What does the future hold for international trade?
If we are going to recover, it is going to be lead by increased trade. The more interdependent that we become as a world, the more it is going to require trade to bring us out of these crises. To the degree we restrict trade, we make it more difficult to solve the problem. Everyone is affected. But most poignantly, those who are the poorest and the least developed are most affected. We worry about the U.S. economy, as we should. We look at Europe and see that they are in worse shape than the United States. Japans growth dropped by 12.3 percent in the last quarter. Even Chinas growth is down from 11.4 percent to 6.8 percent growth. China needs 8 percent growth just to create enough jobs each year to maintain a stable workforce. The poor get hurt the worst, and they have been forgotten in all of our concern about how we are going to do to dig our way out of it. My experience tells me that only the U.S. can lead the world out of this kind of financial crisis. Only the U.S. has a large eno
