A look back at how Alexander Hamilton's economic blueprint turned a farming nation into an industrial giant — framed as a warning about what comes next.

• America's first Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, built a plan to make the young country able to make its own goods instead of buying everything from Britain.
• His argument: a nation that can't make what it needs isn't truly independent, no matter what its constitution says.
• The plan had two parts — taxes on foreign goods (tariffs) and government money to help young American companies grow until they could compete worldwide.
• This approach ran the US economy for about 150 years and turned a country of 4 million farmers with no factories into the world's biggest industrial power.
• The catch: this same playbook has historically ended with one empire falling as a new one rises to take its place.

Outlook: The story hints that the US may now be on the losing side of that cycle, with another country rising to take the industrial crown.