It Isn’t a Zero-Sum Game

Today, Google is a global company with more than fifty offices worldwide, more than half of our web traffic coming from outside the U.S., and roughly a third of our employees located outside the U.S. To really understand Google-and lead the company as we become even more global-associates need to understand how our offices work around the world. We have associates all over-Mountain View, Seattle, New York, London, Zurich, Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Sao Paulo. We would like to rotate them among different countries as part of their training. To make this happen, we need immigration policies that allow us to easily bring people to the United States for a year or two and more permanently as their careers progress.

John Snow, former Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush, and now chairman of Cerberus Capital Management
The U.S. remains the leader of the global economy. A half-century of openness has brought rising living standards not only here, but also to places around the globe embracing similar policies, with more people rising out of poverty over the last 35 years than ever before in history.

Americans succeed in the global marketplace because we are the most productive and creative people on earth, and our economic system, based on the rule of law, has welcomed investment and rewarded success. Even now, U.S. exports are a key pillar holding up a shaky economy.

This has not happened by chance. For two generations a bipartisan consensus worked to open up trade and investment. I was proud to have worked to pass NAFTA, where President Clinton's call to "embrace change" articulated so well how trade brought more of an opportunity than a threat.

The consensus has now given way to election year politics, and trade is a favorite bogeyman. The call to dismantle NAFTA, the most successful market on earth, and the rebuff of our friends in Columbia and elsewhere, smacks of economic isolationism.

But as former Prime Minister Tony Blair declared, debating globalization is like debating whether autumn should follow summer. There's no such debate in China and India, he observed, because they are too busy seizing its possibilities. And so must we.

Larry Lindsey, CEO of The Lindsey Group, an economic forecasting firm, and former economic advisor to President Bush
While America has gained economically from globalization, the biggest gainers have been the hundreds of millions of people in the developing countries, notably China and India, who have joined the global middle class. But the United States has not promoted free trade only for its economic benefits. Beginning with the Marshall Plan and the Kennedy Round of tariff reductions, American trade policy has been based on the belief that prosperity is the best guarantee of peace and the most promising avenue to advance freedom around the world. Our decision to enter into an broad free trade relationship with China after the fall of the Berlin Wall followed this pattern. The current calls for protectionism would reverse an American security strategy that began with Harry Truman and has been followed by Presidents of both political parties ever since.

To prosper, we must make America the best place in the world in which to do business, invest, and create jobs. This means moderate taxation. America already has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, and some of the election proposals would sharply increase the taxation of entrepreneurs and people in high-tech, finance and engineering, the skills most in demand in the global market place.

Bart van Ark, chief economist of the Conference Board
The global economy requires competitive and open markets for an efficient allocation of goods, services, labor and capital. This is more important than ever, as access to capital becomes more difficult, commodities become more in demand, and natural resources become more costly. Efficient markets require transparent prices and an open exchange of information, which will need to be promoted by business and regulators, and will require international dialog.