Former U.S. Trade Representative Bob Lighthizer laid bare Wednesday what he said were the troubling economic trends caused by decades of increased outsourcing and hyper-globalization.
During an appearance on the “Tucker Carlson” podcast, Lighthizer discussed a decrease in U.S. economic growth, which marked a shift from the robust growth experienced in prior decades. Lighthizer also talked about the detrimental effects of wealth transfer overseas.
“So let me give you a point here. If you think from the 1960 to 1980, and then 1980 to 2000, and 2000 to the present, think in those three increments,” Lighthizer told Carlson. “From 1960 to 1980, we had 14 years of plus 3% GDP growth, all right, reasonable GDP growth. From 1980 to 2000, again, we had 14 years of plus GDP growth. Since 2000 to now, we have had three years, and one of those was COVID, which doesn’t really count.”
Based on the data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, from 1960 to 1980, the U.S. experienced several years of GDP growth exceeding 3%. However, the trend of achieving such growth rates diminished significantly after 2000, with fewer instances of surpassing the 3% mark, underscoring Lighthizer’s point about the slowdown in economic growth in more recent years.
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“The last time we had plus 3% GDP growth was 18 or 19 years ago. And that coincides with this period of uber, some would say hyper-globalization, hyper-free trade that came on largely in the 1990s,” Lighthizer said. “So we’ve seen the transfer of wealth overseas. We are getting poorer. We have seen America have a slow economic growth. We’ve also seen a deterioration of our technological lead. And there’s a number of ways to think about this.”
Lighthizer pointed out the U.S.’s diminishing role in manufacturing critical technologies, from semiconductors—where the U.S. now produces only 8% of the global supply—to solar panels and rare earth elements.
“We invented the personal computer. Now we make almost none and none without foreign parts. We invented the semiconductor. We make now 8% of the global amount. We used to dominate it. We could say the same thing about rare earths,” Lighthizer said. “We didn’t invent them, but we used to dominate that. Solar panels. We could go through all of these various things, nuclear energy, all of these things, where we have lost, not only lost our lead, have basically fallen out of the competition.”
The conversation also delved into the impact of demographic changes and immigration policies on the U.S. workforce.
“The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a wonderful institute that’s supported by the government of Australia, but also private sector people. They track 64, what they call critical technologies, 64. The United States is behind China in 57 of the 64,” Lighthizer added.
“And these are things like AI and robotics and the kind of things you need. And if you said, well, where were we 15 years ago, we were behind in three. So you’ve seen this deterioration during this period of hyper-globalization or hyper-free trade or huge trade deficits. You’ve seen us actually fall behind technologically. But the fourth and by far most important ramification of this process is we’ve seen a real deterioration in the quality of life of our working-class people.”
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute reported that China has surpassed the U.S. in high-impact research across the majority of critical technologies, holding a clear advantage. Simultaneously, U.S. strengths in technology implementation could diminish as China’s investments in science and technology yield results.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Tucker Carlson)
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