How Americans Can Adapt to a Global Economy
What about younger people just starting their careers?
Younger people should learn another language–it's not too late and it's not too hard, and it's easier to do when you're young. If you speak Chinese, you can live anywhere in Asia.
What about blue-collar workers? If you were a 50-year-old assembly-line worker who was worried about losing his job, what would you do?
First, I'd look around and ask, "What is the environment I'm in now?" If it's the rust belt, and there's nothing there, I'd consider moving. But if there's a wafer fabrication plant down the street, or university research labs within 50 miles, I'd look for some kind of retraining.
We all know about China going gangbusters. Is there anybody who's not getting into China as quickly as necessary?
I gave a speech recently to a group of paper industry executives. I told them, "I think you're missing the boat in China. Most of their building is done with cement. There are 750 million literate people there... They need a lot of paper!" One executive came up to me afterwards and said, "We got burned in 1989 [after Tiananmen Square], and we haven't gone back." So they're still fearful of radical change in China. My joke is, Well, I think you're safe through 2008 at least. That's when the Olympics take place in Beijing. Yeah, you're going to pay a risk premium in China. But it's too important a region to ignore.
What other parts of the world are you paying attention to?
We're setting up some programs in the Middle East. Some governments there are pretty progressive. The [United Arab] Emirates, Abu Dhabi, they have a tremendous commitment to education. They see it as the way to wean themselves off of oil. The thing that's impressive is that they still have 50 or 100 years of oil left. Yet they're thinking about stuff like nanotechnology and biofuels.
Do you see anything like that in Saudi Arabia?
The Saudis can't change their society to the degree where our people are comfortable working there. You can be an Israeli and be a woman and be comfortable in Abu Dhabi. Not in Saudi.
What should be done to make American companies more competitive?
If there were a more aggressive and vocal business lobby in this country, it would be a good thing.
What should businesses lobby for?
The mandate should be to come up with implementable ideas to reduce red tape, improve competitiveness, improve the attractiveness of U.S. markets, and retrain segments of the population.
Do you see anything like that happening?
Nothing solution-oriented. Nobody's going to put a stake in the ground. A CEO's average tenure is four years. Their main job becomes self-preservation.
What about the Council on Competitiveness?
It's had zero impact.
Why isn't there a stronger voice insisting on those things?
Business is a little scared to get close to [politicians and regulators]. We're not sure we trust them.
There's still this view that we ought to be able to do everything. But there are some industries we should just get out of. Like maybe auto manufacturing. The Koreans can come here and start from scratch and apply methods and technologies they've developed somewhere else. Computer assembly. I don't think anybody has really looked industry by industry and said here's where we are still competitive and here's where we're not.
Private equity has become a big factor in the U.S. economy. How far do you think that can go?
Until this year, it seemed that mostly what they were doing was selling businesses to each other. Now, you've got these club deals, and there's some attractiveness to being private instead of public. The only thing that might turn that around is a rollback in all the regulations public companies face.
advertisement
