dr. robert atkinson, president of innovation foundation. al fan zoe lubrano, small and medium manufacturers. craig giffi, vice chairman and u.s. leader at deloitte and dr. kenneth tindall, from the north carolina biotechnology center. good afternoon. thank you all for being here with us today in front of our subcommittee. you'll each be recognized for five minutes. please watch the timers in front of you. when it turns yellow, you have a minute to wrap up and make sure to turn on your microphone and bring it close to your mouth. the audience at home needs to hear you and only can if you're speaking clearly into the microphones. dr. atkinson, you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you madam chairman. it's a pleasure to be here. itif has been doing a fair amount of research on what's happened to the u.s. manufacturing economy and we'll be releasing a report shortly on what we need to do to fix it. we lost a larger share of our manufacturing jobs in the last decade than in the great depression. consensus is a reflection of superior perfo

dr. atkinson. you state that the country can restore its manufacturing competitiveness if we adopt the right set of policies in the tax, trade and talent arenas. why do you believe the changes you suggested will restore our competitiveness? have they been proving elsewhere? >> i think they have. if you look at the change in output as a share of gdp, the worst four countries in the world are united states, spain, italy and great britain. spain and italy we all know about having real serious problems now and great britain has had real serious problems. there are lots of countries that are high wage countries that have not lost manufacturing. sweden, germany, a number of other countries have been able to perform quite well and many of those countries have taken all four of those steps. the overall tax rate is ten percentage points lower than the united states and these countries have put in place high rnd tax credits. you look at france and their credit is six times more generous than the u.s. credit,

dr. atkinson.you state that the country can restore its manufacturing competitiveness if we adopt the right set of policies in the tax, trade, talent and technology arenas. why do you think this will restore our competitiveness? have they been proven elsewhere? >> well, i think they have. if you look at the change in real manufacturing output as a share of gdp, the worst four countries in the world are united states, spain, italy and great britain. spain and italy we all know about having real serious problems now, and great britain has had, i think, very serious problems. there are lots of countries that are high-wage countries that have not lost manufacturing. sweden, for example, germany, a number of companies that have actually been able to perform quite well, and many of those countries have taken all four of those steps t. overall tax rate in the non-u.s. oecd is ten percentage points lower than the united states. you look at a country like france, for example, where their research and develo

dr. atkinson. say the country can restore its competitiveness if we adopted the right set of policies. why do believe the change will restore our competitiveness? have they been proven elsewhere? >> i think they have. a change of real manufacturing output. worst quarter countries are at the nine states, spain, great britain, and italy -- the united states. lots of countries have not lost manufacturing -- sweden and germany. they have been able to perform quite well. the overall tax rate is now 10 percentage points lower than the united states. these countries have high tax credits. look at france. tax credit is six times more generous than that of the united states. germany can compete against the chinese. they have a great appreciative program. they take workers and train them. they have a wonderful system of -- 59 centers that are co- founded by the government and located at or near universities that work with middle-size companies like the kind of company that mr. lubrano is with. high-wage countries can be successful. >> thank you. we carry trade surpluses with countries that we ha