Yes, it's a step forward to recognize that it's the cornering of those quasi monopolies and not trade balances per se, as Arrighi had it, that matters, though no one seriously maintains that the US will have a monopoly over all these "quasi monopolies of new leading industries".
At any rate, one need only recall Marx's speech on free trade on 9 January 1848:
"One other thing must never be forgotten, namely, that, just as everything has become a monopoly, there are also nowadays some branches of industry which dominate all the others, and secure to the nations which most largely cultivate them the command of the world market. Thus in international commerce cotton alone has much greater comerical importance than all other raw materials used in the manufacture of clothing put together. It is truly ridiculous to see the free traders stress the few specialities in each branch of industry, throwing them into balance against the products used in everyday consumption and produced most cheaply in those countries in which manufacture is most highly developed."
Of course today it is ridiculous to see such cheap goodies thrown into balance against the advanced, R& D-intensive capital goods (and pharmaceuticals as well) the market for which seems to be reserved only to those few oligopolistic firms that were able to capture sufficient share on a world scale to have enjoyed increasing returns and thereby earned monopoly rents that then, reinvested, helped to further consolidate the oligopolistic position. Meanwhile, the rest of uncaptured extra profit seems to be passed on to fellow domestic firms which are best situated to assimilate the superior tech first and thereby enjoy quality/price advantages in the world market.
It seems that 150 years later,bourgeois economics now has a dim understanding that through quasi monopolies of the new leading industries (oligopolies in strategic trade theory) some countries can capture profits at the expense of others.
In this Free Trade Speech, Marx said: "If the free traders cannot understand how one nation can grow rich at the expense of another, we need not wornder, since these same gentlemen also refuse to understand how within one country one class can enrich itself at the expense of another."
Yours, Rakesh