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Global Competition: Opportunities and Challenges for Manufacturers
2007-11-04
I want to talk to you about manufacturing, about the fundamental sources of prosperity, and about the critical role of technology. With my modest knowledge of the Great Plains states, I’ll try to make some connections to show regional relationships with some of these broad, national global trends.
The last time I was involved with economic competitiveness and growth issues was the mid 1980s. I served as the executive director of the President's Commission on Industrial Competitiveness, which was set up by President Reagan. John Young, the chairman of Hewlett-Packard, was chairman of the commission. We had 30 very distinguished business, academic, and public policy leaders essentially doing an independent analysis of what the competitive condition of the United States was.
Now think back to the mid '80s. This was a time our productivity growth rates were approaching zero in the manufacturing sector. We talked about the Rust Belt. I grew up in Illinois so that was the term. We talked about deindustrialization. We talked about the hollowing out of America. We talked about losing huge markets to Japan and Europe. We had the twin deficits -- the trade deficit and budget deficit -- that were intertwined with our loss of competitiveness.
And where are we today? We bounced back. We've come back out on top. We did not go into this slough of despond, but we ended up fighting back. And today we are unquestionably the economic leader of the world. Russia, our big enemy since World War II, has a $400 billion a year GNP; we're at $8 trillion. I mean Russia almost doesn't matter if it were not to be part of the economy. Now that's obviously not the position that I want to take, but we are an economic superpower today.
