Here's a worrying scenario, according to Clyde Prestowitz: The Obama administration has released a report on The Competitiveness and Innovative Capacity of the United States.  Inexplicably, there has been "virtually no mention of it in the media."

Prestowitz said the report is alarming because it demonstrates that there can be "no sustainable Defense Department or budget if the United States loses its competitive and innovative capacity -- something it is presently doing at a rapid rate."

The report does indeed admit that the U.S. has "some problems."  But unfortunately, says Prestowitz, it entirely omits a discussion of "the U.S. industrial policies that largely created the American aircraft, shipping, computer, electronics, telecommunications, semiconductor, chemical, railroad, agricultural, and many other industries."

Yet again, we see a complete lack of thought for the trade problems that have subsequently led to the dismantlement of U.S. industry:

These are foreign currency manipulation that overvalues the dollar, subsidization by many foreign governments of the offshoring of U.S. production capacity, the "buy national" policies and attitudes of many governments that force U.S. companies (and the corporations of other countries) to produce in a particular country if they want to sell there, and the subsidization of and risk reduction for capital investment by state-owned or indigenous private companies in designated "strategic" or "pillar" industries by a number of foreign governments. As long as the report doesn't even mention these elements, let alone address them, there is no hope for a shift in the downward arching American economic, industrial, and technological trajectory.

Read Prestowitz's full editorial.