Emerging markets remain rocky, Japan is still struggling with its worst crisis since World War II, and economic activity has been anemic across much of the European Union, but growth in the United States powers ahead at a robust 4% per year. The current business cycle expansion, which started in 1991, has already become the stuff of legend. But even as recently as five years ago, policy debates in the United States were laced with pessimism about the sustainability of American economic leadership. Policy wonks called for the United States to emulate Japan, develop an industrial policy, save manufacturing, and restore American might.
A version of this article appeared in the November–December 2000 issue of Harvard Business Review.