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INTERNET CENSORSHIP IN CHINA IMPACTS GLOBAL TRADE

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INTERNET CENSORSHIP IN CHINA IMPACTS GLOBAL TRADE

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Unfree Speech

Online censorship can take many forms. With over four billion global Internet users in 2019, the lines around how we express ourselves online are being drawn and redrawn around the world.

In Europe, democratic governments are considering bans on so-called fake news and fines on social media companies that fail to delete “harmful” content. In the United States, tech companies are under fire for under- or overdoing their monitoring and expunging of material on their platforms that may be “extremist,” “hateful,” or merely repugnant or wrong-headed to some. Although free and open speech is fundamental to any democracy, U.S. culture is growing ever more hostile to dissenting opinions or genuine debate. The “cancel culture” is a harmful form of societal censorship.

When it comes to systemic state-sponsored censorship, North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran impose the harshest restrictions on Internet use by citizens and companies. Censorship is a tool of state control over the populace in those countries.

In China, political dissent or criticism of the Chinese Communist Party is punished, independent bloggers silenced, credentialed journalists from international publications denied access, and scholars made to fall in line with party views. But it isn’t only political speech that is banned or filtered. China maintains a system of surveillance and blocking technologies that comprise the “Great Firewall” between its citizens and many of the world’s largest commercial websites. The Senate recently held a hearing to discuss censorship of foreign companies in China as well as the government’s use of market power to extend the reach of censorship beyond its borders.

Firewalls and Filters

China’s State Internet Information Office appears to spearhead the monitoring and filtering of Internet traffic into and within China, but the endeavor is so extensive that as many as twelve other agencies comprise China’s censorship apparatus. The government exercises control over information technology infrastructure and deploys sophisticated software to scrub, deflect or block content and sites it deems illegal. China’s telecommunications companies, including China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile are enlisted to carry out and enforce state censorship measures, as are Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, China’s main Internet platforms. Controlling much of the allowable content in China, these companies maintain strict filters – censoring themselves and their users – to comply with government requirements.

China ISPs enlisted

Content deemed illegal is required to be removed or sites are blocked altogether. The U.S. Trade Representative’s 2019 Report to Congress on China’s WTO Compliance cites industry calculations that “China currently blocks more than 10,000 sites, affecting billions of dollars in business, including communications, networking, app stores, news, and other sites.” Blocked sites include Dropbox, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google search and Gmail, and foreign news services such as The Guardian and the Wall Street Journal. Services required for day-to-day business operations such as cloud storage are restricted to service portals approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, not privately-owned or controlled channels where the government could lose visibility and access to the data transmitted.

As a second line of defense, the Chinese government prohibits or strictly licenses wholly- or partially owned foreign firms seeking to provide value-added telecommunications services such as Internet-based calls, videoconferencing services, online search and data processing, or virtual private network (VPN) services.

Corporate Choices and the Cost of Censorship

In 2010, Google famously defied the Chinese government’s requirements to filter the content returned by its search algorithm. When Google redirected its users to its uncensored Hong Kong site, the Chinese government blocked it. Taking it a step further, the government throttled Google’s services, degrading them to the point where users become inclined to abandon the service, causing Google to lose substantial market share and withdraw from China. Washington DC-based think tank Information Technologies and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) estimates Google lost $32.5 billion in potential search revenue from 2013 to 2019. Eventually, Google began developing Dragonfly, a search engine designed to comply with China’s censorship requirements.

Other U.S. companies have contorted themselves to avoid censorship. U.S.-headquartered Marriott International apologized for listing Taiwan as a separate country after Chinese authorities shut down its website. International airlines fell in line too, changing their websites to refer to Taiwan as part of China under threat they would be banned from operating in China.

The Chinese government is also becoming more brazen about leveraging its market power to ensure foreign corporations and their employees avoid criticizing its policies outside of China. We are all familiar with the NBA’s backpedaling after initially supporting its employees’ right to exercise free speech in the United States in expressing support for Hong Kong. Increasingly, foreign firms will face a choice between protecting their right and the rights of their employees to freedom of expression or protecting their business dealings in China.

Foreign firms face choice rev

Not Just a China Problem

According to an analysis from Google, more than 40 governments now engage in broad-scale restrictions of online information, “a tenfold increase from just a decade ago.” Among the examples cited, YouTube has been blocked in Turkey. Several countries in Eastern Europe interfere with the popular blogging service, LiveJournal. Guatemala suppressed WordPress blogs during its 2009 political crisis. Iran stifles dissent by blocking social media platforms. Vietnam actively filters political content from social media.

Censorship Map revised

Do Global Trade Rules Address Censorship?

Within the trade community, voices are growing louder that China’s Internet controls constitute a barrier to market access and are therefore a violation of China’s global trade obligations.

Foreign companies and industry have argued that China’s censorship measures are not even-handed; they are applied to non-Chinese products or service providers selectively and in ways that are more restrictive than those applied to domestic providers. They point to examples of similar content that draws a permanent ban of a foreign site whereas the domestic site is merely required to remove specific content.

The Chinese government’s guidelines for permissible or illegal content are vague, unpublished and not transparent. The criteria for IP addresses, domains and website addresses that are permanently or routinely blocked are a state secret. Foreign companies operating in China or seeking to export to China have no way to understand the basis or seek redress for limitation on their access to the Chinese market.

Weakening foreign industry’s case, however, is their acknowledgement that the market access commitments many WTO members have undertaken may not apply to all Internet trade. In the WTO agreement on services, a member’s commitments to national treatment and market access apply only to services specifically listed by members in their schedules. When the agreement was negotiated, many of today’s value-added Internet services did not exist.

The WTO agreements covering trade in goods and services permit measures “necessary to protect public morals,” to maintain public order or to protect national security, with the limitation that those measures should not be applied in a manner that would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or “a disguised restriction on international trade.” Legal experts debate whether a WTO suit against China’s censorship is winnable, and China experts are dubious whether China would comply regardless.

Trade Rules Cant Fight Censorship

Cyber Sovereignty or Cyber Superpower?

China’s policy footing is unabashedly oriented to exercise absolute control over access to Internet content and services within its own borders. Centrally, the Chinese Communist Party will thwart communication it perceives “subverts state power or undermines national unity.”

The question is, how far will the government go to exercise influence over international norms for cyber governance? And how much state support will be thrown behind freeing itself from dependence on foreign technologies and services to become a global cyber superpower? Is censorship being used to lock foreign competitors out of China’s market to protect local competitors? How far will China go to censor communication it perceives as a threat outside China?

The apps we use that are created by mainland Chinese companies likely contain code to scan and block prohibited websites or language the Chinese government finds objectionable. But beyond sanitizing content, the government may specifically target sites for censorship outside of China.

The Chinese government recently disabled a social media platform in Hong Kong that was used to organize anti-China protests. Its actions may portend a broader approach to Internet censorship in Hong Kong which, according to the Hong Kong Internet Service Providers Association is home to more than 100 data centers operated by local and International companies that transit over 80 percent of web traffic for mainland China.

The Nexus of Censorship and Trade

Government measures to disrupt Internet access or prevent the dissemination of information online are generally considered to infringe upon the basic human right to freedom of expression. Now, industry actors along with open Internet advocates are leading the charge to consider censorship antithetical to the global trading system. At the center of the debate is China, the country with the most extensive censorship program in the world and which holds significant market power in the global economy.

The implications of commercial censorship run the gamut, from stifling key sales channels for exporters to China, to limiting or prohibiting foreign companies from providing Internet services in China, to extraterritorial censorship of overseas Internet sites and services. At a recent hearing on censorship and trade, Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) stated, “The actions undertaken by China are clearly insidious and counter to the necessary conditions of a fair global economic system.” That may be so, but global trade rules and institutions as they exist today are inadequate to alter China’s approach or mitigate the global impacts of China’s censorship.

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Andrea Durkin is the Editor-in-Chief of TradeVistas and Founder of Sparkplug, LLC. Ms. Durkin previously served as a U.S. Government trade negotiator and has proudly taught international trade policy and negotiations for the last fifteen years as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Master of Science in Foreign Service program.

This article originally appeared on TradeVistas.org. Republished with permission.

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Archives, Global Trade Daily, Imports/Exports, News

LATEST: CBP Issues Marking Guidance for Goods Produced in Hong Kong

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On August 10, 2020, U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) issued a notice that goods produced in Hong Kong will need to be marked as a product of China starting on September 25, 2020. The marking changes are the result of the July 14, 2020 Executive Order on Hong Kong Normalization that ended Hong Kong’s special trade status.

CBP is allowing for a 45-day transition period after the date of publication in the Federal Register to implement the requirements due to the “commercial realities.” The notice does not specify how the changes affect tariff treatment of Hong Kong goods.

An administration official has stated that the Executive Order does not “provide for new U.S. tariffs on goods from Hong Kong”, but that the Administration is continuing to evaluate its policies. Therefore, at this time, it remains unclear whether goods originating in Hong Kong will be subject to the same tariffs as Chinese origin goods, including antidumping duties, countervailing duties and Section 301 duties.

Additional guidance from CBP, USTR and the U.S. Department of Commerce is expected.

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Stephen Brophy is an attorney in Husch Blackwell LLP’s Washington, D.C. office focusing on international trade.

Robert Stang is a Washington, D.C.-based partner with the law firm Husch Blackwell LLP. He leads the firm’s Customs group.

Turner Kim is an Assistant Trade Analyst in Husch Blackwell LLP’s Washington, D.C. office.

Camron Greer is an Assistant Trade Analyst in Husch Blackwell LLP’s Washington, D.C. office.

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Archives, Global Trade Daily, In The News, International Trade

Hong Kong Sanctions Bill Passes Congress

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On July 2, 2020, Congress passed the Hong Kong Autonomy Act.  Once signed by President Trump into law, the Act will require the Secretaries of State and Treasury to designate certain persons and financial institutions deemed responsible for eroding Hong Kong’s autonomy and in turn require the President to sanction such designated parties.

The Act comes on the heels of Beijing’s passage of a national security law that critics claim undermines the “One Country, Two Systems” framework that has been in place since the British handover of its former colony in 1997. Under the 1984 Joint Declaration between the U.K. and Chinese governments governing the terms of the handover, certain guarantees were required to be written into the Hong Kong Basic Law (i.e., the de facto Hong Kong constitution) to ensure certain political rights and the semi-autonomy of the territory from mainland China through at least 2047. The recently passed national security law is the latest in a string of moves by Beijing to more closely integrate Hong Kong with the mainland.

Summary of the Legislation

The Hong Kong Autonomy Act would require the Secretary of State to identify and report to Congress within 90 days persons providing or attempting to provide a material contribution “to the failure of the Government of China to meet its obligations under the Joint Declaration or the Basic Law.” This is defined under the Act to include any person who “took action that resulted in the inability of the people of Hong Kong . . . to enjoy freedom of assembly, speech, press, or independent rule of law; or . . . to participate in democratic outcomes; or . . . otherwise took action that reduces the high degree of autonomy of Hong Kong.” Once a report is made to Congress, the President is required to impose property blocking sanctions and visa restrictions on the identified parties within one year. The Act requires that the Secretary of State provide an unclassified assessment for imposition of such sanctions “so as to permit a clear path for the removal of economic penalties if the sanctioned behavior is reversed and verified by the Secretary of State.”

Similarly, between 30 and 60 days from the Secretary of State’s report, the Secretary of the Treasury would be required to identify and report to Congress “any foreign financial institution that knowingly conducts a significant transaction” with a foreign person identified by the Secretary of State. Within one year, the President must impose at least five of ten possible “menu-based” sanctions on the financial institution, which include, for example, restrictions on loans from U.S. financial institutions, restrictions on bank transfers subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, and/or asset blocking sanctions. Within two years, the President must impose all ten of the sanctions on the financial institution.

Both reports by the Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury must be unclassified and available to the public, although certain provisions would allow for the omission of information that would compromise an intelligence operation or subvert law enforcement activities. The reports are required to be updated no less frequently than annually.

Although the sanctions provisions are characterized in the Act as “mandatory,” the Act also empowers the President with a high degree of discretion to remove identified persons or financial institutions or terminate existing sanctions under the Act if the President determines that the material contribution or significant transaction by the identified party:

— “does not have a significant and lasting negative effect that contravenes the obligations of China under the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law;”

— “is not likely to be repeated in the future;” and

— “has been reversed or otherwise mitigated through positive countermeasures taken by” the identified person or financial institution.

The President is required to notify Congress and provide a rationale when exercising this discretion. Further, the Act authorizes the President to waive the application of sanctions if the President “determines that the waiver is in the national security interest of the United States” and notifies Congress of the waiver and the rationale for doing so.

Context

Hong Kong has been rocked by mass protests since last summer, which were first sparked by a bill proposed in April 2019 that would allow extraditions to mainland China. The proposed law drew significant protests from critics who claim the bill would be contrary to the Joint Declaration because, among other things, it could be used to target political dissidents. Ultimately, Beijing withdrew the extradition bill in September 2019. However, while protests have subsided somewhat in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have persisted more or less continuously.

Notably, the Basic Law required Hong Kong to pass legislation to address national security, which the city has never done, despite some unsuccessful attempts. Citing Hong Kong’s failure to enact its own national security legislation and the protestors’ “collu[sion] with external forces,” on June 30, 2020, Beijing enacted its own national security law applicable to Hong Kong which, inter alia, criminalizes “secessionist, subversive or terrorist” activities with penalties of up to life in prison; empowers Beijing to deploy mainland security forces; and overrides the ability of local Hong Kong courts to interpret the law.

Likely Practical Effect

The Hong Kong Autonomy Act represents an escalation in tensions between the United States and China. However, because of the wide discretion granted to the President under the Act, the actual effect of the legislation is unclear for the time being. In particular, the Trump Administration reportedly attempted to delay passage of the bill, and has thus far resisted imposing significant sanctions under a similar bill targeting China for alleged human rights abuses of minority Uighurs in order to salvage his trade deal with Beijing.

Because the Secretary of State must take the first action prior to set in motion any sanctions under the Act, the speed with which Secretary Pompeo makes the required designations will be a good indication of the Trump Administration’s intent. Parties interested in potential sanctions under the Act should monitor the State Department for developments.

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By Ryan Fayhee, Roy (Ruoweng) Liu and Tyler Grove at law firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP

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Is It Just a Phase? Redesigning Trade Deals in the Age of Trump.

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Comprehensive is Out, “Phased” is In

Within the first few months of the Trump Administration in 2017, the U.S. Trade Representative issued a report identifying intellectual property theft and forced technology transfer as crucial sources of China’s growing technological advantage at the expense of U.S. innovation. Tariffs would be applied until a trade deal to address these practices could be reached.

But expectations had to be reset early in the negotiations – China’s offenses cannot be pinpointed to one set of laws, regulations or practices, and so the complex wiring of China’s national approach cannot be untangled or rewired in one pass, in one agreement, even if China shared that goal. An agreement this ambitious would have to be built in phases.

In presenting the “Phase One” agreement signed between the United States and China on January 15, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the deal represents “a big step forward in writing the rules we need” to address the anti-competitive aspects of China’s state-run economy. And it is a serious document.

Beyond its detailed provisions, the strategic and commercial impact of the deal will take more time to evaluate. What is clear in the meanwhile, is that this administration has departed from the standard free trade agreement template.

Comprehensive agreements are out. Partial or phased agreements are in.

Something Agreed

It’s common in trade negotiations to whittle down differences, leaving the hardest issues to the end. Early wins keep parties at the table, building a set of outcomes in which the parties become invested and more willing to forge compromises around the remaining difficult issues. One way to avoid settling for deals that leave aside the most meaningful – and often hardest – concessions is to stipulate that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”

For this administration, however, the art of the deal is – quite simply – closing the elements of the deal available. With China, that may be the best and only way for the United States to achieve a deal. And it may very well represent significant progress. At turns, a larger deal looked as if it would collapse under its own political weight in China. Some things agreed is probably a better outcome than nothing agreed.

A Way Out or a Way Forward?

The deal lays down tracks for more detailed intellectual property rights and newer prohibitions on forced technology transfer. Among other commitments, the deal also breaks ground on previously intractable regulatory barriers to selling more U.S. agricultural and food products in China including dairy, poultry, meat, fish, and grains. But it does not address subsidies provided to China’s state-owned enterprises, a complaint shared by all of China’s major trading partners, Having dodged the issue for now, China may have created an advantage by stringing out its commitments over phases.

The Trump administration brought China to the table with billions in tariffs on imported goods. While compelling, it is not a durable approach. The U.S. macroeconomy is withstanding the self-inflicted pain, but tariffs have real and negative effects on U.S. farmers and business owners who will vote in November. Even a temporary tariff détente is a welcome respite, but uncertainty remains. And while we wait to see if the provisions on intellectual property and technology transfer prove fruitful, what of the lost agricultural sales for U.S. farmers and sunk costs for U.S. businesses?

As part of the deal (a part that gets phased out), China committed to shop for $200 billion in American goods and services over the next two years, including more than $77 billion in manufactured goods, $52 billion in energy products, $32 billion in agricultural goods and $40 billion in services. If fulfilled, the purchases in Phase One would appear to solve the problem of waning U.S. exports to China, but that was a problem of our own making so the administration might only merit partial credit for this part of the deal.

Journey of a Thousand Miles

Of course, the Trump administration’s phased and partial approach to reaching trade deals may simply stem from impatience or a focus on the transactional – comprehensive deals take too long to complete. But the approach may also make sense if these deals are stepping-stones in a bigger, longer game.

In a June 2018 report, the White House offered a taxonomy of 30 different ways the Chinese government acquires American technologies and intellectual property, including through U.S. exports of dual-use technologies, Chinese investments in the United States, and the extraction of competitive information through research arms of universities and companies in the United States.

Ambitious as it is, the administration is not limiting itself to the new Economic and Trade Agreement to solve all the problems it identified. The Department of Justice has initiated intellectual property theft cases, the Department of Commerce is expanding controls over the export of dual-use technologies, and the Treasury Department oversees a process to tighten reviews of proposed inward investments.

A Chinese proverb says that “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Concerns the administration will not limit or end its quest with Phase One were evident in the letter from President Xi read aloud at the signing which urged continued engagement to avoid further “discriminatory restrictions” on China’s economic activity in the United States.

Just a Phase?

Beyond engagement with China, the administration has nearly consistently favored partial deals, with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement (USMCA) the exception. NAFTA needed to be modernized. Our economies have changed too much for the deal to keep pace without some upgrades. Could the modifications have been achieved without replacing the deal? Probably, but perhaps not politically, or it might have been done years sooner. NAFTA’s facelift as USMCA offered a chance for the administration to fashion provisions it intends for broader application, such as those on currency and state-owned enterprises. Though it replaced NAFTA, USMCA changes constitute a partial re-negotiation.

With Japan, the administration set much narrower parameters, hiving off-market access and digital trade as an initial set of deliverables. Last September, President Trump finalized a partial trade deal with Prime Minister Abe that went into effect on January 1. Limited in scope, it encompasses two separate agreements that only cover market access for certain agriculture and industrial goods and digital trade.

The White House characterized the partial deal as a set of “early achievements,” with follow-on negotiations on trade in services, investment and other issues to commerce around April this year. But crucially, the partial deal enabled the United States to avoid addressing its own tariffs on autos and auto parts, which comprise nearly 40 percent of Japan’s merchandise exports to the United States, while securing access to Japan’s market for U.S. agricultural exports.

The United States also restarted talks in 2018 on a partial trade agreement with the European Union that is stalemated over whether to include agriculture.

Walking Alone?

Preferential market access deals are an exception to WTO commitments. WTO members have agreed that free trade agreements outside the WTO should cover “substantially all trade” among the parties and that staging of tariff reductions are part of interim arrangements, not an end state. But with comprehensive negotiations stalled in the WTO itself, members are trying new negotiating approaches such as focusing on single sectors, like information technologies.

Although there was little mention of state-owned enterprises and subsidies in the U.S.-China Phase One deal, something important happened on the margins of that ceremony that received little attention: The trade ministers of Japan, the United States and European Union released a joint statement proposing ways to strengthen the WTO’s provisions on industrial subsides, which they called “insufficient to tackle market and trade distorting subsidization existing in certain jurisdictions,” a reference to China. The statement proposed elements of new core disciplines – a first phase if you will in launching more formal negotiations among WTO members.

The deal signed with China this week envisions reforms to China’s laws, regulations and policies as they apply to any foreign company operating in China, not just the American ones. Perhaps our trading partners see it (only partially) as a go-it-alone strategy and partially as a way to create a corps of provisions that can be migrated to the WTO.

Phase One trade deal - foundation for future US-China trade relations?

Construction Phases: Trump’s Real Estate Mindset

How is the real estate business like trade policy? It isn’t, except in the mind of Donald Trump. Buildings can be demolished or imploded in seconds. A giant hole is dug before its replacement is built. The builder then pours the concrete foundation constructs the frame long before wiring the interior and installing the finishes.

Maybe a phased trade deal represents the opportunity to reset the footing and frame out a solid structure for the future of US-China trade relations – and the finishing touches will come later.

Access the full agreement.

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Andrea Durkin is the Editor-in-Chief of TradeVistas and Founder of Sparkplug, LLC. Ms. Durkin previously served as a U.S. Government trade negotiator and has proudly taught international trade policy and negotiations for the last fourteen years as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Master of Science in Foreign Service program.

This article originally appeared on TradeVistas.org. Republished with permission.
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Amid US-China Trade Battle, Here is how America can Remain the World’s Strongest Economy

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The Communist Party of China has laid plans for a century of unlimited Chinese power and, with it, the end of the American era. However, we still can — and must — bet big on the future of American economic power. The best antidote to China’s ambitions is to ensure America’s continued economic and technological preeminence.

Far too many strategists, investors, and policymakers accept China’s economic preeminence as an inevitable outcome, given the country’s enormous population and potential for growth.

As the business community looks toward a “partial trade deal” to unwind tariffs and reduce trade hostility between the world’s two largest economies, we must understand that non-negotiable problems in U.S.-China relations will accelerate if China closes the gap with the United States in terms of economic and technological power. With the right strategic mindset and a focus on domestic productivity, America can not only win the economic and technological contest but also turn the tide in the U.S.-China competition for global power.

China’s bid for global power is built on its economic ascendency, which is based on engagement with the United States and our allies. Chinese companies are capturing global markets and climbing the ranks of the Fortune Global 500 by taking advantage of stolen or coerced foreign intellectual property and state-orchestrated market distortions. The Communist Party is converting China’s technological power into a dystopian surveillance state and a military that is focusing its capabilities on the United States and our partners.

Chairman Xi Jinping calls regularly for Chinese forces to “prepare to fight and win wars,” while converting civilian industrial technology into military power through “civil-military fusion.” Meanwhile, China’s current account surplus is employed for global influence, buying “strategic partners” with intercontinental projects like the “Belt and Road Initiative” and state-backed acquisitions of foreign firms.

U.S.-China competition is likely to be the hardest geopolitical contest in generations — but it is a contest that the United States can win if we focus on the right objectives.

The People’s Republic of China is a challenge to America’s values and concept of world order. U.S.-China competition is likely to be the hardest geopolitical contest in generations — but it is a contest that the United States can win if we focus on the right objectives. So, where do we go from here?

Focus on GDP

The first step must be a focus on accelerating U.S. productivity growth. U.S. productivity growth need only increase from 1.3 percent a year to 2.5 percent for U.S. GDP to remain ahead of China’s for the entirety of the 2020s, the decade in which many expect China’s economy to surpass America’s.

By 2030, economic leadership will be easier to maintain as China’s demographic problems set in. Such a productivity increase is realistic, given that productivity growth from 1995 to 2008 was higher than 2.5 percent.

Protect America’s edge

The second step is to preserve our edge in advanced and emerging technologies. America must remain ahead of Communist China, not only in hard sciences, but also in the actual production of advanced goods and services.

If America competes against China only through soybean and oil production, we will fail to counter China in advanced industries such as robotics, semiconductors, aerospace and biopharmaceuticals. China is gaining in these and other technologies and industries and could eventually have a decisive advantage over the United States.

As Alexander Hamilton warned 200 years ago, America can’t be great if it is a “hewer of wood and drawer of water.” We must out-invent and outproduce China in advanced technology and industrial goods.

Maintaining U.S. advantage will require collaboration between government and corporations towards national goals in science, engineering and industry. This approach has long served our nation in times of international struggle and led to lasting commercial and national security breakthroughs.

New and Big

In order to attain these goals, Washington must think new and big. New in the sense of a bipartisan consensus that productivity growth and technological competitiveness must be national priorities.

Big in the sense of big and bold proposals. Here are three: First, implement a robust research, development and investment tax credit that will stimulate innovation and investment on American soil. Second, establish a series of well-funded “moonshot” goals to ensure American leadership in emerging industries such as advanced robotics and quantum computing. Third, develop a national productivity strategy that will take the best ideas of government and industry and focus on building the next $10 trillion in annual U.S. GDP by 2030.

Half a century ago, under the leadership of President John F. Kennedy, America faced a Communist superpower that believed that it would “bury” the United States, much as Chinese Communist leaders today believe that the 21st century belongs to China. Kennedy reminded us then that America would “bear any burden” and “meet any hardship” to prevail in that consequential time.

In the end, it was the power of the American economy, the power of American technology, and the power of American industry that brought victory over our ambitious foe. We must unleash these forces once again, wrestle them into national service, and build on toward the greater good — an American era that can and must prevail.

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Dr. Jonathan D.T. Ward is the author of “China’s Vision of Victory” and founder of Atlas Organization, a strategy consultancy on US-China global competition. Follow him on Twitter @jonathandtward. 

Dr. Robert D. Atkinson is the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and the author of “Big is Beautiful: Debunking the Mythology of Small Business.” Follow him on Twitter @robatkinsonITIF..

This article originally appeared on FoxBusiness.com. Republished with permission.