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Trade Deficits, Industrial Competitiveness, and the Japanese
McCulloch, Rachel
27/2  (Winter 1985): 140-156

As nearly every month brings new record deficits in U.S. merchandise trade and the current account, the competitive position of U.S. industries has become the subject of increasing public concern. Several years of ever-larger trade deficits have convinced many U.S. citizens that the nation does indeed face a basic "competitiveness problem." The causes of dismal U.S. trade performance, once confined to the realm of dry technical analysis, now serve as the centerpiece of television news features, after-dinner speeches and even political platforms. Committees and commissions are formed almost daily to study the competitiveness problem, devise recommendations for its speedy solution and promulgate the inevitable report. A hefty stack of these reports now awaits the interested reader and still more reports continue to pour in as additional groups complete their collective labors and publish their findings. The mammoth trade deficits reflect the decline of U.S. industrial competitiveness.

 

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