By Clyde Prestowitz, Foreignpolicy.com, March 28, 2011

As I have been urging for some time, it now appears that President Obama will appoint Google Chairman Eric Schmidt as the new secretary of Commerce to replace Gary Locke....Under Locke and his recent predecessors, the Commerce Department has been virtually invisible, with leaders who had little knowledge of, or interest in its potential for being the key to revitalization of the U.S. economy.

The United States needs a strategy to become a producer again....Developing such a strategy is precisely the job of the Commerce Department. It is a job that has been long neglected because the macroeconomists who dominate U.S. policymaking have disdained as insignificant any concerns about the structure of the economy and the global supply chain....

He should begin by taking two crucial steps. The first is to reconstitute the department's industry analysis capability. When I was there in the 1980s, Commerce industry experts had an intimate knowledge of the status, strengths, and weaknesses of every significant U.S. industry and of their foreign competitors as well. Now, if I want to know something about U.S. industries, I find the information provided by Japan's Ministry of Economics Trade and Industry to be the best source....

The second step should be to undertake a series of meetings with the CEOs of all significant companies, foreign and domestic, making products in the United States. Of course, there is nothing wrong with service-providing companies, but Schmidt will have to get real here and he'll have to make Obama get real. The job-killing U.S. trade deficit in goods is so large....