Robert D. Atkinson

Based on key indicators of innovation and advanced-industry performance, China has surpassed the United States in total innovation output and is getting close on a proportional basis. To regain its leadership, the United States must respond more strategically and forcefully.

Semiconductors are arguably the most important core technology in the modern world. You can’t fully understand the current state of politics, economics, or technology until you consider the role they play. Rob and Jackie sat down with economic historian Chris Miller to discuss the extent to which microchips are the new oil.

China’s aspiration to become the new global hegemon calls into question the “Washington Consensus” that free markets and unfettered globalization maximize U.S. and global welfare. But for true believers, that is unacceptable. So, the idea China is a threat must be destroyed intellectually.

President Biden has accused leading U.S. tech companies of destroying privacy, spreading harmful content, and hurting competition. Not only are these alleged abuses vastly overblown, but the regulatory solutions he appears to endorse would do more harm than good.

When Europe gets around to fixing its own trade and procurement imbalances and with the United States and discriminatory policies, then the Biden administration should talk. In the meantime, the Biden administration needs to stop being defensive against the EU attacks and counter with its own narrative that demonstrates the EU’s protectionist performance.

As Yogi Berra once said, making predictions is hard, especially about the future. So, looking ahead to the New Year, ITIF can offer predictions with only 90 percent confidence. The other half is prescriptive.

Starting with a 2016 amendment to Korea’s Telecommunications Business Act, ISPs of comparable size have had to compensate each other based on the volume of traffic they exchange under a sending-party-network-pays policy. But consumers are the ones who ultimately pay in this arrangement.

ITIF’s Rob Atkinson appears on the podcast What China Wants by Sam Olsen to talk through the realities of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s proposal to create a “NATO for Tech” to counter Chinese influence.

Crafting and implementing well-funded U.S. government policies that advance U.S. international competitiveness, especially in technology-driven industries and in relationship to China, requires a modicum of corporate political support or, at minimum, limited opposition.

Teaching students to combine basic ideas to solve novel, difficult problems is imperative to lay a foundation for STEM pursuits.

The European Union wants it all—access to the U.S. market without fully reciprocal access to the EU, U.S. action against China while it free rides by exporting to China, and the freedom to restrict U.S. firms in Europe under the banner of “digital sovereignty.” It’s time for the U.S. government to say, “No more.”

Economics is about more than the economy. It also intersects public and private institutions, culture, religion, morality, and politics. Rob and Jackie explored these subjects with Benjamin Friedman, a professor of Political Economy at Harvard and author of The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth and Religion and the Rise of Capitalism.

Please join ITIF for an all-day conference with leading experts and policymakers to explore why and how Washington can look to Hamiltonianism for guidance in how to win the techno-economic contest with China.

Join ITIF and OECD Working Party to explore policy questions that arose in the context of the OECD Review of Innovation Policy: Germany, but which have relevance to both the United States and Germany.

In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, President Biden outlined an ambitious legislative agenda for Congress to tackle alleged shortcomings of “Big Tech.” The president’s list of priorities includes enacting a federal privacy law, reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and increasing competition in the tech sector.

Watch ITIF's briefing event featuring Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and an expert panel of current and former U.S. trade officials who discussed how to limit China’s ability to profit from its predatory trade practices.

Robert Atkinson participates in an expert panel discussion on “The Politicization of Business: What Gives” as part of a Cato conference—“New Challenges to the Free Economy (from Left and Right)”—that brings together leading economists and policymakers to discuss the ascendant political threats of progressivism and national conservatism to the free economy.

Robert Atkinson spoke at signature Protocol Live event, “The State of Innovation,” which was held virtually on September 27th.

Rob Atkinson spoke on an expert panel hosted by the Washington International Trade Association. Topics included what the Chips and Science Act means for the U.S. jobs, exports, and international trade policy, and how these bills position the U.S. relative to China and in relation to its allies and partners.

Watch ITIF and an expert panel featuring key policymakers and leading analysts who discussed how to bring House and Senate versions of competitiveness legislation across the finish line in a form that will be a winner for U.S. workers and the economy.

Join ITIF for a discussion on the accuracy of the narrative put forward and whether or not market concentration has, indeed, increased with ITIF's Julie Carlson & Robert D. Atkinson, Nicholas Trachter of the Federal Reserve of Richmond, & former DOJ official, Gregory Werden.

ITIF hosted a discussion of what a robust national strategic-industry policy should—and should not—entail.

Rob Atkinson was the keynote speaker at the Ministries of Korea Global Policy Conference on the 4th Industrial Revolution on December 15th, 2021.

The GTIPA’s annual summits bring together alliance members with world-leading experts to explore creative solutions to the difficult economic, trade, and innovation challenges facing the international community.