There should ALWAYS have been a much more stringent "performance assessment tied to salary" component for Zoellick at USTR and when he was at State in the 1990s going up against Japan. The more this guy got on the plane to Asia, the more he and his ilk negotiated, why the more US industry lost ground and more markets were kept close, the more his salary should have been docked. Based on the poor figures, the guy would have been earning $12,500 per annum at the end of the Bush Administration if I had my way.
That rational-choice theorist twerp could prattle out the most excellent sounding, high flying trade agreements in flowing legalese, and stroke himself silly about American Victories On Procedurual Issues Only, yet at the end of the day, whole American industries and strategic technologies were gutted because of no enforcement procedures, and the Japanese laughed behind the guy's back the moment his United flight was wheels up at Narita Airport. Those of us left behind who had to live there, heard it all upon his departures.
Zoellick is highly intelligent, and highly naive. He is useless. I don't know why Bush brought him on in the first place with his dismal record of failure (but hey, he negotiated some "GREAT" multilateral agreements!!)