This is a unique article that looks at U.S. business in an optimistic light. What's more, the argument for why U.S. business is winning was a big surprise to me. In spite of having read so much about how Americans are ill-prepared to do business with the world, and the fact that China and other rapidly growing economies will outpace ours sometime this century, Mallaby has a different take on these matters. Could it be that as a natural course of our drive to succeed economically, the U.S. will embrace multiculturalism on a widespread scale, rather than pursue isolationist sentiments (like English is the only language for business) in matters of other cultures and languages? Some of the statistics regarding language learning of Asian languages and Arabic would indicate this.

Moreover, America's business culture is perfectly matched to globalization. American executive suites and MBA courses are full of talented immigrants, so American managers think nothing of working in multicultural firms. The immigrants have links to their home countries, so Americans have an advantage in establishing global supply chains. The elites of Asia and Latin America compete to attend U.S. universities; when they return to their countries, they are keener to join the local operation of a U.S. company than of a German or Japanese one.

Tags: business | America | multicultural