Sec. 2. Findings

288 words·~1 min read·/bill/113/hr/2996/ih/section-2

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Congress finds the following: In 2011, manufacturing contributed $1,800,000,000,000 to the Nation’s economy and accounted for 47 percent of all United States exports. If ranked as its own country, the United States manufacturing sector would be the 10th largest economy in the world. American manufacturers employ more than 11,000,000,000 Americans in jobs with wages and benefits that are one-third higher than the wages and benefits in other sectors. Manufacturing has the highest multiplier effect, with every dollar in final sales of manufactured products resulting in $1.34 in output from other sectors.

As the source of nearly one-third of the United States investment in research and development manufacturing, firms drive innovation in the United States. Countries such as Korea, Japan, and Germany have a larger share of the advanced manufacturing sector than the United States. Each of these countries has a positive trade balance in advanced manufacturing products. In contrast, the United States had an $81,000,000,000 trade deficit in 2010. The United States share of research and development spending dropped from 43.1 percent in 1998 to 37.3 percent in 2008, while China’s share of research and development spending increased from 3 percent to 11.4 percent during the same period.

According to a survey by the Council on Competitiveness, chief executive officers view the quality and availability of scientists, researchers, and engineers and the quality and availability of skilled production workers as the first and second most important drivers of competitiveness. According to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the United States ranked 27th out of 29 developed countries in the percentage of students who earned bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering in 2009.

Colleges in China and India award more 4-year engineering bachelor’s degrees than United States colleges.