Manufacturing in America – A Story of Global Competition
Originally posted on The Atlantic’s Ideas Roundtable. As the GE Working in America data visualization depicts, in 1960, manufacturing was the U.S. economy’s largest-employing sector, but today, it has...
View ArticleITIF Disputes Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Report that U.S. Set for...
A BCG report out today claims the United States is on course to regain its status as a global industrial powerhouse, arguing that several forces—including lower U.S. energy costs, rising labor costs in...
View ArticleIt’s National Manufacturing Day!
Today, October 5, is National Manufacturing Day. The day is being marked with events around the country highlighting the importance of manufacturing to the U.S. economy and celebrating innovations in...
View Article“The Atlantic” Story of American Manufacturing Renaissance? Think Again
The cover story of this month’s The Atlantic is titled “Comeback: Why the Future of Industry is In America.” The lead article by Charles Fishman argues that the outsourcing wave is largely over and now...
View ArticleNo Structural Change in the Economy: Are You Kidding
Image: Countries in Recession as of 2009. Red indicates countries officially or unofficially in recession. There is a booming cottage industry among neoclassical economists to explain the Great...
View ArticleCreating the Manufacturing University
American manufacturing is in crisis. Over the last decade the United States lost one-third of its manufacturing jobs, more than any other industrialized nation, and our total industrial production was...
View ArticleAmerica Needs a Vibrant Clean Energy Manufacturing Sector
This week, the Brookings Institution released three papers with recommendations to revitalize the domestic manufacturing sector. One proposes the creation of a national network of advanced industries...
View ArticlePresident Obama Calls for Creation of a National Network for Manufacturing...
In his State of the Union address this evening, President Obama called on Congress to support creation of a network of at least fifteen manufacturing innovation institutes that would bring together...
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Breaking Down the Federal Clean Energy Innovation Budget: Manufacturing...
This is the 5th and final post in a series analyzing and detailing federal investments in clean energy innovation. Part 1 defined “clean energy innovation.” Part 2 broke down the federal clean energy...
View ArticleThe Epistemic Sequester: Budget Cuts Kill an Important Statistical Program
After already slashing R&D funding, the Sequester is about to deliver another kick in the teeth to American competitiveness: it’s going to sharply reduce our ability to measure it. This one comes...
View ArticlePresident Obama’s Budget Promotes Innovation but More Work Needs to be Done
Innovation is one of America’s most prized assets. If our country is going to successfully compete on the global stage over the course of the next several decades, we must develop the new technologies,...
View ArticleITIF Event Highlights the Social and Economic Case for Autonomous Vehicles
On Capitol Hill yesterday, ITIF hosted an event making the social and economic case for autonomous vehicles. The event featured presenters from Toyota, Google, and Texas Instruments, as well as DC...
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Obama’s Budget Boosts Support for Energy Innovation
President Obama released his long-awaited FY2014 budget request and while it’s unlikely the budget will be taken up by Congress in its entirety, it remains an important document. Namely, the proposal...
View ArticleRobots Are Good for Us: Really, They Are!
The Smart Manufacturing Coalition recently conducted a survey of Americans to get their views of whether modernizing factories with advanced technology and automation was a good or bad thing for the...
View ArticleThe Real Reason Why Washington Should Care About Manufacturing
Manufacturing has been the focus of much attention lately — a key theme of President Barack Obama’s Inauguration and State of the Union addresses and the subject of numerous recent books and articles....
View ArticleWhy the 2000s Were a Lost Decade for American Manufacturing
Originally posted on IndustryWeek. In my inaugural article I tried to make the case for why Washington should care about manufacturing (Reason: it’s the key traded sector for the U.S. economy.) But...
View ArticleWhat’s the Right Path for Manufacturing?
Originally posted on IndustryWeek. Recently, I wrote about how the 2000s were a lost decade for U.S. manufacturing. Ensuring that the 2010s are not more of the same will require a robust national...
View ArticleClimate Hawks Should Aggressively Support the America COMPETES Act
Making Innovation Part of Climate Hawks Policy Pitch In a previous article I argued that climate policy advocates should make energy innovation part of their policy elevator pitch. A good opportunity...
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Is Technological Change Speeding Up? How Can You Tell?
Evidence of technological change is all around us—smartphones, self-driving cars, amazing drug discoveries, and even drone warfare. With all of this novelty many futurists and other pundits...
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Grasping at Luddite Straws
The current issue of the New York Review of Books features an article by Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman, “Brave New Capitalists’ Paradise’: The Jobs?” which is yet another reminder why we should...
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