A recent survey of the world's 50 largest Internet services companies, according to the industry magazine Interactive Week , found that all are American firms. This is due at least in part to the ability of America's labor force to focus on producing high-tech products. Free trade quickens the flow of technology. Most of the products made today by industrialized countries involve technology that did not even exist two decades ago. No one country can produce all the technologies necessary for the development of new and innovative products.
Free trade allows U.S. firms to enter into crucial partnerships with foreign firms.
These partnerships, called strategic alliances, allow American companies to gain access to, and to benefit from, the new manufacturing, marketing, and distributing techniques that are being developed overseas. In the late 1980s, for example, Japan had achieved a commanding lead in the production of circuitry for such products as laptop computers. American firms responded by seeking partnerships with various Japanese firms involved in that production. As a result, those American firms gained firsthand experience in the production of faster and smaller electronic components. This development helped save the U.S. semiconductor industry from bankruptcy.