That's the argument of C. Fred Bergsten, Assistant Treasury Secretary under Carter and now Director of the Petersen Institute. He thinks the rest of the world should allow us to pursue what he acknowledges is an aggressive trade policy. He wants a weaker dollar plus our really, really pushing China to revalue the renminbi. He's willing to bring China before the WTO and even adopt a protectionist policy similar to that of China. His other points are less aggressive.
Bergsten believes that we are a power in services, where we are running a surplus (as compared to our trade deficit). He wants other countries to loosen the regulations which limit our exporting of services and he wants us to sign a few more liberal trade agreements.
His final point concerns intellectual property. Bergsten wants us to get a lot more aggressive in defending this property. Unlawful appropriation of our innovative methods is rampant in Asia. I know this from personal experience. Our Japanese agent converted our IBM software to run on a different computer without our approval; in fact, we found out about it only by chance. Asians do have different ideas about what is right and wrong in the world of business.
If we follow Bergsten's policies, he thinks we can add 3-4,000,000 jobs with no cost to us. Interesting ideas but it will take a lot of chutzpah on Obama's part to make them reality.
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