Never give a sucker an even break

摘要

There is something drearily predictable about xenophobic protectionism. In the late 1980s, when Japanese companies were busy buying up the Rockefeller Centre, tyre-makers and movie studios (or "invading Hollywood" as one news maga- zine proclaimed on its cover), howls went up that America was selling off its birthright. Japanese keiretsu, backed by their inscrutable government, were trampling over naive market-trusting Americans, especially in high tech. That was the constant refrain from Congress-and it was spectacularly wrong. A decade later, the Japanese stockmarket had halved in value and those naive American geeks were billionaires.