Wealth & Money Quote by Martin Feldstein

A “more competitive” dollar is a euphemism with teeth: Feldstein is really talking about a weaker dollar, engineered or at least welcomed, to make U.S. goods cheaper abroad. The phrasing does what technocratic language often does at pivotal moments - it turns a distributional choice into an innocuous-sounding adjustment. Competitiveness reads like virtue; depreciation sounds like risk. He picks the former because it smuggles in the policy preference without triggering the reflexive anxieties about inflation, lost purchasing power, or global confidence.

The intent is narrowly macroeconomic: keep growth humming by leaning on net exports when domestic demand might not be enough. Under the hood is a diagnosis about the U.S. growth model of the mid-2000s: consumption-heavy, credit-fueled, and vulnerable to any cooling in housing or household balance sheets. If the consumer sputters, the external sector has to pick up slack. That’s why “we may need” is doing so much work - it signals contingency while quietly warning that other engines are already suspect.

Context matters: this is the era of yawning trade deficits, China’s rising export machine, and recurring political pressure over outsourcing and “global imbalances.” Feldstein’s line tries to recast the weak-dollar idea as pragmatic stabilization, not mercantilism. The subtext is a plea for flexibility: if exports must rise, something has to give, and the exchange rate is the cleanest lever. Cleanest, not costless - and the quote’s careful blandness is how you advocate a contentious move while keeping the room calm.