Welcome
Robert White, President, National Academy of Engineering
I welcome you on behalf of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Academy of Engineering. This conference is sponsored by the National Research Council's Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy, and it is part of a series of events in a project called International Friction and Cooperation in High Technology Development and Trade.
This project is a collaborative activity between the National Research Council and two of Germany's leading economic institutes, the Hamburg Institute for Economic Research and the Kiel Institute of World Economics. Both of these German institutes are represented here by their presidents, Erhard Kantzenbach (the project co-chair) and Horst Siebert.
The project co-chair for the Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy is Alan Wolff, one of Washington D.C.'s foremost trade lawyers. The co-chairs and Horst Siebert serve on the Project Steering Committee along with others, including Sylvia Ostry of the University of Toronto and Bill Spencer, CEO of SEMATECH.
This project was conceived in response to an invitation from the Foundation of the German-American Academic Council, established at the initiative of Chancellor Kohl of Germany and supported by Presidents Bush and Clinton. This project is one of the first undertaken by the Council.
The German-American Academic Council has provided the initial support for this conference, which was conceived as a multinational activity, not merely a bilateral conference between the Americans and the Germans. The Steering Committee is composed of Asian, North American, and European representatives and sponsored by corporations from each of these regions, all of which have global operations.
In January 1995, the Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy sponsored a symposium on international access to national technology support programs. It was a worthwhile symposium, with vigorous exchanges and discussions of the complex issues associated with this topic.
In February 1995, the Hamburg Institute sponsored an initial conference that examined the rationale for and the variety of government involvement in support of technology-intensive industries.
For now and in the future, we will build on the record of these conferences, continuing the examination of national economic strategies; reviewing several cases of international friction, for example, Airbus, semiconductors, and telecommunications; and assessing prospects for international cooperation and technology, private alliances, and mixed public and private programs.
In August a conference in Kiel, Germany, is to consider the mechanisms and venues for addressing international conflicts over technology development and trade and the ground rules for cooperative endeavors. The task of the Steering Committee is to produce a set of conclusions and recommendations in a report to be presented in the latter half of 1996 to national governments and international organizations.
We welcome your participation in this larger enterprise and thank you in advance for your contributions to our work on these issues.
