NO MATTER HOW it is measured, America’s balance of international trade has deteriorated dramatically during the 1980s. Few analysts think that it will improve in the near future; some predict that large (if not progressively larger) trade deficits will linger into the 1990s. Most Washington policy pundits worry that the country’s worsening trade balance signals a degeneration of the country’s “competitiveness,” the new Washington buzzword made so prominent by the Reagan administration that it is sometimes called the “C-word” in Washington policy circles.