Sherrod Brown: “the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War opened up a 10-year flood of new trade investment and economic…”

“the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War opened up a 10-year flood of new trade investment and economic growth in the world. But underneath this trend lies an unsettling pattern. When it comes to competing for U.S. trade and private investment dollars, democratic countries in the developing world, countries like India and Taiwan and Bangladesh and South Korea, are losing ground to more authoritarian countries, like Indonesia, and especially the People's Republic of China. In the post-Cold War decade, the share of developing country exports to the U.S. for democratic nations fell from 53 percent in 1989 to 34 percent in 1998, a decrease of 18 percentage points. Nondemocratic nations increased their share commensurately. In manufacturing goods, developing democracies' share of developing country exports fell 21 percentage points, from 56 percent to 35 percent. Regarding U.S. foreign investment in manufacturing, developing democratic countries gained 1 percent over the last 10 years. Nations that do not support democracy gained 5 percent of U.S. foreign investment over the last 10 years. China was responsible for 5 percent of foreign investment gained for nondemocratic countries. Not only have the U.S. export market shares decreased for developing countries that have always been democracies, countries that have recently become democracies have also lost market share.”