Why do Americans have to do all the heavy lifting? That's the refrain of every U.S. policymaker, wondering why the rest of the world seems to be waiting for the U.S. economy to pull it out of a downturn. And the sentiment is shared by American corporations, which would just love to find a growing international market for their products. But Western Europe continues to disappoint, and Japan's recession seems endless. What's an exporter to do?
How about: look past Japan to the rest of East Asia. During the early and mid-1990s, tigers like South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong,...