Managers of US multinational corporations generally respond with a "big yawn" to warnings that the world trading system might evolve into a set of protectionist regional blocs.

Their lack of fear is justified, since both their past strategies and their more recent, supposedly global strategies have resulted principally in regional systems of production facilities. The gains from manufacturing and trading among more widely dispersed facilities seem lower than the costs of managing such a complex system. As a result, US multinationals' trade in manufactures stays mostly within the region of production, and would be little affected by the emergence of powerful trading blocs.

The strategies of most US multinationals would be threatened only if regional blocs restricted foreign investment. This seems unlikely, given the history of regional trade groups, and restrictions on new investment would probably harm Japanese competitors more than US multinationals, which have already established ...