Policy Debate

Abstract

In its June 2011 report to President Barak Obama, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) noted that: ‘While the United States may not be able to compete in the long run to make goods for which low wage unskilled labor is the key input, this need not be true for sophisticated manufacturing linked to products and processes derived from scientific discovery and technological innovation’. Rather than focusing policy efforts on low technology manufacturing, PCAST argues that ‘advanced manufacturing provides the path forward to revitalizing US leadership in manufacturing and will best support economic productivity and ongoing knowledge production and innovation in the Nation’. In June 2011, President Obama announced the launching of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, an effort bringing together industry, universities, and the federal government to invest in such emerging technologies as nano-scale carbon materials, next-generation optoelectronics, flexible electronics, and nanotechnology enabled medical diagnostic devices and therapeutics. PCAST argues for a coherent innovation policy that manifests itself in a recommended ‘Advanced Manufacturing Initiative for America’s Future’ (‘AMI’) – a concerted government effort led by the US Departments of Commerce, Defense, and Energy, and coordinated by the Executive Office of the President. How does an AMI based on an ‘innovation policy’ harmonize with an Administration that has been consistently following an ‘industrial policy’ that financially – as well as through its regulatory policies – supports and influences specific manufacturing companies and industries that it deems as ‘winners’? The short answer is not well. Both ‘tilting the field’ and ‘playing the role of principal actor’ is how the Obama administration has actively supported ‘green’ technology companies, and this industrial policy could be expanded in a second term to other government designated ‘winners’ at the competitive expense of other industry sub-sectors of advanced manufacturing.