analysis

Yes, I'm sure that was the problem

From the American Prospect:

"I think that state socialism failed Africa, and it failed Africa in many ways because it was not a socialism for the people, it was a socialism for the elite."

Almost from the first moments after the Berlin Wall fell, the campaigns to give credit to politicians and leaders began. But the story of the revolutions of '89 belongs far more to the people who sensed a weakening of their oppressors and who took advantage of the moment for themselves.

Calling Pat Buchanan

Gary Heiman, president and chief executive of Standard Textile Co., in today's Washington Post:

If more American textile and apparel manufacturers had been less insular, more willing to look for customers overseas instead of only within our borders, they would have improved their chances to grow, even as the market in the United States was shrinking. We, for example, sell to 49 countries. Rather than banking on high-powered lobbyists to stave off the march of globalization, we welcome the end of quotas.

It's not too late for more U.S. textile companies to shift course and adapt. Their survival will depend in large part on their ability to innovate and stay a step ahead of competitors elsewhere. Researchers have only just begun to figure out how nanotechnology, bioengineering and other relatively new disciplines can create the clothes that our grandchildren will wear. Technological ingenuity has always created new American jobs in the past. This can -- and must -- happen in my industry.

The transition to freer trade will be traumatic, and, unfortunately, there is no doubt this industry's American manufacturing base will continue to shrink in a quota-free world. But desperately and defiantly clinging to protectionism is not the way to meet this challenge. The answer is to innovate, export, become active in the global marketplace and become competitive again.