The Year in Preview

International Trade: Although Asia won’t return to its big spending ways, trade optimists are betting that government stimulus and bank reform will staunch the bloodletting in Japan and that financial restructuring in Thailand and South Korea will pay off with positive growth rates. The Jan. 1 launch of Europe’s single currency, the euro, should cut costs for U.S. firms operating on the Continent. In the U.S, protectionist impulses in Congress will strengthen as the economy slows and low-cost imports push the trade deficit toward $200 billion. Such congressional reservations threaten the success of a new round of trade talks that will be launched in late 1999 at the World Trade Organization’s ministerial meeting in Washington.