Staying Competitive: U.S. Economic Policy

Staying Competitive U.S. Economic Policy Fred Bergsten and the Institute of International Economics, The United States and the World Economy: Foreign Economic Policy for the Next Decade. Washington, DC: IIE Press, 2005, 488 pp. $26.95.

The United States and the World Economy: Foreign Economic

Policy for the Next Decade suggests policy changes to resolve the economic problems of the United States and the implications of these suggested policies for the rest of the world. The authors are drawn from the Institute for International Economics (IIE). G. Fred Bergsten, director of the IIE, leads with a 50-page essay entitled "A New Foreign Economic Policy for the United States," whose title aptly explains its content. The meat of the book lies in Bergsten's piece, with the rest of the thirteen chapters further developing some of Bergsten's ideas.

In proposing an agenda for improving U.S. foreign economic policy for the next decade, Bergsten is often on the side of angels. He wishes to counter the domestic protectionist backlash against globalization by pushing Congress to extend the president's trade promotion authority in order to complete the multilateral Doha round of negotiations under the World Trade Organization (WTO) by 2007-including cutting agricultural protectionism everywhere. He backs this assertion with the convincing argument that per-capita income in the United States has benefited enormously from previous trade negotiations and that this could continue into the future.