News & Updates

During the Council's Summer 2026 Board, Executive Committee, and National Commission Meeting, Gallup Chairman and Council Executive Committee Member Jim Clifton opened the day with a challenge to the standard framing of U.S. economic health. The 4.3 percent official unemployment rate reported that morning, he argued, excludes a vast number of Americans who are, effectively, […]

Consider these two data sets side by side. The first, drawn from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data, shows China's R&D investment crossing above that of the United States as early as 2024 — several years before previous predictions, and the result of more than two decades of relentless acceleration. In 2000, China […]

As AI technology rapidly advances, the United States faces increasingly complex competitiveness challenges, as demonstrated by these graphs. The first picture is optimistic. Weekly U.S. business applications have surged to historic highs, approaching 130,000applications per week in early 2026, according to data compiled by Apollo Global Management. For context, that figure is nearly double the […]

According to Apollo Global Management* and others — like Bridgewater —hyperscalers (Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Google) are poised to invest over $600 billion in capital expenditures in 2026. This level of investment is approaching 2 percent of U.S. gross domestic product —with the investment’s share of GDP more than doubling since 2023 (and growing […]

Global economic and geopolitical uncertainty is no longer episodic; it has become structural. Non-financial U.S. corporations are holding approximately $7.9 trillion in liquid assets — roughly 12 percent of their total — a level that reflects elevated interest rates and heightened risk sensitivity rather than capital scarcity.1 At the same time, traditional pathways for deploying […]

Recent data on global manufacturing output spotlights a stark reality: China now accounts for 35 percent of the world’s manufacturing, nearly three times the United States’ share. The remaining 53 percent is spread across the rest of the world. This concentration is of strategic significance. Manufacturing underpins innovation ecosystems, supply chain resilience, national security, and […]

Reflections from the Global Federation of Competitiveness Board Council Meeting at the University of Pittsburgh When I stood before the global federation of competitiveness leaders gathered at University of Pittsburgh last month, I opened with three numbers that frame our current reality: One trillion dollars in global AI infrastructure investment over the next two years. […]

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data underscore a pivotal trend in the global race for innovation leadership. In 2023, the United States invested $823 billion in research and development (R&D) — the largest total globally — but China is rapidly closing the gap, reaching $781 billion and growing nearly twice as fast (8.9 […]

The numbers tell a stark story: China now graduates roughly 1.25 million engineersand computer scientists annually—five times the U.S. total of 250,000. Over just twodecades, China’s output of bachelor’s degrees in these fields increased tenfold,master’s degrees by 15 times, and doctorates by 20 times. Meanwhile, U.S. growthhas been comparatively modest, widening the domestic gap in […]

The regulation of public utilities is an arcane art practiced in the U.S. at the state and federal government levels. Public utilities, also called public service companies, include such vital infrastructure industries as electricity, natural gas distribution and water. These private companies are granted monopoly franchises to serve specified communities. In return for the monopoly […]