Advanced Industries Are Essential for U.S. Competitiveness
Until recently, the United States was the global technology and economic leader. Those days are gone. America’s principal geopolitical adversary, China, has a larger advanced technology base than the United States, and has overtaken it in a host of advanced industries, including telecommunications equipment, high-speed rail, solar panels, drones, shipbuilding, and industrial machinery.
As Rob Atkinson writes in Wilson Quarterly, this matters because techno-economic capabilities are increasingly the key to global power. Chinese President Xi Jinping showed that he understands this when he stated: “Technological innovation has become the main battleground of the global playing field, and competition for tech dominance will grow unprecedentedly fierce.” Unless Washington grasps this reality and responds with a coherent, advanced industrial strategy, the US is likely to continue to lose both the global technological advantage and its global leadership standing overall. Both are vital to its competitiveness.
