For a self-described "trade nerd," the headline couldn't be more provocative: "China Drawing High-Tech Research From U.S." The March 17 New York Times article, which discusses why U.S. manufacturers such as Applied Materials Inc. are locating top technology talent and R&D facilities in China, certainly made Marianne Rowden take notice.
Since becoming president and CEO of the American Association of Exporters and Importers (AAEI) in June 2009, Rowden says she has publicly responded to news articles on one or two occasions. But the day after the New York Times article appeared, Rowden fired off a press release urging U.S. lawmakers to "demonstrate the political will to compete with China for providing the best opportunities for researchers to do their work here, especially in the technology sector."
"China is willing to offer companies giant incentives to do their research in China, including cheap land leases and cash," Rowden said. "The U.S. may not be in the position to offer those kinds of incentives. But we can improve our responsiveness to the needs of innovators, and lift cumbersome and needless regulatory strangleholds."
Why does Rowden consider keeping high-tech research on domestic soil such an urgent matter? "If we don't, we're going to increasingly face imports from our technology being manufactured in other places and being re-imported to us," she warns. "And that is a perverse, perverse irony that I find galling."
For example, California is considering buying Chinese technology -- "it's our technology that the Chinese have sort of perfected that they want to sell back to us," Rowden asserts—for the construction of a statewide high-speed rail system.
"This is going to happen over and over again, and it makes me crazy," Rowden says.
Still, Rowden sees some silver lining in the New York Times article and other news stories on trade topics, as they show the "mainstream media now understanding the trade world, which has been under the radar for so long." On a similar note, reaction to defective products imported from China in recent years shows that "the American public now understands how much global trade touches their lives in a very tangible way."
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