The United States often provokes economic and trade frictions in the name of other countries' industrial policies and subsidies in the high-tech field. But in fact, it has been a common practice for many years for the United States to promote the development of science and technology industry with its own industrial policies and government subsidies.
Industrial policy has existed for a long time
American mainstream economists think that "industrial policy" is reminiscent of planned economy, so they avoid mentioning this kind of policy. But in fact, American industrial policy has existed for a long time, which has strongly promoted the development of American science and technology industry and economic growth.
Historically, Hamilton, the first US Treasury Secretary, was an early advocator of industrial policy. In the 1950s and 1960s, the United States implemented the industrial revitalization plan in aerospace, military industry and other fields, and achieved good results. Many U.S. governments have chosen emerging industries, formulated long-term plans to support them, promoted government enterprise cooperation and technology transfer to enterprises, and even directly intervened in the market through tax relief, government procurement and other means. The "information superhighway" plan of the Clinton administration in the 1990s is a typical example.
Today, this kind of industrial policy is still continuing, especially in the high-tech field. Just take this year as an example. In May, the U.S. government held the "American industrial Artificial Intelligence Summit", proposing that the government should coordinate and integrate industrial and academic forces to maintain the "leadership" of the United States in the era of artificial intelligence. Michael Clarias, deputy assistant to white house technology policy, said that the White House has established a "Special Committee on artificial intelligence". Industry leaders from commercial companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook attended the summit, which stated that new ways of public-private partnership should be explored to speed up the development of artificial intelligence.
In June, the science, space and Technology Committee of the US House of Representatives disclosed a bill to be approved by Congress to promote the "national quantum program". The 10-year plan aims to increase investment in quantum information technology and strengthen resource sharing among the government, industry and academia, including measures such as technology transfer to start-ups.
Government subsidies "commonplace"
Since last year, Amazon, an American technology giant, has chosen the location of its "second headquarters", triggering competition among big cities in many states in the United States. Local governments have tried their best to attract investment by means of land grant, road construction, tax reduction and even direct subsidies.
For example, in April this year, Maryland proposed through a plan that if Amazon chooses the state, it will provide "incentives" with a total value of nearly $8.5 billion, including asset tax, sales tax and income tax relief, and improvement of transportation facilities. Amazon received at least $613 million in local government subsidies between 2005 and 2014, according to a 2016 report by the local independence Institute, a US consultancy.
The performance research center, a non-governmental organization in the United States, tracks the situation of various industries in the United States receiving government subsidies. Its records show that Tesla has received a total of 3.5 billion US dollars of public subsidies (including tax cuts) since 2007, nearly 10% of which came from the federal government, and the rest came from local governments. Among them, Nevada has given Tesla 1.3 billion US dollars of tax relief, supporting the company to build a super battery factory in the state.
In fact, there is no lack of funding from the U.S. government behind the "Iron Man" Elon Musk's various "masterpieces" in the high-tech industry in Silicon Valley. For example, the space exploration technology company he founded not only has the technology transfer from NASA, but also the launch contract between NASA and the military.
In 2014, Boeing company and space exploration technology company obtained a total contract of 6.8 billion US dollars from NASA to develop "starplane" spacecraft and manned "dragon" spacecraft respectively, so as to transport astronauts to and from the international space station and get rid of the US dependence on Russian spacecraft.
According to the latest data from the performance research center, IBM received $1.632 billion in government subsidies at all levels; Google's parent company, alphabet, received $766 million in state and local government subsidies; Facebook received $333 million in federal, state and local government subsidies.
"Close cooperation" between government and enterprises
The U.S. government has many scientific research institutions and has been working closely with the business community for many years. For example, the National Laboratory under the Ministry of energy, the advanced research projects bureau of the Ministry of defense, the space administration, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of health have invested a lot of R & D funds to serve the revitalization of the industry.
According to a survey report in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences, from 2010 to 2016 alone, the US government invested more than 100 billion US dollars in basic biomedical research to promote the development of new drugs. During this period, 210 new drugs approved by the U.S. Food and drug administration were related to research funded by government agencies.
The risk of early research failure in the field of biomedicine is high, so it is carried out by scientific research institutions affiliated to the government. Once the drug passes the clinical trial, the enterprise is expected to obtain high profits. It is a common "role division" in the United States that the government invests in early R & D and bears risks, and the enterprises undertake the technology transferred by the government and follow-up development and face the market.
Observers believe that industrial policy has always been a common means of economic and technological competition in developed countries led by the United States. Stephen Roach, a former chief economist of Morgan Stanley, recently wrote that Japan used to support emerging industries through government subsidies in the 1970s and 1980s, and the Eisenhower Administration of the United States also used the "military industrial complex" with a large amount of state funding as the key to promoting American innovation.
Roach said that the Internet, semiconductors, nuclear power plants and dual-use aerospace technologies are all evidence of the implementation of U.S. industrial policies. Most of the above-mentioned scientific and technological achievements have used the U.S. defense budget.