Commentary on Gregory Tassey’s “Rationales and mechanisms for revitalizing US manufacturing R&D strategies”

Abstract

Gregory Tassey has written a brilliant, although not flawless, analysis of the technological challenges to American manufacturing and of actions that should be taken by both business and government to ensure that American manufacturing’s future is bright. Tassey has long been an astute observer and analyst of American science, technology, and innovation policies. His paper is both a synthesis of many of his earlier contributions and a significant extension into new realms of understanding. Tassey’s fundamental thesis is that the decline in American manufacturing’s contributions to GDP and private employment, as well as its decline in shares of world trade, can be attributed in substantial measure to two factors. The first is that there is a national consensus around models of how technology is developed and used that fails to account for both vertical disintegration along supply chains and the speed of change. Second, because of American aversion to the involvement of government in the private sector, there is an overly rigid understanding of the synergistic roles of private and public investment in generating cycles of major changes in new technologies. Tassey marshals a wide array of evidence to support his thesis, and he offers recommendations for action to address the problems he has identified. He disparages observers, whom he leaves largely unnamed, who he says argue that the future of the American economy lies in a strong service sector or in the invention and design of complex sociotechnical systems that are based on integration of manufactured goods from abroad. I have considerable sympathy for Tassey’s point of view. That American manufacturing is in trouble has long been recognized and proposals for action have been widely discussed. During the 1980s, when American manufacturing was deeply challenged by Japan, astute American observers pointed out that the success of leading Japanese firms