Linking Trade and Technology Policies An International Comparison of the Policies of Industrialized Nations (1992) / Chapter Skim
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13. THE CHALLENGES OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE TO US TECHNOLOGY POLICY
13. THE CHALLENGES OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE TO US TECHNOLOGY POLICY
Pages 121-138
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From page 121... ...
As this list suggests, technology-related issues now occupy a much more prominent place on the trade policy agenda of the United States and other industrial and industrializing economies.) This paper surveys several aspects of the challenges to domestic technology policy created by greater international economic and technological interdependence.
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From page 122... ...
The growth in international trade and investment within the U.S. economy have created at least six issues for technology policy, many of which have also received considerable attention within the EC and Japan: Equality of access to research facilities and results among industrial economies with contrasting domestic systems of research and industrial governance (the finance, ownership, and oversight of corporate organizations)
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From page 123... ...
U.S. universities may well account for a larger share of total national R&D performance than is true of many Western European nations.
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From page 124... ...
technology policy relied heavily on federal funding of scientific research, especially basic research, and on federal funding of development or applied research in defense-related areas. This de facto technology policy was further differentiated from those of many other industrial economies by the important role of federal procurement, primarily for defense purposes, and a tough antitrust policy during much of the postwar period.
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From page 125... ...
Nontariff barriers are numerous, difficult to define and measure, and often involve instruments of domestic technology policy. The redefinition of the trade policy agenda during the past 20 years has propelled intellectual property regimes, anti
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More recently, foreign direct investment in this economy also has grown rapidly, although foreign investment in the U.S. economy remains lower than foreign investment in most Western European economies.4 The speed with which the U.S.
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From page 127... ...
The Reagan administration entered the White House in 1981 with a pledge to remove the federal government from a major role in the commercialization of new technologies. In this view, the appropriate federal role in civilian technology development was limited to funding of basic research, commercialization of which was best handled by the market.8 The contrast between its 1981 posture and the administration's 1987 response to the demonstration of the phenomenon of high-temperature superconductivity or the formation of Sematech (the Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology consortium)
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From page 128... ...
In many cases, these programs replaced or supplemented the technology policies of member states (primarily France and the United Kingdom) that had relied on "national champions" during the 1960s and 1970s, often attempting to use defense and other public sector procurement policies to bolster these domestic champions.9 The EC programs of the 1980s, including ESPRIT and others, as well as the EUREKA program, invested large sums of public funds in "precommercial" research in information technologies, microelectronics, etc.
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From page 129... ...
Improved international protection for intellectual property has also been a central goal of U.S. trade policy in bilateral negotiations, including the use or threat of Section 301, and in the multilateral Uruguay Round of trade negotiations.
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From page 130... ...
Indeed, the reality of global technological interdependence is well illustrated by the recent decision of Texas Instruments, a major participant in Sematech, to enter a technology-sharing joint venture with Hitachi of Japan, presumably one of the major technological threats to the firms participating in Sematech.~4 Efforts to impose strict limitations on international transfer or foreign participation attempt to deny the reality of this interdependence. Restrictions on foreign participation in U.S.-based research consortia that involve significant public funds (in many cases from state, as well as federal, sources)
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From page 131... ...
than recent Pentagon programs, and Airbus subsidies support production as well as development. The fact nevertheless remains that the Airbus program is driven in part by the desire of the participant governments to maintain military aerospace industries by supporting the participation of their national aircraft firms in a major commercial project.
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From page 132... ...
CONCLUSION: ISSUES FOR THE FUTURE Within the U.S. government, science and technology policy oversight and coordination within and between Congress and the executive branch are unequal to the task of reviewing strategic technology policy initiatives and coordinating these initiatives with the policy agenda in international trade negotiations.
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From page 133... ...
S firms, specifically small, high-technology firms, are frequently cited as an important source of asymmetry in technology access, since such firms have few analogues in the Japanese or Western European economies.
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Formal or informal restrictions on foreign investment in the United States, however, are difficult to square with the stated position of the United States in the Uruguay Round and elsewhere that restrictions on foreign investment should be removed. A second important issue in reciprocal access to research concerns the role of U.S.
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U.S. technology policies can be criticized for their inconsistency with trade policy, their perverse effects on U.S.
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15. Foreign investment flows further complicate these efforts, as in the recent decision to exclude the British computer firm ICL from participation in three key projects of the Joint European Semiconductor Silicon Initiative (JESSI)
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17. Indeed, the high probability that domestic antitrust exemptions might be combined with protection against imports illustrates the inability to divorce even a carefully formulated, strategic technology policy from trade policy issues and concerns.
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From page 138... ...
1984. High-Technology Policies: A Five Nation Comparison.
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