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Vol:
12
| Issue:
5
Reginald Dale
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Don’t Buy American
Reginald Dale takes a look at the business costs of anti-Americanism overseas
There is no doubt that a strong tide of anti-Americanism is engulfing many parts of the planet, creating serious difficulties for U.S. foreign policy. But what about the commercial repercussions? Entrepreneurs and executives are increasingly asking how far anti-Americanism is likely to damage U.S. business and economic interests, now and in the future. If the threat is real, what can be done about it? And should business play a role in refurbishing America’s international image?
The growth of anti-Americanism is well-established, both by opinion polls and by the anecdotal experience of Americans traveling abroad. An average 50 percent of respondents in 25 countries told BBC World Service pollsters in early 2007 that the United States was playing a mainly negative role in the world, and another survey in June found that majorities of people in 10 of 15 countries did not trust America to act responsibly.
Some caution is needed in interpreting these results. The BBC poll, for example, asked respondents such leading questions as whether they liked U.S. treatment of Guantanamo detainees and whether the U.S. military presence in the Middle East “is a stabilizing force or provokes more conflict than it prevents” (a vast over-simplification that clearly invites the more negative response.) Significantly, no attempt was made to discover if people in other countries welcome U.S. support for freedom and democracy or appreciate America’s strenuous efforts to minimize civilian casualties in Iraq.
It’s also true that anti-Americanism is less virulent in Asia and Africa than it is, for example, in Europe. It is not uncommon for American visitors to Britain to be assailed by fierce natives shouting war cries along the lines of “Bush is a . . . half-wit,” at steadily rising decibel levels, as if that passed for reasoned analysis. Such aggressive attitudes, however, are by no means confined to the Mother Country. They are manifestations of a much broader global phenomenon: many of the world’s citizens think they know all about America, or at least enough to form unshakeable opinions about it, without any need actually to go there – or to listen to American points of view.
Others, especially in the Middle East, have reached the zero-sum conclusion that if they are poor it must be because America is rich, ignoring the fact that the U.S.-backed open market principles underpinning today's world economy have caused the greatest surge in global prosperity in human history. And while current administration policies and mistakes have exacerbated hostility toward the United States in many quarters, anti-Americanism both precedes the advent of President George Bush and will long outlast his departure.
Does it follow then that globe-wide hordes of anti-Americans will turn their backs on the goods and services offered by U.S. exporters and multinational corporations? Business for Diplomatic Action (BDA), a private-sector task force devoted to improving America’s world standing, has studied what it calls America’s "global reputation crisis” and come to some disturbing conclusions.
In a report published in October*, BDA says the crisis is causing significant problems for the U.S. economy and the American business community. Industries such as travel and tourism have been hard hit by a drop in foreign visitors to the United States since 9/11 and its aftermath, with harmful consequences for sales, tax revenues, and jobs. Stricter U.S. visa policies and entry procedures – real and perceived – have cost American companies billions of dollars, and corporate security costs have skyrocketed. If left unchecked, America’s reputation crisis "will be a drag on the U.S. economy for years to come and could undermine the global competitiveness of many American companies."
BDA concedes that there is no formula for computing the exact impact of anti-Americanism on the sales and profits of U.S. companies abroad, although the current wave of hostility toward the United States clearly cannot be good for American business. Well-established market research theory, however, provides one largely irrefutable lesson: attitudinal changes among consumers precede behavioral ones. Thus the rise in anti-Americanism does not bode well for the future of the U.S. economy or of American businesses. “Unless reversed, the negative trends in global attitudes toward America will exact an even higher price in terms of increased costs of doing business and lower revenue potential, both within the U.S. market and in critical overseas markets,” BDA concludes.
So what is to be done? Two things are immediately clear. The first is that solving America’s reputation crisis will take a lot of time and effort; the second that the task cannot be left to the U.S. government alone. A report published in November by the CSIS Smart Power Commission**, which draws similar conclusions to BDA, points out that, “The dynamic dimensions of American life today are largely in the private sector, not in government . . . Vast dimensions of soft power reside in the private sector, yet the U.S. government is largely oblivious to these resources and does not know how to tap them for coordinated effect.”
BDA has some ideas for doing just that. It calls for the creation of two new bodies: an independent Corporation for Public Diplomacy, including corporate and media representatives, to be structured like a business and held accountable for achieving performance goals in improving America’s image; and a National Communications Council to coordinate public diplomacy and strategic international communications policies among U.S. government agencies, as the National Security Council does for foreign and security policy.
BDA argues that the American business community is far ahead of the U.S. government in understanding and mastering 21st century techniques of information and media strategy in the dramatically changing world of international communications. McDonald’s alone spends three times more making friends for itself around the world than the U.S. government does. American businesses have a vast array of proven cross-cultural management and communications techniques that can help address America’s reputation crisis. Although the Iraq War is plainly a harder sell than Egg McMuffins, it makes obvious sense to take advantage of these techniques in forging a new national strategy.
Reginald Dale is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. and a former senior foreign correspondent, commentator and editor for the International Herald Tribune and the London Financial Times.
* “America’s Role in the World: A Business Perspective on Public Diplomacy.” Business for Diplomatic Action, October 2007. www.businessfordiplomaticaction.org.
** “A Smarter, More Secure America.” Report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on Smart Power, November 2007. www.csissmartpower.org
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