Skip to content

Technology & Innovation — January 2, 2011

U.S. Abandons Unilateral Free Trade

The United States will start to imitate the industrial and strategic trade policies of countries like China, Japan, Korea, Germany, and France. It will also begin to withdraw its overseas troops.

Clyde Prestowitz

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Over the next year, two historic trends will emerge. The long eroding competitiveness of the U.S. economy will become fully apparent as unemployment remains high and the U.S. trade deficit continues to rise. In response, the United States will begin to abandon its longtime policy of unilateral free trade and will start to imitate the industrial and strategic trade policies of countries like China, Japan, Korea, Germany, and France.

The second trend will be the beginning of a withdrawal of American military forces from overseas bases and a major reduction of the size of the U.S. military establishment. The United States has gotten to the point at which it simply can no longer afford to be the world’s sole policeman.

— Clyde Prestowitz, President of the Economic Strategy Institute

Image courtesy of Flickr user KB35.

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Related

Does Congress have the power to stop America’s endless wars?

The U.S. has been in a state of continuous armed conflict since 2001, yet Congress has not declared war on a country since 1942. How have several presidents managed to keep sending troops without a declaration of war, and what does this mean for the American people?

Illustration of a person standing on a ladder inside a large head with a maze-like brain exposed, symbolizing introspection or exploration of the mind.

Is teaching psychology a waste of time?

When appraising human behavior, people tend to forgo the lessons of psychology in favor of assumption and anecdote.

A red number 5 with orange flames extending from the left on a dark background, symbolizing the fiery drive to improve company culture.

5 ways to rapidly improve your company culture

Don’t become one of those organizations that slouches toward positive behavioral change — here’s how to move fast.

Starts With A Bang

Have we found a galactic “twin” of the Milky Way?

Our galactic home in the cosmos — the Milky Way — is only one of trillions of galaxies within our Universe. Is one of them truly our “twin?”

Industrial landscape featuring large smokestacks and various structures of an oil refinery, some incorporating cutting-edge carbon removal technology, set under a cloudy sky.

Not all forms of carbon removal are created equal

The carbon market and offsetting system have created “carbon cowboys” and perpetuated forms of neo-colonialism and other inequities.

Up Next

Personal Genome Sequencing Technology is Now Faster and Cheaper—And Fits on a Tabletop

As I wrote in my past blog entry, “The 1000 Genomes Project Will Help Us Understand Genetic Variations,” it initially cost $3 billion to fully sequence all of the 25,000 […]