The difference is that a smaller percentage of our workforce is producing a vastly larger quantity of manufactured goods. In three words, it's improved worker productivity. The U.S. market also is the most lucrative in the world. The value of the increased production in the United States in just one year is greater than the entire output of Taiwan. This is not a time for timidity.
Free trade means opportunity, hope and progress.
Opportunity for a better life for the American worker. Hope for future generations. And progress toward a world free from the economic stagnation that leads to civil strive, individual impoverishment, war, and repression. But at the very time we should be capitalizing on our strengths and advantages to define the new economic paradigm for the 21st century, instead we find ourselves gripped by fear. While lecturing ailing economies on the need to open their markets, Congress passes legislation to close our markets.