C. Fred Bergsten from the Peterson Institute for International Economics writes on trade in the Washington Post. His four points of focus include: "the exchange rate of the dollar, trade agreements, our own export controls and tax policy." More on the second:

Such agreements increase U.S. imports, but virtually all of them substantially favor the United States in job terms because the partner countries maintain much higher trade barriers than we do. The most obvious cases are the pending free-trade agreements with Colombia and Panama, whose sales to the United States are already virtually free of duties but whose own tariffs limit our sales to them. Implementation of the Colombia agreement and the pending pact with Korea would save about 300,000 U.S. jobs, one recent study concluded. The administration should propose that Congress promptly pass all three agreements as part of its new jobs program.

More broadly, major countries are busily signing trade agreements that exclude the United States. East Asia's large and rapidly growing countries are creating a regional bloc that will discriminate against our exports and will increasingly force U.S. companies to source their Asian sales from their Asian plants rather than from factories here. The European Union is working out preferential deals with Asian powerhouses, including India and South Korea.

Obama has entered into negotiations for a Trans-Pacific Partnership with seven Asia Pacific nations, a group that could shortly expand to include a critical mass of countries in that region and eventually evolve into the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific that President George W. Bush proposed in 2006. The administration should aim to conclude these talks when the United States hosts the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in 2011.