But turning away from trade agreements, now and in the future, will not strengthen our economy, it only weaken it. There is nothing wrong with the economy in Wisconsin or the rest of the country that cannot be helped by opening overseas markets to our products and services. U.S. export sales have been running at about $1.3 trillion a year and that figure is going to climb as a result of an expanding world economy and a weaker dollar that is making our products more competitive.

I do not think the trend in manufacturing downsizing is going to change in the years to come because technology will allows us to make more things faster, cheaper and with fewer workers. But if Clinton and Obama want to expand the

U.S. manufacturing base and help American workers at the same time, expanding overseas trading markets for made-in-the-USA stuff should be at the top of their list.

Number two on that list should be cutting the corporate income tax from 35 percent to 20 percent or lower. We have the second highest tax rate on corporations in the industrialized world, after Japan. A lower rate would make us more competitive with the rest of the world, which is where our economic future lies.

"The claim that automation and international trade will create a large class of permanently unemployed American workers remains as fuzzy as ever," writes economist Stephen Rose, who is at work on a book titled "Mythonomics," in the Washington Post. One of those myths is that because of trade with China and India, "the United States has become a nation of low-paid service workers destined for a high rate of unemployment."

But Rose notes that Commerce Department data shows "that even at the state level, including in Midwestern 'Rust Belt' states, employment is up at least 14 percent since 1993, the year the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed."

We need to open up more markets to more trade, not less, as the Malthusians would have us do. For openers, let's drop the economic sanctions with Cuba and sell them whatever they want.