Steel maker recasts debate over free trade.

• Position: Economic Outlook

Dan DiMicco, CEO of Charlotte-based steel maker Nucor Corp., claims trade liberalization has hurt the U.S. economy. Other countries are unlawfully devaluing their currencies, he says, making it cheaper for them to sell steel and other goods here. He disagrees with Thomas Oatley, an associate professor of political science at UNC Chapel Hill, who says liberalizing trade benefits the U.S. economy because, among other things, it creates jobs that pay better than those lost (Outlook, April).

BNC: Are laid-off workers finding better-paying jobs?

DiMicco: Those people are not going out and working at a job that pays $60,000 to $70,000 a year. They are going to a Wal-Mart or a convenience store, or they are trying to run their own business. Throughout the boom of the 1990s, we created a half million to three-quarters of a million high-paying manufacturing jobs in the United States. In two years, you have destroyed 2 million of them. We are not creating 2 million high-paying jobs.

What's the fallout for manufacturers here?

Manufacturing in general is being severely damaged because of currency manipulation that gives a 40% cost advantage to foreign countries.

What's the impact beyond manufacturing?

This is where it really gets sinister. You've heard that we don't need the textile mills and the steel mills and all this basic industrial manufacturing base. What we need are all of these software jobs, the programmers and engineers. But for the first time in our history, we have a trade imbalance with respect to technology. It's not just manufacturing. Service operations are leaving as well. Bank of America has farmed out some of its information-technology operations to India.

Why isn't trade liberalization working?

You cannot take things to an extreme in the name of trade liberalization. It ends up destroying the system. Every freedom has a set of rules and guidelines. If people break the rules, they've got to be held accountable.

How are people breaking the rules?

A very basic tenet of both International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization policy is that currency manipulation is illegal to promote countries' export activities. Yet currency is being openly manipulated around the world, particularly in Asia. By devaluing their currencies, they are making their products cheaper to sell in the United States. They are trying to get their countries to be manufacturing powers and export powers.

How do you know that other countries are devaluing...