FACT: A new container ship launches every day.

THE NUMBERS: Largest container ship by year, in TEU* capacity –

2024:	24,327 TEU (MSC Irina)
2020:	23,992 TEU (Ever Ace)
2014:	19,100 TEU (CLC Globe)
2010:	14,770 TEU (Emma Maersk)
2004:	8,500 TEU (CLC Asia)
2000:	8,160 TEU (Sovereign Maersk)
1990:	4,614 TEU (American New York)
1974:	2,984 TEU (Hamburg Express)
1956:	56 TEU (Ideal-X)

*  “Twenty-foot Equivalent Units.” A TEU represents one 20 x 8 x 8.5 foot shipping container; a 40-foot container is two TEUs.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

After a squad of tugboats pulled the stranded Dali away from the Key Bridge wreckage on Monday, the Port of Baltimore’s operators hope to reopen their main shipping channel by the end of May, and Danish shipping giant Maersk plans to start container service to the Port again by early June. With a brightening outlook for Baltimore’s port workers and users, here are four notes on the container-shipping fleet:

There are more container ships each year: Alphaliner, a Paris-based maritime consultancy, counts 6936 container ships operating worldwide this week, up from 5,101 in 2014.  Mainly built in China, Korea, and Japan, these ships make up about 6% of the world’s 105,000 cargo vessels, but (being large ships) have a seventh of the world’s 2.2. billion deadweight tons — that is, carrying capacity — of merchant shipping.  The full container fleet has a combined capacity of 29.7 million TEU, up about 10% from the 25.8 million TEU at President Biden’s inauguration, and up 50% from the 19.9 million TEU of 2014. This growth is not slowing: Denmark-based shipping association BIMCO says 350 new container ships launched in 2023, and 2024 will likely top 475. A table illustrates:

2024	29.7 million TEU
2020	25.8 million TEU
2014	19.9 million TEU
2010	12.8 million TEU
2000	4.3 million TEU
1990	1.2 million TEU
1980	0.5 million TEU

They are getting bigger: The Dali is 948 feet or 300 meters long, with deadweight tonnage of 116,851 tons and a crew of 21.  Built by Hyundai and launched in 2015, it has a capacity of 9,971 “TEUs,” meaning it can carry just under 10,000 standard 20’ x 8’ x 8.5’ shipping containers at a time. Twenty years ago, the Dali would have been easily the world’s largest container ship. Today it’s still well above median — average capacity across the whole fleet is now about 4,600 TEU — but has less than half the 24,000+ TEU capacity of its largest relatives.

As of this month, 121 ships can carry 20,000 TEU or more. The largest one on the water today is MSC Irina, owned by Geneva-based Mediterranean Shipping Corporation, whose capacity more than doubles Dali’s at 24,326 TEU and 240,739 deadweight tons.  Delivered in March 2023 from a Chinese shipyard and currently in Busan, MSC Irina is 400 meters/1,312 feet long.

They are mostly new: The container-ship concept is almost 70 years old — the first, Ideal-X, launched from Newark in 1956 — but most of the actual ships are young, and every 20,000+ TEU ship has been built since 2017.  UNCTAD’s most recent Review of Maritime Transport says the average container ship is 14 years old, while the average age of cargo vessels in general — container ships plus bulk carriers, general cargo, tankers, ro/ro, etc. — is 22.

And they don’t need many people: Though not exactly a giant floating robot, a modern container ship isn’t far from that. Dali’s forlorn crew totals 21 people — 20 from India, one Sri Lankan, finally getting some land time today after being stuck on board doing maintenance and responding to investigation queries since March — and even MSC Irina with its 24,000 containers needs just 25.  To put this in perspective, this is no more staff than you’d find in a medium-sized restaurant or hardware store.  Alternatively, Great Republic — the largest 19th-century clipper ship, built to sail back and forth from New to Australia — needed a crew of 67 to manage about 5000 tons of cargo.

FURTHER READING

Updates:

Maryland Port Authority updates.

Maersk plans an early-June return to Port of Baltimore cargo service.

And Gov. Moore’s interim support program for Port workers and distressed businesses.

Container-ship data:

UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport series has data and trends for container ships, oil tankers, port efficiency, and more. The most recent edition, out last November, counts 105,400 cargo ships around the world, or about 5,000 more than the 99,800 they found in 2020.

Alphaliner Top 100 has day-to-day updates of current container capacity, worldwide and by shipping firm.

The Copenhagen-based Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO), in a January “Shipping Number of the Week”, reports a likely 478 new containership launched in 2024, after a record 350 in 2023.

… and a decade-old but still evocative visualization of daily maritime transports, with small lights representing a hundred thousand ships against a darkened blue-grey ocean backdrop

Ship comparisons:

Combining various tallies — UNCTAD for cargo, military sites for navies, FAO for fisheries—– the world’s large-vessel fleet comes out at about 170,000. (105,000 cargo vessels, 45,000 large fishing boats, 10,000 navy ships, 5,000 cruise ships, with miscellaneous cable layers, LNG tankers, yachts, and so forth making up the rest.) At the top end, container ships are the longest by about 20 meters. Bulk ore carriers and supertankers are a bit shorter but have more cargo space. A quick look at the largest in each category:

Container ship: Mediterranean Shipping Corp.’s 400-meter, 24,347-TEU MSC Irina.

Oil tankers: Ultra-Large Capacity supertankers, though shorter than the top container ships at 380 meters, at 442,000 deadweight tons can carry twice the cargo weight. The largest are the four T1s, dating to the early 2000s and named for continents. TI-Europe is in Singapore.

Bulk cargo carriers: The 35 Valemax-grade iron-ore freighters are very slightly smaller than the tankers, 360 meters long with deadweight tonnage up to 400,000 tons. Built between 2011 and 2016 (again by Chinese, Korean, and Japanese yards) they carry iron ore from Brazil and Australia to China.

Military: U.S. Navy’s 337-meter Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is the largest naval vessel on the water, launched from the Newport News yard in 2013, and the first of the 11 Ford-class carriers replacing the Nimitz-class fleet.

Roll-on/Roll-off: The standard automobile carriers are a bit smaller. The largest is the 265-meter MV-Tonberg, built by Mitsubishi in 2012 and operated by Norwegian carrier Wallenius Wilhelmsen. It can carry 8500 cars and trucks at a time.

Fishing: The largest fishing vessel, the Vladivostok 2000, is 228 meters and 49,000 tons. A converted oil tanker with a dismal history of IUU (illegal/unreported/unregulated) fishing, V2K is blacklisted in the South Pacific but continues to operate in northern waters. It’s currently berthed in the eponymous city of Vladivostok.

Cruise ship: The Icon of the Seas at 385 meters, launched last January and built for 7,600 passengers. By comparison, the largest 19th-century passenger ship, Victorian super-engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s 211-meter Great Eastern, could carry nearly 5,000. The BBC on IotS.

Shipbuilding:

A gloomy two-pager from CRS on cargo vessel construction worldwide, and the very modest U.S. role in it over the last 50 years.

And some maritime-logistics lit.:

GPS and satellite communication, 60-foot propeller blades, computer terminals, and crane loading — Horatio Clare’s Down to the Sea in Ships (2015) tracks the Gerd Maersk, a 6,600-TEU ship built in 2006 — still operating, en route this week from Oakland to Qingdao — on a two-month trip from Felixstowe through the Suez Canal to Malaysia, Vietnam, China, and Los Angeles. Detail on crew life (Filipino ratings, European and Indian officers; no alcohol at any time), cargo loading, rules for avoiding Red Sea pirates, the approach to the Port of L.A., etc.

Coal-burners and on-board smokestacks, radio, and breakbulk cargo — Richard Hughes’ In Hazard (1938), recounts the fictional passage of a British general-cargo vessel with a ‘globalized’ 1930s crew (Chinese ratings, U.K. and American officers, few if any alcohol limits) from Virginia through a gigantic Caribbean hurricane.

Wood, rope, canvas, muscle, and wind — Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast (1840) on the Pilgrim’s five-month journey from Boston to pre-Gold Rush California via Cape Horn, and back a year later.  (Mostly New England crew with some Europeans; strict alcohol limits for sailors, but not for the mates or captain.)  Lots here to disenchant age-of-sail romantics – a drowning, a scurvy case, two of the Pilgrim’s 12 sailors flogged for back-talk, ice storms, constant deck-scrubbing, etc. Also looks at early California: Los Angeles, “a large and flourishing town of about twenty thousand inhabitants, with brick sidewalks”, is full then as now of helpful and friendly people; on the other hand, “nothing but the character of the people prevents Monterey from becoming a great town”.  San Francisco has promise (“if California ever becomes a prosperous country, this bay will be the centre of its prosperity”); also see the large Native Hawaiian role in West Coast shipping, and Dana’s very disparaging, no-filter comments on visitors from Russia’s Alaska colony, whose southernmost fort was 90 miles north of present-day Oakland.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: U.S. auto production unchanged since ‘USMCA’ replaced ‘NAFTA’ in 2020.

THE NUMBERS: U.S. car and light truck production* –

2023	10.6 million vehicles
1994-2019 average	10.7 million vehicles
1975-1993 average	10.3 million vehicles

* Bureau of Transportation Statistics for 1993-2021; OICA for 2022 and 2023. From 1993-2019, production ranged from a low of 5.7 million vehicles during the financial crisis in 2010 to a peak of 13.0 million in 1999.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Trump administration negotiators in 2018 said their “primary objective” in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement was “to improve the U.S. trade balance and reduce the trade deficit with the NAFTA countries.”  This plainly didn’t happen — deficits instead rose by a combined $91 billion by 2023 –—but not because a different agreement text or legislative drafting would have gotten a different outcome. Rather, the Trump group promised something a new agreement couldn’t, and therefore didn’t, deliver. (See below for a bit more.) As the resulting “USMCA” approaches its fourth birthday this June, the more interesting question is whether the four big real-world policy revisions separating it from the NAFTA — automotive trade, labor policy, environmental protection, internet policy, and digital data flows – are working.  Here’s a somewhat troubling look at the auto side:

As a point of reference, U.S. auto production averaged 10.7 million vehicles annually over NAFTA’s 26-year life, with output varying from a 13.0 million peak in 1999 to a financial crisis low of 5.7 million in 2009.  The 2016 figure was 12.2 million vehicles, of which two million went abroad for export and 10 million to American dealerships. Meanwhile, about 8 million vehicles arrived from abroad that year as imports, including 2.2 million from Mexico and 2.0 million from Canada under NAFTA’s tariff waivers. (The normal auto tariff rates are 2.5% on cars and 25% on light trucks.) According to the U.S. International Trade Commission’s “Dataweb,” about 1% of these vehicles arrived outside NAFTA — 39,000 passenger cars and 100 light trucks from Mexico, 6,000 cars from Canada — and so were subject to the regular tariffs.

USMCA’s U.S. negotiators and Congressional legislative text drafters hoped to (a) encourage more car and truck assembly in the United States, and (b) increase the “North American” parts, metal, and labor content of vehicles produced in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada for American, Mexican, and Canadian car-buyers. To this end, USMCA developed “rules of origin” — that is, legal definitions of what it means for a car or truck to be “made in” the U.S., Canada, or Mexico and therefore eligible for tariff waivers — much more restrictive than NAFTA’s. Briefly summarizing some complex formulae, NAFTA required a “regional value” of 62.5%.  This meant buyers had to certify that 62.5% of a car’s value was “North American”. That is, a sedan valued at $30,000 at the border needed to show that $18,750 of its parts, labor, metal, paint, and so forth had to come from the U.S., Canada, or Mexico to qualify. USMCA’s 46-page set of rules raised this “regional value” to 75% — $22,500 of the same $30,000 car — and added new requirements covering (i) use of parts, from brake linings and transmission shafts to ball bearings, gaskets, and radios; (ii) use of metals, with 70% of the steel and aluminum in a car or truck (by value) needing to come from North American mills or smelters; and (iii) labor input, with 45% of the labor value required to be “high-wage.” The rules take effect in over five years, beginning with USMCA’s “entry into force” in June 2020 and fully in effect by 2025.

What has happened since?

Output: Not much so far, at least in the U.S. Auto production fell sharply during the 2020 COVID pandemic to 8.8 million vehicles, and as of 2023 had rebounded to 10.6 million, slightly below the long-term NAFTA average. So to date, USMCA’s auto innovations have left U.S. production about the same, though they’re still new and might have larger effects later on.

Trade: Trade flows in total likewise haven’t changed drastically. Last year’s 8 million in new car and truck imports were about the same as those of 2016, with a few more from Mexico and a few less from Canada. But the detailed data published in the Dataweb suggest an unexpected shift: at least in car trade with Mexico, USMCA seems to be getting less use than NAFTA.  These figures report that in 2023, about 468,000 Mexican-made cars — 20% of the year’s 2.1 million total, 20 times the 2016 figure — arrived with the 2.5% MFN tariff rather than duty-free under USMCA.  Light truck imports have also shifted a bit, though much less dramatically, with 1700 arriving outside USMCA.  Canadian cars and trucks, by contrast, were almost all covered by USMCA.  The 468,000 outside-USMCA vehicles are not subject to any “rule of origin” at all, so if the Dataweb figures are correct rather than some kind of data entry problem, and don’t simply reflect a temporary adjustment as manufacturers get used to new rules, the tariffed cars can contain lots more foreign parts, metal, and so forth than their NAFTA-era predecessors.

A cautionary note: The USMCA is still new, the shift is mainly in car imports from Mexico rather than in trucks or U.S.-Canada trade, and auto production patterns take years to change. More generally, the slightly lower post-USMCA auto production in the U.S. isn’t necessarily related to the agreement; it could reflect unusual post-pandemic buying patterns, EV transition, etc. But these points duly noted, the revised auto rules so far (a) don’t seem to have brought more auto production to the U.S., and (b) if the tariffed, outside-USMCA imports continue to grow, could be encouraging more rather than less “international” content in “North American” cars. They haven’t by any means failed in the conclusive way Trump negotiators’ hope for lower trade deficits failed; but so far, they seem less than a resounding success, and maybe not an improvement.

FURTHER READING

USMCA text, see pp. 224-270 of Chapter 4 for rules governing cars, trucks, and parts.

Agreements and rules:

A U.S. Trade Representative Office Federal Register Notice from last March requests thoughts on supply-chain “resilience,” with Question 8 asking specifically about rules of origin:

“There is concern that preferential rules of origin in free trade agreements can operate as a “backdoor” benefiting goods and/or firms from countries that are not party to the agreements and are not bound by labor and environmental commitments. What actions could be taken to mitigate these risks and maximize production in the parties? What policies could support strong rules of origin and adherence to rules of origin?”

The FRN.

PPI’s Gresser, testifying at the hearing a week ago Thursday, carefully suggests that USTR’s phrasing is a bit off, as adjectives like “strong” or “weak” aren’t really the point. The low-drama response, using USMCA’s auto rules as a case in point.

“A well-designed rule strikes a balance, enabling firms to meet it easily and cheaply while not being so permissive as to reduce the benefit to the countries participating in the agreement.  Complex and very demanding rules, however, may be so costly or create such paperwork burdens that businesses choose not to use the agreement.  In this case they may continue importing under MFN tariffs (using any outside inputs they find convenient) or find non-FTA sources instead.”

Gresser testimony.

Global perspective:

Where do cars come from? The Organization of International Automobile Manufacturers’ country-by-country data show about a third of the world’s 93.5 million new cars made in China in 2023, and a sixth in the U.S./Canada/Mexico:

World Vehicle Production:	93.5 million
China	30.2 million
European Union	14.3 million
(Germany)	4.1 million
(France)	1.5 million
(Slovakia)	1.4 million
(Czechia)	1.4 million
(Italy)	0.9 million
United States	10.6 million
Japan	9.0 million
India	5.9 million
Korea	4.2 million
Mexico	4.0 million
Thailand	1.8 million
Canada	1.6 million
United Kingdom	1.0 million
All other	10.9 million

OICA’s production and sales data.

And from the Commerce Department, U.S. automotive trade data, sadly updated only through 2021.

And a note on balances:

The Trump administration’s 2018 “President’s Trade Agenda” report uses trade balance as the main grounds to renegotiate NAFTA:

“[O]ur goods trade balance with Mexico, until 1994 characterized by reciprocal trade flows, almost immediately soured after NAFTA implementation, with a deficit of over $15 billion in 1995, and over $71 billion by 2017. … USTR has set as its primary objective for these renegotiations – to improve the U.S. trade balance and reduce the trade deficit with the NAFTA countries.”

As of 2023 — three years into USMCA — this same “goods trade balance” with Mexico was -$152 billion in deficit, and with Canada -$25.8 billion.  So, pretty total failure here, with both deficits doubled. The reason for this, though, isn’t any particular problem with the new agreement’s text or legislative drafting, though. Rather it’s that the Trump-era policy designers didn’t understand trade balances and promised something the agreement couldn’t deliver.

The U.S. trade balance is the difference between national savings and national investment. The nearly simultaneous 2017 tax bill raised fiscal deficits, and therefore reduced government savings. Unless for some reason families and businesses started to save more (and they didn’t), the overall U.S. trade deficit was naturally going to rise as a result.  With tariffs on China pushing U.S. purchasing of some formerly Chinese-made refrigerators, TV sets, clothing, etc. into other countries (especially Vietnam but also Mexico), the U.S.-China “bilateral” deficit dropped a bit, but this forced a larger increase with other countries, Mexico and Canada among them.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: U.S. R&D spending approaching $1 trillion per year.

THE NUMBERS: U.S. share of world “knowledge- and technology-intensive” manufacturing and services –

Manufacturing
2022	20.4%
2012	20.1%
Services
2022	39.7%
2012	29.3%

National Science Foundation, 2024.  Manufacturing includes chemicals; pharmaceuticals; weapons and ammunition; computer, electronic, and optical; electrical equipment; machinery; automotive; aerospace; railroad and other transport; and medical devices.  Services include IT and information services, software, and research and development.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

President Biden in October delivered seven Medals of Science and nine Medals of Technology and Innovation:  Dr. Marder of Brandeis for analysis of brain biochemistry and neurocircuitry, Caltech’s Professor Barish for detecting gravitational waves from merging black holes, Mary-Dell Chilton of Syngenta for agricultural biotechnology, Roy Cooper from the VA for inventing improved wheelchairs, along with Internet pioneers, 3D printing founders, social neurologists and more.  He took some time to note administration science policy highlights –— the Cancer Moonshot, the CHIPS and Science Act, climate research — but could perhaps have said a bit more.  The individual achievements and the government policy look less like one-offs than or unusual cases, than especially strong examples of a remarkable if little-recognized Biden-era boom in American science. Two indexes and then some comparisons:

1. Research and Development: Each year the National Science Foundation publishes figures on research and development spending.  Their latest edition launched in March.  It shows U.S. R&D investment rising from $717 billion in 2020 to a likely $886 billion in 2022, with government support up from $65 billion to $73 billion, business commitments from $520 billion to $673 billion, and nonprofit and academic funding from $43 billion to $47 billion. The overall jumps of 10% and 12% in 2021 and 2022 appear to be the largest in the last thirty years.  This makes America’s “research intensity” — R&D spending divided by national GDP — 3.5% by the NSF’s count, or 3.6% according to the OECD.  This figure is up from 2.8% in 2012 and 3.2% in 2019; or in a longer perspective, from 2.4% at the launch of the World Wide Web in 1993 and 2.6% during the moon-landing year 1969. If this “intensity” level held up through 2023, total U.S. science commitment in 2024 would top $1 trillion.

2. Working Scientists: The Bureau of Labor Statistics, meanwhile, reports a 26% growth in the count of working R&D scientists in the last three years, from 796,000 at the beginning of 2021 to 956,000 as the NSF launched its March R&D report. To put this in perspective, total employment in the U.S. has grown by 10% in the last three years.  So the lab workforce is rising more than twice as fast as the general workforce.  From another perspective, the 3.3-year jump of 160,000 scientists compares to a rise of 290,000 in the entire twenty years from the turn of the century to the end of 2020 (and has nearby analogues in similar jumps of 140,000 in engineering, and 300,000 in computer systems design).

Now to the comparisons:

Measured by spending, NSF’s $886 billion R&D estimate places the U.S. first in the world, and makes up about 30% of known R&D worldwide.  Measured by “research intensity”, OECD’s 3.6% estimate puts the U.S. fourth, behind only Israel’s 6.0%, Korea’s 5.2%, and Taiwan’s 4.0%. Comparable figures for other big economies include 3.4% for Japan, 3.1% for Germany, 2.9% for the U.K. 2.9%, 2.4% for China, and 2.2% for France. Rounding out the G-7, Canada is a bit below at 1.7%, and Galileo’s Italy a comparatively anemic 1.3%. A table with the top countries and the world’s ten largest economies:

Israel	6.0%
Korea	5.2%
Taiwan	4.0%
U.S.	3.6%
Sweden	3.4%
Japan	3.4%
Belgium	3.4%
Germany	3.1%
U.K.	2.9%
China	2.4%
France	2.2%
Canada	1.7%
Italy	1.3%
Brazil	1.2%
Russia	1.1%
India	0.7%

What about real-world output as opposed to spending and puttering about in labs?  In April, a few weeks after the R&D report, NSF’s busy editors put out another one looking at the world’s “Knowledge and Technology Intensive Industries”.  Complete with a new acronym, “KTI”, this examines production of a list of impressive things – aircraft and satellites, high-speed dental drills, self-guiding cars and computer software, digital technology, biologic medicines, etc. — and estimates world high-tech industry output at $11.1 trillion in 2022.  (This would be about 10% of world GDP.)  Here the U.S. has a peer — in fact, China’s $3.0 trillion shades America’s $2.9 trillion – while the EU comes in at $1.7 trillion, Japan $0.6 trillion, and Korea $0.4 trillion.  China’s leads show up in the manufacturing of computers, electronics, and optics, while the U.S. is top producer of medicines, medical devices, aerospace, software, and digital information.

And over time?  The American share of world “KTI” manufacturing, having fallen from 29.5% in 2002 to 20.1% in 2012, began a rebound during the Obama administration and has risen a bit to 20.5%.  Or, setting aside what other countries might be doing, the value of this output has grown from $1.3 trillion in 2020 to $1.6 trillion in 2022. The U.S. share of world “KTI” services production — the software, IT services, and research work noted above – has steadily risen, accelerated by the internet industry, from a world-leading 29.3% in 2012 to 39.7% in 2022. All of which suggests that Biden’s well-deserved praise for the individual neuroscientists, astronomers, wheelchair and Internet-backbone designers highlights not only exceptional personal achievement, but the fact that the administration deserves credit for some large-scale science policies and has reason to feel good about the last three years’ results.

FURTHER READING

Biden presents last year’s Medals of Science and of Technology and Innovation last October.

The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy.

… the Cancer Moonshot.

… and never out of fashion, Dr. Vannevar Bush’s original 1945 Endless Frontier report, arguing for a permanent government role in promotion of science and technology.

Assessment:

The National Science Foundation’s April 2024 Production and Trade of Knowledge- and Technology-Intensive Industries report.

And the American Association for the Advancement of Science reviews government policy.

And some data:

OECD’s estimates of R&D spending, GDP share, and science employment by country as of 2022.

And NSF’s State of U.S. Science and Engineering looks at American scientific research, education, workforce and more, with some international comparisons.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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