What do information technology, intellectual property rights, and manufacturing have to do with each other? Everything. We focus on these issues at ITIF because they are more closely linked than ever and are integral to U.S. economic competitiveness and prosperity.

Therefore, I was glad to see over a dozen U.S. Senators from both parties (members of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship) recently add their voices to a plea from the nation’s attorneys general for the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on foreign manufacturers who are ripping off U.S. intellectual property and using stolen information technology in their products. It signals a growing understanding that value-added manufacturing, intellectual property, and information technology are each important in their own right but also inextricably linked. These efforts also demonstrate a growing consensus that the U.S. needs to step up enforcement of commercial rights and obligations.

As ITIF has documented in compelling and sobering detail, the U.S. manufacturing sector has experienced declines worse than those of the Great Depression in the last decade.

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