Publications: Robert D. Atkinson
July 8, 2025
US Antitrust as an Anti-Competitiveness Weapon
Only in the United States is gutting a world-leading firm seen as a policy win. No other government would be insane enough to attack its own national champions the way American antitrust enforcers do.
July 7, 2025
Podcast: The Case for Smarter AI Regulation, With Matt Perault
Regulating how AI is used—not how it's built—is the only way to protect innovation and give small startups a fair shot.
July 2, 2025
Letter to the Trump Administration Regarding Non-Tariff Attacks on US Tech Firms and Industries
Foreign governments are systematically deploying policies that constitute non-tariff attacks (NTAs) on America’s leading technology companies. ITIF and other think tank scholars and policy experts urge the administration to put these unfair NTAs on the U.S. trade agenda and insist that America’s trading partners address them.
June 30, 2025
Congress Should Fully Fund NSF’s TIP Directorate to Make America More Competitive Versus China
Congress has authorized $20 billion over five years to fund the National Science Foundation’s Technology Innovation Partnership, but lawmakers have appropriated just $410 million. To win the techno-economic war with China, America needs the TIP directorate to be fully funded.
June 30, 2025
If They Told You Wolverines Would Make Good House Pets, Prime Minister, Would You Believe Them?
If the Starmer government thinks for one minute that the PRC will allow the UK to expand exports of anything with any real strategic importance, it is gravely mistaken. It’s time for competitive realism.
June 29, 2025
How Should Korea Negotiate With Trump Over Trade?
For Trump, it’s a new world and Korean President Lee Jae Myung and his administration needs to treat it as such by negotiating a new deal that preserves Korean market access to America in exchange for real concessions on what at the end of the day are relatively minor things for Korean economic competitiveness.
June 26, 2025
Rostow’s The Stages of Growth Needs a Sixth Stage
Rostow’s model suggests that stage five is the ultimate destination. A better model sees no fixed stages and certainly no permanent peak, only a relentless push to go higher and higher.
June 23, 2025
Podcast: mRNA and the Future of Personalized Medicine, With Andrew Geall and Deborah Barbara
Continued innovation and investment is vital to maintaining the U.S.'s leadership in the biopharma sector.
June 23, 2025
US Science Policy at a Crossroads
America needs a robust federal science and engineering enterprise now more than ever. But the scientific community’s rigid defense of the Vannevar Bush model and its full-throated embrace of ideological DEI has left it politically exposed.
June 17, 2025
Fixing America’s Quality Crisis Starts With Reforming the Baldrige Award
Tariffs and tax breaks won’t fix America’s quality crisis. But perhaps an overhaul of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award will.