It is going horribly wrong at the moment, and I don't think the people in charge have any idea of what's going wrong, why they were elected, or how to fix it.

My guess as to what the problem might be is that the US has essentially become a two-class society. One class has been thriving, while the other has been struggling since the first China shock. The US was open to trade and more neutral, while other countries pursued export-led growth industrial policies. This benefited one class, but the other is increasingly relying on basic income financed by debt.

The thing is, Trump and Musk are clearly benefiting from an overvalued dollar and a trade deficit. Why would they change a system that is working so well for them? They might end up changing it accidentally by eroding trust in US reliability (also w.r.t. US creditworthiness), but that could be catastrophic and ultimately benefit no one.