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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, December 12, 2006

U.S. techs losing to imports

By Dee DePass
McClatchy-Tribune News Service

MINNEAPOLIS — Imports are siphoning major chunks of market share from U.S. high-tech companies, according to a new report by the U.S. Business and Industry Council.

After analyzing census manufacturing and trade data, researchers found that 97 percent of 114 American technology industries have reported losing significant market share to imports between 1997 and 2005.

While the United States reported a $716 billion trade deficit for all industries last year, the latest data spotlight high-tech goods, a sector where domestic firms were expected to remain supreme, researchers said.

About 26 of the 114 advanced industries that were studied revealed market-share dips as high as 50 percent between 1997 and 2005. Hardest hit? Pharmaceutical, telecommunications hardware, navigation systems, transmission and power-train equipment firms, along with broadcasting and wireless communication products.

Other sectors reporting market share declines of 5 percent to 15 percent between 2004 and 2005 included semiconductor machinery makers, telecommunication hardware firms and industrial control manufacturers.

"I was absolutely shocked by that," said Alan Tonelson, the USBIC research fellow who assembled the report along with his colleague, Peter Kim. "That tells me that in these high-value and high-tech industries that are also critical for national defense that offshoring has taken off to a much greater extent than anybody had recognized."

The report, coming just ahead of the October trade deficit figures due out today, found that rising import penetration rates "for this many critical domestic industries represent the most definitive evidence to date that domestic manufacturing has suffered a significant hollowing out."

Researchers found 11 industries in which imports soon will control half of the U.S. market if current trends continue. These sectors included "new economy" firms that make test and electricity measuring devices, nonengine aircraft parts, turbine generators, construction and X-ray equipment.

Import and export reports showed that the foreign winners were not just from China, Other countries taking U.S. market share include Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany and France.

U.S. exports grew 16 percent during the third quarter and 14.9 percent in the first nine months of the year.