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Europe’s response today often seems reduced to imposing international digital taxes aimed at capturing – often unsuccessfully – the value created within individual jurisdictions.

And finally, there is foreign policy: on one side, the temptation to strike deals with certain autocrats; on the other, a renewed military interventionism shaped by principles very different from those of the neoconservative era – alongside the persistent tendency to reduce everything to a political and economic deal, detached from the values of the once-dominant “idealist” approach.

All of this unfolds within the broader context of America’s growing disinterest in the other side of the Atlantic and the enduring success of a slogan that is no longer new – America First. A vision that seems to mark the end of the long internationalist phase that, from the postwar era through the post-9/11 world, shaped the liberal international order through institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, the Bretton Woods system, the United Nations, and NATO.

And Yet, That Shining City Upon A Hill Still Glows

So, is everything lost? Not at all. As recently explained in a recent article for Corriere della Sera, we are clearly living through a phase of transition, and the points of friction between the United States and Europe are undeniable. The challenge of “keeping the West united,” repeatedly emphasized by Prime Minister Meloni, appears more difficult than ever. And yet, if we momentarily set aside politics and diplomacy and instead look at the level of integration between people – individuals, businesses, institutions, and communities – on both sides of the Atlantic, the picture becomes very different. Even events like the FIFA World Cup help reinforce those ties. The atmosphere of the traditional Independence Day reception at Villa Taverna, relaxed and celebratory, remains a powerful symbol of a relationship that continues to run deeper than political disagreements.

After all, European citizens continue, rightly, to be fascinated by the United States (the shining city upon a hill, according to the famous expression) because the spirit of Philadelphia – the idea that all people are born equal and must prove their worth by making the most of the inviolable rights granted to them by the Creator: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – is still alive and vibrant in the Old Continent, which drew from the “American Revolution” the best elements of the French Revolution and of modern constitutionalism.

And it remains alive because, in many ways, the United States still represents an inextinguishable beacon – like the one at Ellis Island that once welcomed so many of our fellow citizens in search of a better world.

Europe Vs. America: The Comparison That Leaves Us Exposed

In a Euro-American comparison, looking at recent years, the growth gap already says a great deal. The comparison between capital markets is unforgiving. And the average household still enjoys a higher level of prosperity across the Atlantic, despite attempts to downplay or dismiss this evidence.

So, is living in the United States “worth it”? Everyone makes their own calculations. But it cannot be denied that Europe is still bound by the “red tape” of those who prefer to keep wealth immobilized, or perhaps direct it toward public debt; that it is often slowed down by unnecessary bureaucracy, which has little to do with the entrepreneurial spirit of Silicon Valley or the many other “innovation districts”; that it is dominated by timidity, unjustified formalities and rituals, aversion to risk, the stigma of failure, obsession with compliance, and a culture of suspicion toward the intentions of philanthropists (“yes, he is a philanthropist, but he only gives to charity for a huge tax break”).

Across the Atlantic, instead, we find boldness, pragmatism, concreteness, optimism, a willingness to bet on the success of others… and admiration for that success, rather than social envy.

Why Washington Still Matters As A Beacon Of Growth (Including Individual Growth)

These cultural aspects remain fundamentally intangible, beyond any monetary value we may try to estimate. And they describe a reality in which, in the United States – just as the Founding Fathers envisioned – those with talent and determination still have the opportunity to succeed: if not always, or almost always, then at least with a greater probability than in Europe. Here, instead, that “social elevator” which helped define the American success story seems irreparably broken: in Italy more than elsewhere.

We have finally realized this, but concrete solutions are still nowhere to be seen: we will return to this soon. In the meantime, we continue to look with admiration at the United States and at these 250 years of freedom, which still have so much to teach us.