I've read a bit of Fletcher's works. Central to his beliefs is the principle of reciprocity. For example we should allow China access to our markets in the same way they allow us to their markets. We know China is manipulating their currency. We would use tariffs to correct this.
Japan simply wiped out most of the electronics manufacturing in the United States. Much of this was done with their subsidies. The same can be said of autos. They also sold under cost in many instances. Fletcher would not have allowed this to happen.
This subject is not easy to comment upon in a short post. Part of me agrees with Fletcher but I'd worry we would break down into total protectionism if we went down the path he suggests.
Interesting post, but I think your comment about how Japan "undersold" products in various industries in order to eliminate their competition.
That kind of business model simply doesn't work, especially in this day and age. It's not as if these companies were suddenly able to raise the prices of their products to exorbitant levels once they "wiped out" their competition, right?
In my opinion, the biggest factor in the shift of manufacturing from the U.S. to Asia in recent decades (first Japan and Taiwan, then Korea, then China, and now Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam) has been the development and growth of containerized shipping. The shipping container -- which was invented in the mid-1950s right around the time the U.S. was building the Interstate Highway System -- completely revolutionized global commerce by streamlining the freight transportation process and reducing costs tremendously.