United Frontier of Globe: “Obama exhorts US, allies to bolster Arab spring”

“Holding out Poland’s transformation to democracy as a model for the world, President Barack Obama on Saturday exhorted Western allies and the American public alike to extend their support, energy and vision to those now reaching for democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. “

“I want the American people to understand we’ve got to leave room for us to continue our tradition of providing leadership when it comes to freedom, democracy, human rights…. it is a U.S. obligation to support democracy around the globe, one that pays dividends in the form of a safer and more prosperous world…. His message was a tacit answer to simmering sentiment that America should cut back on foreign assistance at a time when it is grappling with deficit troubles at home. In fact, foreign aid makes up less than 1 percent of the federal budget. “

“Tom Mann, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said Obama’s trip may have incrementally boosted his image with Americans as a leader on foreign policy but was “more of a boost for him among European leaders, which may help in pursuing U.S. interests in the Middle East and elsewhere. ” From: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110528/ap_on_re_eu/eu_obama

lift zeme out of place to new planet. phys v pro; waiting the time to come.; G- bless the city. sound of train?           

US Jobs, Trade: In Defense of WTO, NAFTA

This blog post is written in response to complains of US unemployment, manufacturing job losses, WTO, and NAFTA (Source: Robert Kuttner, Not Just Jobs — Good Jobs, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/not-just-jobs-good-jobs_b_706209.html)

Opening, liberalizing trade in forms of WTO, NAFTA, or other forms of multilateral or regional trade agreements has not been political agenda of one specific presidency, but the general trend of every administration since the mid-1970s, regardless of republican or democratic presidency. It may have incorporated the political influence of large corporations’ business and profit pursuits via international venues. But also not opening trade and global markets would have had the serious downside of collectively impoverishing American people by reducing their purchasing power of goods and consumption based on their income by, my guess is, one-third or more of their levels under trade. Because not-trading increases prices of products and reduces the choices of products available in the US markets, so we have to buy, consume less with same amount of income and feel more poor or less rich.

There is a reason that Wal-Mart has become the largest US and world corporation; because it has provided those choices of lower prices and more varieties of products through its multinational manufacturing or procurement of goods as much as the WTO, NAFTA or other trade agreement rules allow the corporation to do so. And Americans have “Crazily” enjoyed the “Benefits of Wal-Mart’s international operation while condemning evil Chinese or Mexican workers to take away American jobs. If people complain about WTO, NAFTA or other open trade issue and the consequent losses of US jobs, they should do it while abstainning themselves from going wal-mart or buying any cheap imported goods, or buying Japanese cars to reduce maintenance costs and reduce (the chances of losing workdays or income because of frequent car troubles before go to work) and bear with living with far less. They should put their acts together in belief; they cannot do A while pursuing conflicting B because of convenience.

Flattening American wages for decades. One of reasons is, the world is changing. In the Past, America was often the best or a leader in many manufacturing industries because the Europe was growing old and the Asia was not that much in the picture as it started its industrial infancy in 60’s and 70’s. Now, America is one of those growing old folks as Europe. We have to see where this country is standing in the world, to have correct understanding of the situation.

Opportunity for American Manufacturing, Jobs: The Case of Luxury Goods – Export?

In the beginning of Obama Administration, there had been voices that the US is in need of comprehensive analyses of US industrial competitiveness, strategic identification / development of industrial portfolio of which industries are viable, competitive, sustainable, or have growth potentials. At that time, there had also been some notion that “New Deal” style economic stimulus will not be viable, that “New Deal” failed as the New Deal construction boom of infrastructure for a few years (1933- 1937) went into another deep recession……

US market has been considered saturated as too many foreign and domestic competitors fight in a aging market while US producers have been defunctional in adapting to consumer demand but mainly surviving by manipulating US policies. Despite that, many giant US firms without competitiveness have still fallen, including labor intensive industries and auto industry.

However, despite worldwide recession, reportedly worldwide-widening income gap between rich and poor means means that there are sizable, lucrative foreign markets for US manufacturing of luxury goods, especially in countries like Brazil, Argentina, Korea, Asian tigers, India, China where riches are competing with those in this country. Rich people’s consumption are recession-resistant, meaning they will buy whatever they like, no matter it is recession or not. Do you remember the old news of some Koreans smuggling Viagra into Korea and got the whole country mad about those reckless, non-patriotic rich sons of etc. who care for those while the whole country suffers from financial madness?  On the other hand, US has unbeatable competitiveness in luxury goods that has cajoled the luxury lifestyles of American mass modern dynasties of rich and famous entrepreneurs, hollywood, basketball stars, etc. US entrepreneurs can strive to export these luxury goods to leisurely classes of foreign countries, such as bollywood (or dollywood? what was that) stars of India or you name them; foreign consumers can not buy American luxuries because they are not available either because of their governments’ import restriction or Americans don’t exports them.

Chinese Consumers in the Era of China As #2 Super Economy

Recently, China became the number 2 world economic superpower after the United States.

In an article, “The Truth About China as #2″, Dr. Robert Reich talks about China’s production and consumption expansion as below:

“But Chinese wages are so meager relative to China’s productive capacity that it would take a tsunami of labor agitation to push pay up to where it should be.

China is now the world’s largest market for everything from cars to cell phones – but that’s not because these items are within easy reach of the average Chinese. It’s because, out of 1.3 billion people, a couple of hundred million can save enough to buy them.

If the wages and purchasing power of Chinese households continues to rise more slowly than China’s capacity to produce goods and services — more slowly than China’s corporate profits and the government’s share of national income — we’re all in trouble.

Think of China as a giant production machine that’s growing 10 percent a year (this year, somewhat less). The machine sucks in more and more raw materials and components from rest of world — it’s now the world’s #1 buyer of iron ore and copper, and close to the #1 importer of crude oil — and spews out a growing mountain of stuff, along with huge environmental problems.” (source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-truth-about-china-as-_b_684004.html)

I wonder whether Dr. Reich’s view of Chinese consumer is too simplistic. China appears to have huge dichotomy of economic development levels because of extreme urbanization/industrialization in cities while most rural areas suffer lack of infrastructure, industrial/employment sources, unimaginable poverty, resembling African poverty and starvation.

Chinese people in urban areas get along well with fast increasing wages, available modern appliances and lifestyles, the corresponding consumption. Chinese in urban areas or cities imitate lifestyles of people in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, or New York. While urbanization has been growing fast in China, it is the vast size of Chinese rural areas and their consumers’ extreme poverty, starvation that drag down the overall consumption level of Chinese consumers.

It will change over time depending on the speed of China’s urbanization/industrialization process.
China, in general, is extremely underdeveloped and have to undergo hell of industrialization process couttry-wide for Chinese’s individual average level of consumption to reach the level of other industrializing and industrialized countries. Although China now reached the #2 world economy status after the US, in terms of the level of economic growth or maturity, still the country is in the stage of early teenage level, I would say, which means unimaginable potential for further growth over prolonged period until next super power rises.

In terms of China’s production growth, it will also depend on the world market condition. During recession like this, world demand for Chinese goods either slows down or stagnates, which limit Chinese expansion of production.

The Chinese Aren’t Coming: “The Inofficial Reason of Chinese Militarily Not Attacking US.”

My argument: Does anybody fear for the potential military attack to US by China? I have to say that the Era of Military War has been shifted to the Era of Economic war. When? A or two decades ago maybe? When Russian and Chinese started busying themselves with business, commerce and earning money, the nature of “Communism” has changed into that of “Consumerism.”

Have you ever seen any (even communist) riches who yarn for wars to lose all their riches? How long Chinese have clinged to the low value of Yuan so that they can export more goods and earn more money? Do you think Chinese want to destroy their lucrative export markets?

At least, Chinese seem to be wiser than Wall Street Bankers; they don’t kill, don’t wipe out their lucrative market – money/business sources, but rather invest some money on it to prevent its collapse and secure their future harvest from it. Isn’t it wiser than Wall Street Bankers’ ruthless draining of any possible profits from their clients regardless of what will happen in future?

Inofficial reason of Chinese not coming; I heard that in NY or big cities, a lot of sons and daughters of Chinese government officials have attended expensive US universities. Although China’s hourly wage used to be far less than 50 cents per hour years ago, these governments officials often earned huge sum of money through bureaucracy and able to finance their kids to attend most expensive universities in US, live in most expensive US cities and the kids would usually wear Gucci suits, nothing less than that. And I heard that most Chinese people in US (same as Indians), although their appearance may look clumsy and poor, have strong political connections in China that enabled them to come to US.

I don’t think Chinese govt officials will wage war with US to jepadize their kids’, relatives exciting life in US. And who wants to kill their money source?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

“Will China’s Revaluation of Currency Boost US Manufacturing and Jobs?”

“Oh, Dr. Reich !,

(regarding the impact of China’s revaluation of currency) So, is China revaluing it’s currency? Will it help US economic situation or hurt it at this point? Usually increasing the value of originally undervalued Chinese currency and making it more expensive should make China’s exports to US more expensive, decrease US imports from China, decrease US export prices to China, and increase US exports to China, right? So, will the revaluation of Chinese currency help both US export and import situation with China and, therefore, US manufacturing and “JOOOOOOB” situation? (since school, figuring out this kind of stuff is getting somewhat confusing…) I heard that even during this serious recession and (near) bankruptcies of US auto makers, still US cars have been hot items in Chinese market and “Very Profitable”!”, very exciting !

Dr. Robert Reich’s blog, “What’s Ahead for the Economy and Politics in 2010”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/whats-ahead-for-the-econo_b_411640.html

Thoughts of Connecting Energy, Climate Issues with the Commercial, Trade Rules of WTO as Fair Conditions for Global Trade and Industrial Competitiveness

-This blog was posted on mybarackobama.com website on Apr 26th, 2009.-

There has been news about Republicans and some Democrats’ skepticism about current Energy Proposal that emphasizes the increasing supply of renewable energy and “cap-and-trade” measure to control CO2 emission. Their claim of opposition is that these measures “increase costs for consumers, send jobs overseas, and hurt businesses.”

I also read, the administration reportedly intends that the energy bill does not conflict with international trade rules to prevent any disruption on US exports. And there has been the suggestion of negotiating a new “international climate change agreement” to obtain nations’ long term commitment to control emission. As President is scheduled to meet the world leaders of major economies to discuss the energy crisis, “EU calls on US to help lead global fight for climate change”, and small nations ask for more drastic measure from industrialized economies to control extreme weather changes including flood, rising sea levels, and extreme weather changes, there seems to be a increasingly better chance to get international agreements and support on energy and climate issues.

As I observe the changing international and domestic politics, and as the current opposition to the energy legislation is labeling this bill as a potential source of increasing energy costs and taxes, and weakening US industrial and trade competitiveness of, I would say, “tradable goods” in both world and domestic markets along with domestic jobs, I would like to discuss the alternative ways of dealing with these problems.

I am not certain about the practicability of this suggestion, and I don’t have specific information on how costly or cheap these new energy sources from wind, sun, waves or other renewable sources can be, especially in the beginning stages of their industrial or commercial applications. Common knowledge has been that new technologies, inventions, developments, and prototypes of newly developed products usually tend to be relatively expensive in their initial stages of development and introduction to market / commercial usages. It usually takes time for industries and markets to get accustomed to new types of technologies and products and refine / reshape their production methods / technologies into commercially cheaper and cost efficient mass production system.

Assuming that these renewable energy sources and technologies may need a bit of transitional period to mature and become mass, standardized, cost-effective energy sources to consumers and industries, and to reduce the possible disadvantage of US manufacturing of tradable goods in the initial stages of switching to these new energy sources if the administration governmental consumption of renewable energy sources, the administration may continues to pursue US consumer, industries, and government to switch to renewable energy sources, I would like to suggest the followings:

1.      In the beginning stage of pushing the consumption of renewable energy to consumer, industrial, and federal and state governments, it may be useful to differentiate and wisely choose the proper target groups with different time schedule of adopting renewable energy sources. In the beginning stage of implementing this energy legislation, the administration may choose individual consumer, industries of non-tradable-goods (such as retailing, medical industry, tourism, other service industries), and federate and state governments as the primary target groups to switch from traditional energy sources to renewable energies. And it would be less hurtful for US manufacturing if the administration provides longer, gradual, flexible time schedules for US industries of tradable goods to switch to renewable energy sources so that they gradually adapt to new energy sources. This flexible adjustment period will reduce the chance that the shift to renewable energy sources partially contributes to deteriorating weakening the global and domestic competitiveness of industries of tradable goods.

2.       During the process of implementing (1) as mentioned above, it would be productive to seek international agreements on harmonizing, equalizing global industrial and trade competitive conditions. This effort may include the phased time schedule of incorporating renewable energy sources and emission control worldwide. Requiring these conditions as the prerequisites or fair conditions for global industrial and trade competitions, negotiating memberships, rules, or terms of World Trade Organization (WTO), regional / multilateral trade agreements, foreign market access / investments / bidding for foreign government contracts or procurements, and serving global common cause of fighting climate crisis could prevent from penalizing the manufacturing competitiveness of countries, who actively pursue the fight for global climate crises, because they adopt these measures to protect environments. It is critical to make nations face the same sets of underlying rules and conditions of international industrial and trade competition including energy and pollution issues, and to prevent from disadvantaging, penalizing specific nations’ manufacturing that adopt climate-friendly production methods are critical.

According to political history of negating regional and/or multilateral trade agreements, dealing with labor or environmental standards have proven to be difficult issues as imposing these standards to economies of different GDP sizes have been tough challenges. And multilateral negotiations have been inefficient, time consuming, and often difficult to reach resolutions / agreements. However, recent international political scenes have shown some positive signs regarding climate issues. For example, there have been news reports such as

“European Union environment ministers called on the United States to help the EU lead and finance the battle against climate change.”

“The EU has been the leader of the international debate. We want to keep on and to offer a co-leadership to the US.”

“We need to build a coalition. It cannot be done unilaterally on the EU side,” “It is not only an obligation of the EU to come with fundings and figures… the United States, Japan and all the developed countries should contribute.”

Although EU showed passive attitude toward the “Global Fight with Terrorism” at NATO meeting, the bloc is showing a positive attitude toward dealing with Global Climate Crisis. When both the US and EU, the largest world markets and have strong leverages in world politics and commerce, are so enthusiastic on working together on climate issues, and many small nations are anxious about taking drastic measures to tame climate crisis as natural disasters such as flood, rising sea level, and drought are threatening their nations’ survival, I believe there is better than ever favorable chance of getting international cooperation on adopting renewable energies and emission issues, along with other environmental issues, to their economies and manufacturing.

I also believe, it would be more effective to get international agreements on climate issues if these issues are negotiated along with commercial / trade issues, later of which have been regulated by WTO and regional trade negotiations and have been major economic concerns to both developed and developing countries. I expect that this combination of issues is more likely to motivate both developed and developing countries whose economies are keenly related to exports. Although current global economic downturn may have negative effects on this endeavor and consensus is often tough to reach, the timing and international political environments for negotiating energy / climate issue are more favorable than before.

Climate: No Arctic Ice in 30 yrs. – My love, you are disappearing so fast

This blog was posted on mybarackobama website on Apr 3rd, 2009 . Because this issue is unchangeably important, I post it again.

This morning, I read that Arctic sea ice is melting so fast that they wouldn’t be around in the Earth in next 30 years. And the disappearing Arctic ice means that the sunlight-reflecting, Earth-cooling effect of its white surface will disappear and sunlight will be all absorbed through the newly exposed dark ocean, increasing the temperature of Earth further. Disappearing Arctic ice, along with fossil fuels, are the major causes of global warming, according to the report.

All of us, all societies, and all nations have our, their own individual universes with different orders of priorities, what’s the most or least important. In mothers’ universes, what their kids ate this morning, whether they are sick or play with which toys or books, that kind of things are the most important things above anything elses. Anybody who don’t agree with them are strangers. For teenage girls, makeup, clothes, boys, parties, drinking, and going wild come first before anything else in their universes. For business men, drug dealers, or any kind of entrepreneurs, money, profits, promotion come first before anything else at any costs. For hungry people, food comes first. For sick people, medical service comes first. For artists, art comes first. During good times, whether we are richer, thinner, have bigger cars or houses, have more fun and entertainment of life than others come first. During recession, economy comes first. To terrorists’ world, attacking their enemy nations comes before their own lives and peace. For nations, which countries have the strongest military or economic power, or how to put pressure or threaten other countries to get what they want come first before anything else, etc.

While all of our universes are colliding with each other without finding common grounds, consensus, and concessions, the world have become a chaotic, uncontrollable place. In the process, our only common home, the Earth, have taken the backseat all the way, while we have been consciously and/or unconsciously trashing it close to the point of no-return, it increasingly becoming inhabitable for us anymore. But still it doesn’t seem to be important enough to get proper amount of our attention and to do something about it. We are in life-threatening crisis. Just we don’t think so.

US Self-Sufficiency, No Trade, Global Isolation / Protectionism, and Collective Sliding into Poorer US.

The night before Thanksgiving, there was one person’s comment to my Huffpost comment that insisted on the isolation of US economy from the world, protectionism, and the lie of globalization.  As there must be a lot of people who share the same opinion as this person’s, I want to clarify their misunderstanding as much as possible. The contents of the comment is listed as below:

danarothrock replied on Nov 25, 2009 at 16:55:50

“Tarrifs were not the main cause of the 1930s depression. The cause was the exact same financial casino gambling that brought us down this time. Hence, the Glass-Steagall Act, which was repealed in 1999.

America grew strong in isolation and protectionism. We produced almost everything we needed, except rum, coffee and bananas.

Globalization – “Flat Earth” – has been the theory that has destroyed the economy of this country and several other countries. We are on the losing end of every “Free Trade” agreement. We are trading jobs for foreign workers. The Ex-Im Bank and Overseas Private Investment Corporation (two agencies of the US Treasury) are funding $billions every year for American companies to move overseas. 67% of American corporations have plans to increase offshore operations. Do some research on “protectionism”. “Globalization is a LIE.”

My Response was:

Although I am tired, sleepy now. I am still almost sure that “tariffs, protectionism” were the causes of Great Depression. That’s why, since then, there were  international multilateral negotiations to reduce tariffs worldwide and not to repeat the same bad experience of tariff imposition / protection. If you were not sleepy, please check the fact and let me know !

Regarding “America grew strong in isolation and protectionism,” this is the most “RIDICULOUS” statement that I have ever heard! You want to put this country in economic, political exile away from the rest of world and cut off its position of economic and political superpower in the world to degrade into poorer and poorer country? Let me guess. You must have never left your block of town to travel around and see the reality of the world.

What do we trade off by engaging in world trade?

LOSS :

Some labor-intensive manufacturing jobs as imports of those goods gain domestic market sales.

GAIN:

A. Gaining of export-related jobs (this is one reason of why the White House wish China to save US economy and unemployment problem through their purchase of US goods);

B. Cheaper imported goods make us be able to buy more goods, more foods, clothings, electronics, etc with same income. We feel richer when we can consume cheaper import goods; we feel poorer when cheap imports are not available and we have to buy more expensive domestically produced goods (please compare the numbers of grocery items that, with $100, we can buy from Wal-Mart (many of them cheap imports) and from a rather expensive grocery store. You will feel the difference of how much we can consume more or less with same income depending on whether cheaper imports are available to us or not.

Without cheap imports, we may save some jobs of ours or our fellow workers, but we altogether/collectively have to eat less food, wear less clothings and shoes, buy less toy…overall we will feel poorer without trade than when we have imports.

It would be a choice of what we prefer.

“Obama, China, and American Jobs” by Robert Reich and Global Riches, Poors, and US Corporate Centralism

Former Secretary of Labor, Prof. Robert Reich discussed the limitation of China as a source of boosting US economy and jobs in his blog, “Obama, China, and Wishful Thinking About American Jobs,” at Huffington Post. He points out the limitation of China in boosting US economy and jobs as China’s high savings and investments rates and low consumption rates. These characteristics have been the typical profile of developing countries in the stage of high economic growth before reaching the stage of becoming advanced industrialized countries like US and Western European countries.

Here is one irony that I cannot avoid but noticing. Americans here expect Chinese people to help, save US economy and job conditions while they themselves (or we ourselves) keep damaging our own economy and jobs by scheming / manipulating domestic policies for political advantages or profit reasons that end up providing excessive profits to a few wealth group of people at the costs of screwing up the rest of people and the whole economy. And we look for the solution of our problem from a foreign country which also struggles with its own sets of problems including starving people and high unemployment in parts of the country? Does this make sense?

Regarding Prof. Reich’s blog, I wondered about other reasons of China being a limited source of US export market and boosting US economy:  (a) the huge gap between the riches and the poors in that country; (b) the limitation of US international marketing / business.

Regarding the huge income gap in China’s riches and poores as a source of limiting the country’s potential to help out US economy and job losses, Chinese riches live like the corresponding American riches. Chinese poors live like the correspnoding African poors; they starve like poor Africans. Rather than high Chinese savings and investment rates, I wonder whether it may be the huge income gap between Chinese riches and poores that cancel out the potential of Chinese consumers as a whole to help out US. Years ago, I heard from a Chinese that, in poor rural China, there were even families that owned only one pants for 7-8 family members. So, whenever family members had to go out, each member took turn to wear that pants while the rest of family members stay home naked or without wearing pants. Of course, this is a side story compared to their starvation. This is the story of “Rural China” where there are few industrial bases and job sources to feed people. This Rural China story may be comparable to those of US cities or towns that have declining or disappearing industrial bases, less and less jobs available, and increasing homelessness and starvations, such as the conditions of mining towns or cities of declining car manufacturing. On contrast, in “Urban China” booming industries and jobs exist to support Chinese people to increasingly live like people in richer countries.

In case of my country of origin, South Korea, in the 1980s and early 1990s, the young generations of riches in their 20s lived like the corresponding age group in US, attending universities, partying, drinking, killing times for ultimate entertainments and dating, enjoying such spoiled lifestyles and consumption patterns. In contrast, the young generations of poor Koreans, such as sons and daughters of poor farmers or factory workers, were often involved with underground student/labor/political organizations and demonstrations against the military governments and social/political issues, run away from smoke bombs and got arrested during street demonstrations, blacklisted by the government and often tortured by policies or military, maybe partially comparable story to those of young terrorists in Middle Eastern countries. What I am trying to say here is, the choices of lifestyles and consumption patterns seem to determined by the availability of money, not by nationality. The hierarchy of income levels and choices of lifestyles and consumption patterns within a country is exactly parallel to those across different countries regardless of nationality or different economic profiles of countries but more because of availability of money. I believe, human nature is same all over the world.

Regarding US firms’ limitation of exploring foreign consumers, although US has the finest business schools such as Harvard Business School etc., either many US corporates haven’t utilized these human resources or these human resources forgot what they learned in school after their graduation and run business based on what they feel like or their personalities. Despite  some exceptions, many US companies seem to only target domestic consumer and produce goods at corporate/executives’ convenience and needs (as shown by US auto industries), rather than considering / analyzing what consumers or competitors think and act. Some time ago, I read a review/rating of international travelers by, I think, French employees of tourism. They rated Japanese as most cordial and pleasant travelers, French most obnoxious (French travelers were even disliked by their only country fellows), and Americans being as the only nationality who insist to speak only English instead of learning the local languages even while traveling foreign countries. This attitude of American tourists may also explain the mentality of US corporate executives. The story of US corporate people in doing foreign business often sounds similar to that of American tourists. These American business people in foreign countries often don’t like to learn local languages and cultures. They prefer / expect the local people learn English to communicate with them. I may call it as “US Corporate Centralism” although there may be other terminologies given to this kind of behavioral, cultural pattern. Instead of providing goods that fit to the tastes, sizes, and consumption patterns of people in foreign countries, US corporates expect foreign consumers to adjust, adapt to the ways of American-made goods that US corporates produce and provide as they like.

Along with the role of exchange rates between China and US (which has been another huge issue between two countries over a decade) and China’s country profile, this American style of doing foreign business has been and may continue to be the major barrier of selling American goods in foreign countries. In the past, there had been strong, high demand for American goods all over the world. In South Korea, for example, Korean mothers got crazy to rush to OshKosh clothing stores in Korea if they had heard about those stores’ sales advertizements. Because those OshKosh children clothings were sold in Korea at 200%-300% higher prices than the original US prices and not easily available there, if those clothing store had had sales, their were crowds of mothers around those stores and many people behind the crowd even couldn’t look at the products and just wait until somebody toss behind some unwanted products. That’s what I heard from Korean mothers. US products have often meant status symbols for many consumers in developing countries because of the image of US as world super power and American products were not easily available there. Foreign people wished to have American products to show up to their friends and neighbors, but they couldn’t find them. US corporates probably didn’t know that because they were not interested in foreign markets and didn’t do market research, mainly serving US consumers with products that the corporate people like to produce. Without solving visible barriers in engaging in international business, are we supposed to keep talking about why Chinese consumers would not really help US economy and unemployment problem?

Mr. Reich’s Oroginal Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/obama-china-and-wishful-t_b_361492.html