Global

The WTO’s approval of a TRIPS waiver for IP related to COVID-19 vaccines is essentially a shotgun blast completely missing the broadside of a barn.

Nations embracing data liberalism, especially Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States, should work collectively to develop new rules to support data flows and more forcefully resist efforts to limit data flows.

Seven strategically important industries. Sixty-six countries. Twenty-four years’ worth of value-added output data. This interactive visualization tool benchmarks national performance both in nominal U.S. dollars and relative to national shares of global GDP, an industry-concentration ratio known as a location quotient (LQ).

Compared to major competitors, U.S. output in key advanced industries is weak and declining. Congress and the administration should launch an economic “moon shot” initiative committing to increase the concentration of these industries in the U.S. economy by at least 20 percentage points relative to the global average within a decade.

It is a mistake to think that the Internet needs to be governed by one set of laws. Just as nations have different laws in the offline world, they should have different laws in the online world depending on their values, institutions, and legal traditions.

Although skeptics call IP an “elite concern,” recent reports from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), and the European Patent Office (EPO) show the positive impact IP has on small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), overall employment, and regionsal and global economies.

Until a significant share of America’s leaders believes the United States is in economic competition with other nations—and that it has a right and duty to win that competition—generating the political will for a national advanced-industry strategy will be difficult.

When national governments take steps to help their own economies, they can end up helping other economies, too. Sometimes that result is a win-win. But all too often the result is beneficial for a nation’s direct competitors in the fierce race for global advantage in key, innovation-based industries.

The ever-growing gap between technological innovation and domestic and international policy frameworks shows many policymakers are struggling to adapt rules and norms to the digital economy, which detracts from its potential benefits.