National Competitiveness

Please join ITIF for an important policy conference on what U.S. policymakers must do to prevent America from suffering a catastrophic defeat in its techno-economic-trade war with China. At stake are vital production capabilities in the advanced, traded-sector industries that provide the foundation for economic strength and national security in the 21st century.

Congress confirmed Jared Isaacman to lead NASA in late 2025. He should begin his tenure by finalizing NASA’s plan to transition from the ISS to commercial space stations, because the United States must maintain a presence in low-earth orbit to remain competitive.

Maintaining R&D leadership in advanced industries is critical to U.S. economic competitiveness and national power. But on a size- and wage-adjusted basis, China is rapidly gaining ground. Congress needs to boost corporate R&D incentives to prevent America from falling behind.

After South Korea reduced its tax credit for automation in 2018 from 7 percent to 3 percent for large firms, South Korean industries, on average, reduced robot installations by 28 percent compared with their Japanese counterparts.

The House Judiciary Committee has launched an investigation into South Korea's discriminatory targeting of U.S. tech companies, particularly Coupang, marking an important escalation in Washington's pushback against non-tariff attacks that use regulatory measures to weaken American technology leadership. These attacks—which have cost U.S. tech companies over $30 billion globally in the past decade—disproportionately target American firms through fines, operational restrictions, and forced infrastructure investments while creating openings for Chinese competitors.

The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) imposes the heaviest regulatory burdens on large platforms in a way that overwhelmingly targets U.S. technology companies, exposing them to disproportionate compliance costs and fines while largely sparing European firms. This discriminatory model functions as a non-tariff attack that risks weakening U.S. innovation and competitiveness, and is now being replicated globally, amplifying the strategic challenge for American tech leadership.

Culture matters. Just as England’s discomfort with industrialization weakened its economy, today’s U.S. elite skepticism risks becoming a collective headwind against digital progress.

NTAs restrict U.S. firms’ ability to innovate and compete on level terms, undermining U.S. technology leadership, economic strength, and national security in the geostrategic competition with China. Congress and the Administration need to have policy tools at their disposal to identify, document, prevent, and respond to these measures.

Canada should prioritize boosting productivity through the adoption of advanced technologies across its firms and governments, rather than pursuing domestic ownership of existing infrastructure in the name of “digital sovereignty.”

Canada’s path to lasting competitiveness lies in strategic indispensability: specializing in a small number of high value-added goods or services that the world can’t do without. Ottawa must continue making explicit decisions about what gets built and what does not; otherwise, it risks spending heavily with little to show for it.