Innovation Files Blog

Throughout 2025, U.S. businesses and consumers have borne the largest share of the tariff incidence, or burden, while tariffs had relatively minimal impacts on foreign exporters.

While the Hyundai Motor case now sits at the center of Korea’s AI jobs debate, the evidence suggests that the nation’s more immediate constraints are weak productivity growth and uneven labor-market adjustment—not large-scale technological displacement. How Korea responds will shape its competitiveness in a high-cost, aging manufacturing economy under intensifying global competition.

Jonathan Haidt’s claims that smartphones and social media are the primary drivers of the youth mental health crisis overstate the evidence and ignore broader social, economic, and developmental factors. Rather than imposing blanket bans, policymakers should focus on teaching digital literacy and supporting age-appropriate, responsible technology use.

Between 2019 and 2023, the average performance of U.S. eighth graders on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) exam exhibited a 27-point decline.

App store–level age verification laws pose privacy, security, and free-speech risks while leaving websites unregulated, whereas device-level, opt-in parental controls offer a more comprehensive and safer way to protect children online.

European calls for “payment sovereignty” misdiagnose the problem: Visa and Mastercard lead through competition, not coercion, and a state-backed alternative would entrench protectionism instead of enabling regulatory reforms that would let European firms scale and compete globally.

The Trump administration’s withdrawal from international cybersecurity forums like the GFCE and Hybrid CoE risks creating gaps in global coordination, early warning, and norm-setting. Strategic disengagement must be paired with replacement mechanisms to preserve multilateral cyber capacity, maintain allied cohesion, and safeguard U.S. interests.

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.

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.

The Chinese shipbuilding industry controls 55 percent of global market share, with exports increasing by 1,525 percent since 2004.