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The U.S. should encourage innovation in its industries. The dollar is overvalued, which hurts the American cause. The U.S. strategy should be to bring down foreign barriers that unfairly hinder exports. It is a delicate game. The threat of new protectionist measures by the U.S. can sometimes be used to induce other nations to drop their barriers, which are often insufferably high. Yet the enactment of those measures could be ruinous.
A certain amount of stolid dogmatism deadens the debate. The terms themselves — free trade and protectionism — have be come inert and somewhat pointless. The best approach is one of subtle, intelligent and infinitely imaginative flexibility. The U.S. has its responsibilities as the economic power of the world. But it can still negotiate and persuade and improvise in the cause of its enlightened, aggressive self-interest. By Lance Morrow