It was predictable that India and China would refuse to play along with the usual trade liberalization game. They know what the western nations--especially the U.S.--are up to and they are big and powerful enough to tell the Bush administration to take a hike. China, in particular, is not about to allow a flood of subsidized farm products from the U.S. to wipe out their farmers, as happened in Mexico and a host of African and South American nations. Moreover, as one of the major holder of dollars, China can laugh at the IMF's prescriptions for "structural adjustment" that have plunged so many Asian nations into dire poverty as the price of being bailed out. Instead, it's been lending to us by accepting our dollars in return for low-cost manufacturing products. Now the U.S.—that's us--is the debtor and we get to pay the interest.

It would have been nice to know exactly what each side proposed in the trade talks, but apparently our government does not have much confidence in the ability of Americans to understand the fine points of international trade. Or perhaps it's the opposite fear--that the people will understand all too well.

Of course, those fine points have made the difference between the industrial powerhouse this nation was before Reagan and his wrecking crew took power and starting sending manufacturing overseas and concentrating the wealth of the nation into the hands of the superrich, and what it is today, a declining power, foolishly squandering its diminishing resources on a colonial war intended to make a few people rich and to establish control of oil production in the middle east. Fine points, indeed!

I would like to believe that an Obama presidency would at least attempt to encourage capital formation in the U.S., but I don't have much faith that it will.

Without a robust industrial capacity, we are destined to loose our economic and technological preeminence, if, indeed we have not already lost it.