Alibaba founder Jack Ma has given his analysis of why the US economy has stagnated, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
"In the past 30 years, America had 13 wars spending $2tn [...] no matter how good your strategy is you're supposed to spend money on your own people," he said during a public interview with New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin.
He added that US policy has prioritised the health of financial institutions over citizens and local industry, "The money goes to Wall St. Then what happened? Year 2008 wiped out $19.2 tn in US income. What if the money was spent on the Midwest of the United States?"
The entrepreneur added that the US formula of globalisation which saw it maintain IP and brand control while most other jobs went overseas to states like China and Mexico has now backfired.
"The other countries steal jobs from you guys - that is your strategy. You did not distribute the money in the proper way," Mr Ma concluded.
The business man also outlined the difference between China's Alibaba e-commerce platforms and Amazon:
"Amazon is more like an empire - everything they control themselves, buy and sell ... Our philosophy is that we want to be an ecosystem. Our philosophy is to empower others to sell, empower others to service, making sure the other people are more powerful than us.
"With our technology, our innovation, our partners - 10 million small business sellers - they can compete with Microsoft and IBM. Our philosophy is, using internet technology we can make every company become Amazon."
Alibaba has also announced a 12-year deal with the Olympics this morning, to provide cloud and e-commerce services to the games.
On January 10th Donald Trump met with Jack Ma - Mr Trump left the meeting praising Mr Ma as a "great, great entrepreneur" and saying that the meeting had been highly-productive.
"Jack and I are going to do some great things," the US President-elect added.
Mr Trump's praise came despite his charges that companies in China have been ripping-off US brands and copying their designs.
The US government recently placed a major Alibaba subsidiary, Tao Bao on its "notorious markets" list for counterfeiting in December.
