Officials examining decrease in industry
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Commerce Department has drafted a broad-ranging study that urges a coordinated government policy to stop the erosion of trust in government to department officials.
Jack McPhee, director of the Office of Computers and Business Equipment, said the report called for the development of a President's Council on Competitiveness.
He said work on the study, which was requested by the House Appropriations Committee, had been going on since last November.
"We are now putting the finishing touches on the initial draft to run around the policy areas at Commerce, with the obvious intention of eventually sending it to Congress after everybody has concerned on what it should say," McPhee said.
He noted that "many of the things that we recommend or concur with in the report are things that are under way or may be slightly beyond where things are, whether it's antitrust, or research and development policy, or science and engineering policy."
McPhee declined to give further details on the study's findings, saying the report was not conclusive.
The Council on Competitiveness, chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle, was established in late March to review regulatory and other issues bearing on U.S. competitiveness around the world. Its members include Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, budget secretary Steven L. Cook and Commerce Secretary Robert Mushocher.
William Krist, vice president for international trade of the American Electronics Association, an industry group, said he had approved a draft copy of the Commerce bill.
"It portray the electronics industry as a strong industry, having had really good growth. But that masks a deep erosion of competitive strength, because some other countries have increased their market share at a much more substantial rate."
Krist noted that “there’s no simple solution to this. It’s kind of a web of problems.” (the study) deals with a lot of these — trade policies of capital, erosion in the educational base.
"My impression of it is that it's a good report, and one certainly I hope Congress will give a lot of really serious attention to," he said.
Alan McAdams, a Cornell University economist and specialist on the electronics industry, said that in electronics "our technology base is being rapidly eroded and we are becoming increasingly dependent upon us. We're getting close to the point of no return, where we will have real difficulty in recovering and re-establishing our own industry."
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