Prosperity and economic logic contend with a bit of hysteria and xenophobia:

The United States is losing market share in the global economy, and that is not necessarily a bad thing…

Ultimately, the decline of economic pre-eminence may be more damaging psychologically than economically. Ms. Mann notes that many people gauge their well-being not simply as a function of how much their income grows, but how much it grows relative to that of their neighbors. “By virtue of the world becoming richer, in part because of our engagement in international trade, we are getting richer, but many of the poor are getting richer, too,” she said. “Psychologically, a lot of people are going to view that narrowing gap as a negative.”

More broadly, the fact that economies that were closed to outside investment a generation ago are now creating systems of market capitalism should be seen as a victory for the United States, not a defeat. “Many of the countries that are doing well are mimicking the best of what America has stood for — globalization and the export of the American capital markets culture,” said Mr. O’Neill at Goldman Sachs. “There’s nothing that New York and U.S. policies can do about it unless they want to roll back globalization.”

For more on anti-foreign biases, see Robin Hanson and Bryan Caplan.