As this is from the foreign press it is good to see American politics / policies from a different vantage point. It does point out one of our exports is knowledge. The author comes from a "free trade" point of view that sounds very American. I think the point here is that he fails to understand that his own Germany places barriers to trade from the US (Farm subsidies for one) so in essence his complaints of our system wanting to place requirements or barriers is no different than his country has been doing. As long as we export "rose colored" ideas, we will get back what we sow. In this case, the article was interesting from only the view it came from outside our country. The sad thing is that this article may as well been written by the Kato Group in Washington for the policies it parrots.