Three Ways the U.S. Can Create Competitiveness and Opportunity

By Bill Bates — I live and work in Washington, DC for Council on Competitiveness. In my spare time I run marathons and long distance trail races, so for me competitiveness is both my job and my hobby. Sometimes trying to understand what’s happening in the economy — what the opportunities for success are, how to overcome uncertainty and obstacles — is a lot like running 50 kilometers through the woods. You are constantly trying to navigate across a changing terrain and get to the finish line, any way you can.

Defining competitiveness can be equally challenging. It’s a broad topic that can mean different things to different people. What it means to me and the 150 CEOs, university presidents, national lab directors, and labor leaders that have joined the Council on Competitiveness to support our work is that productivity must be increasing, the standard of living should be rising, and markets for U.S. products and services should be open and expanding.

Unfortunately, the reality is a bit more like this: with productivity flat, wages are struggling and global markets vacillating between tremendous opportunity and protectionist challenge.

Corporate success used to be the key indicator. Successful companies were more productive, paid higher wages, and both company and workers paid more taxes, thereby generating more revenue for the government. So, everyone was happy.

Yet, we are less happy today than we should be given the tremendous growth in corporate profits, since the great recession. The question is why? Is it globalization? Robots? Government dysfunction?

Why are wages not growing when unemployment is low? Why is productivity not increasing despite the introduction of new technologies and automation?

There are a number of actions that could be taken to address these challenges and, in fact, the Council releases each year a roadmap for policymakers grounded in data and real world situations with actionable recommendations.

What you see below is the cover of our annual Clarion Call for Competitiveness. Please visit our website at compete.org to download a free copy. I think you’ll find it relevant and informative.

Here’s the rub. Right now, leadership is not coming from Washington. At least not is the short term. Federal dysfunction (no regular order or appropriations), partisanship (data shows we are more divided than ever) and budgetary gridlock (government shutdown threats) are making the likelihood of achieving major legislative accomplishments on healthcare, taxes, infrastructure or trade increasingly unlikely.

I don’t say this lightly. The Clarion Call has a terrific set of recommendations that would go a long way to spurring economic growth and job creation. The Council even puts out a report card every year to highlight progress. The grades are not good!

Instead, Washington is legislating by crisis. If you doubt this is the case, consider some of the language President Trump uses in his Tweets to try and generate action on his priorities.

“The Worst,” “Imploding,” “Locked and Loaded” etc… So, yes, disasters such as Harvey and Irma will thankfully generate action, but otherwise the responsibility increasingly falls to states, regions, territories, and cities to act and create opportunity. Because this blog post is already pushing the boundaries of reasonable attention spans, I offer just three initial recommendations for how to do just that:

Educate for the Future — I think most people are aware how important education is for career and income success, but this chart really highlights how the premium on education is increasing. I want to emphasize that I do not believe every student needs a four year college degree, but more education = more income and more opportunity, so we should provide as many affordable options as possible from elementary onward.

Now, I understand money is not something in great supply at the moment, so saying we need to invest more in education risks falling on deaf ears, but I can share some skills that employers are finding valuable — and those same skills just happen to make people better employees. Gallup has done some very exciting work in this area and what they have found is that the most successful workers benefited from:

• Mentors who showed an interest in their success.

• Internships that demonstrated real world applicability to their studies.

• Transparent alignment between education and career.

• At least one teacher/professor who seemed to care about their success.

The common theme across these goals is the importance of partnerships and communication between schools and business.

Stakeholder Coordination — And that leads me to my second recommendation, which is the critical importance of stakeholder coordination. Over the past two decades, the Council has led regional discussions in several cities and states to help build economic growth from the ground up. To do this regionally requires leadership, coordination and a commitment to a plan. There’s no silver bullet. Cutting taxes without upgrading infrastructure won’t work. Streamlining regulations without educating and training workers won’t work. That means government leaders, business executives and educators need to cooperate, communicate and commit to working together.

Global Engagement — My last point, is that there are a lot of good ideas out there around the world. Shown below is the inaugural meeting of the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils, which I had the privilege of leading for its first 6 years, until we hired a fantastic new Executive Director who actually knows what he’s doing. The GFCC brings together over 30 competitiveness organizations from around the world along with universities and a diverse network of individuals to share best practices and build partnerships. Their website is thegfcc.org. Their focus, similar to the U.S Council, is to ensure the private sector has a voice in policymaking within countries, but also between countries.

About the Author: Bill Bates is the Executive Vice-President & Chief of Staff at Council on Competitiveness and was the founding Executive Director of the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils. Bill is a recognized expert in global competitiveness and innovation and provides policy analysis and strategic advice to the Council’s president & CEO. He coordinates special projects and supervises the organizations’ outreach to both domestic and foreign government policymakers and the international media.

As the first Executive Director of the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils (GFCC), Bill helped establish and build the network of over 30 competitiveness councils from around the world. He managed the U.S. Council’s role as secretariat to the GFCC, oversaw membership engagement and outreach and directed the development of annual policy reports, including Best Practices in Competitiveness Policy.

He previously served as Director of Government Relations for the United States Telecom Association. Prior to that, he was Chief of Staff and Legislative Director to House Commerce Committee member, U. S. Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA).