The entity making decisions and benefiting does not heed and does not work to benefit the american taxpayers. The US from the point of view of the rest of the world is the military industrial complex, a network of corruption/compromise of varipus governments and one sided trade treaties, and the interests of american oligarchs.

The american taxpayer only benefits insofar as they are goven crumbs so they do not revolt or use what little democratic control they have to reign in the beast.

From the point of view of the rest of the world, there is nothing really to distinguish the US from the CCP other than the CCP are slightly more forward thinking in some of their projects in terms of long term benefit to themselves and are (momentarily) more brutally authoritarian. On the US side the main downsides aee they're currently dominant and there is a real danger of the US being taken over by a literal apocalypse cult that seeks climate change as an end to seek rather than merely something to be ignored where possible as the current incumbents do.

Other than that, one imperialist is the same as another -- to some degree even for the other countries in the imperial core.