On Trade, U.S. Retreating Into Globalpliobia: NEWS ANALYSIS
Last month, as economic turmoil in Asia threatened to spread to South Korea and Japan, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers rushed to Capitol Hill to explain why it was happening and what could be done to stop iL Around the world, financial markets waited nervously for their testimony. But for an hour, the two men sat silently as members of the House Banking Committee lectured</br></br>Last month, as economic turmoil in Asia threatened to spread to South Korea and Japan, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers rushed to Capitol Hill to explain why it was happening and what could be done to stop iL Around the world, financial markets waited nervously for their testimony. But for an hour, the two men sat silently as members of the House Banking Committee lectured them about human rights violations in Indonesia, the declining wages of blue-collar workers and the folly of using money from U.S. taxpayers to bail out foreign countries that were stealing American jobs.</br></br>When they finally got a chance to speak, Greenspan and Summers pleaded with committee members to increase the U.S. contribution to the International Monetary Fund as the best way to contain the Asian contagion. But their pleas fell on deaf ears: Congress adjourned for a two-month holiday after stripping the new IMF money from</br></br>This episode is the latest illustration of what many observers view as a retreat from the internationalist consensus that has governed U.S. economic policy for 50 years. No longer, it seems, is there an unchallenged belief that Americans are better off when their economy is open and their government assumes the burdens of leadership in world affairs.</br></br>The recent defeat of ÛÏfast trackÛ trade authority in Congress was the most dramat-See GLOBAL, A14, Col. 1