Both China and India aspire for the role, but it is not clear if nations that belong to the group see either of them as a benign leader or their champion

The ratings agency’s decision will have no consequences for the U.S. dollar’s global role, but it highlights the country’s darkening fiscal outlook and governance challenges.

With Washington absent and Berlin indifferent, it has fallen to Paris to deter and defuse the situation.

Europeans consider vast U.S. subsidies for cars, clean energy, and semiconductors a danger to their economies.