Peter F. Drucker on Practical Leadership

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Help Latin America and Help Ourselves

WHO NEEDS LATIN AMERICA? “We don’t,” most American businessmen would say. But it is the wrong answer. Latin America, rather than Japan, holds the key to the U.S. trade deficit.

Whatever may be wrong with American industry—and many things are surely wrong—it is not “lack of international competitiveness.” Since the overvaluation of the dollar was corrected nearly five years ago, U.S. industry has turned in a stellar performance, especially in exporting to Western Europe and Japan. A host of industrial exporters—South Korea, Brazil, Taiwan, Singapore—became bigger players in world trade. Yet the ...