What is America’s economic long game?

changes to its trade policy with the United States to level a playing field that greatly favors China. Its well-documented efforts to steal our intellectual property and violate UN economic sanctions against North Korea do not provide confidence that China will abide by Western World ethical standards.

A virtual dictatorship like China’s can take a long view until its president-for-life either dies or is toppled. The long-term strength of the American democratic system, of course, is that we protect the rights of our citizens through constitutionally guaranteed elections and checks and balances, and we change presidential administrations no longer than every eight years.

Given the competing visions of our political parties, however, the challenge comes in finding common ground on programs that can drive America’s long-term competitiveness.

America must continue to promote a long-term view of what we have historically stood for — democratic elections, constitutionally based freedoms, open markets, and especially in light of violations of privacy rights and hacking of our 2016 presidential election, a commitment to a higher level of accountability and transparency among nations. All those positions build trust in the American economic system.

In addition, we need to develop more cohesive, long-term American fiscal and economic policies that will enable America to respond better to global challenges. Some suggestions:

• A gradual move to a balanced federal budget that would improve America’s ability to compete in global markets. That will require far more long-term thinking by Congress, including spending discipline and a willingness to “sunset” programs that have outlived their usefulness.

• A robust national policy regarding technology goals and research and development. Although the vast majority of applied R&D occurs in the private sector, the federal government has no centralized budget for R&D and spreads it across many departments. We need a more coordinated publicprivate sector technology innovation strategy, with more partnerships that focus on the areas where we may be most vulnerable in the long-term, e.g. artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. Federal spending amounts to less than 1 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. In China, the figure was over 2 percent as of 2015, the same year in which the Brookings Institute study “U.S. R&D: A Troubled Enterprise” noted that America, once the world leader in R&D per GDP, had slipped to No. 10 among major countries.

• A national public education policy that better supports the development of financial and economic literacy and workplace skills as well as a deeper understanding of global issues to better prepare our children to be citizens of a global economy. We must emphasize more the development of criticalthinking skills than on the “teaching to the (answers to) tests.” We also must strongly support STEM educational programs to ensure we have future workers at all levels that possess the critical science and technology skills America will need to compete.

• A better policy on immigration — one that values tighter enforcement of screening of potentially subversive individuals but also unwaveringly supports our heritage as a haven for others. A country that turns its back on immigrants is one that is unwittingly mandating its decline by neglecting a key source of fresh ideas and enthusiastic patriots.

Although no national policy can or should prescribe or enforce a mindset about values, we must take a longer view of what matters most in our daily lives. That might start with having the discipline to resist the efforts of social media outlets that pander to our immediate needs and emotions more than our ability to reason.

We don’t want to become like ancient Rome in decline, where Emperor Nero “fiddled” while the city burned. Ironically, today’s “fiddle” is perhaps the greatest technological invention in history — the handheld device.