Trump Is Killing American Innovation And China Will Reap the Benefits

Source LInk

Over the last few months, an elaborate plan to ensure China prevails in the global economic competition has taken shape. The plan’s chief architects, however, are not China’s leaders—they are U.S. politicians. The Trump administration’s cuts to federal agencies are undermining the United States’ ability to innovate, the driver of its economic growth. Hostile immigration policies are making it harder for U.S. firms, industries, and universities to attract the best ideas and talent from around the world and leverage them to boost America’s prosperity. Wild threats of tariffs and restrictions on foreign supply chains are terrifying investors, who are beginning to sit on their capital and look for new opportunities away from the chaos. China, meanwhile, is becoming more competitive in the very fields the United States is kneecapping.

Washington needs to rediscover the value of innovation. Every area of future economic growth in which the United States is poised to lead—such as software, AI, oil and gas drilling, robotics, and electric vehicle production—depends on innovations that are impossible to nurture without reliable long-term support from the federal government. Both U.S. political parties once saw public investment in scientific education, training, and innovation as central to the country’s future prosperity. Today, neither party reliably understands or champions that message. Instead, they adopt well-intentioned but misguided bipartisan policies aimed at cutting the United States’ dependence on China and join together to bash Beijing, driving the rest of the world toward greater reliance on China.

Walling off the Chinese economy from the West will fail. Washington has no choice but to participate in a globalized economy it can no longer unilaterally control. The United States has spent decades and trillions of dollars to build the world’s best innovation system. That system, in turn, has become the primary source of the country’s economic and military strength. Stripping it for parts just as China is seeking to build an innovation apparatus that rivals the United States’ would be suicidal.