During the 1970s, the U.S.
trade surplus slowly diminished and turned into an increasing deficit. As the
deficit increased through the 1980s, some of the blame fell on the tariffs placed on US products by foreign countries, and the lack of similar tariffs on imports into the United States. Workers, unions and industry management all called for government action against countries with an
unfair advantage. The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act started as an amendment proposed by
Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO) to order the
Executive branch to thoroughly examine trade with countries that have large
trade surpluses with the United States. If the trade surpluses continued, the offending country would be faced with a bilateral surplus-reduction requirement of 10%. Because of its style of
zero-sum game thought, it is considered by economists to be a modern form of
mercantilism. ==Expiration ==