In addition to the huge worldwide trade deficits... IP theft which includes selling back into the US products created cheaper from stolen US born technology.
Pretty bad, when an independent body has to do a study like this and what the incompetent Govt should be doing with our tax dollars wasted on other pet projects, sending troops everywhere to protect other countries, endless wars, etc.
http://ipcommission.org/report/IP_Commission_Report_Update_2017.pdf
“The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property is an independent and bipartisan initiative of leading Americans from the private sector, public service in national security and foreign affairs, academia, and politics. The members are listed in the section About the Commissioners.
The three purposes of the Commission are as follows:
1. Document and assess the causes, scale, and other major dimensions of international intellectual property (IP) theft as they affect the United States.
2. Document and assess the role of China and other infringers in international IP theft.
3. Propose appropriate U.S. policy responses that would mitigate ongoing and future damage and obtain greater enforcement of IP rights (IPR) by China and other infringers.
IP theft pervades international trade in goods and services due to lack of legal enforcement and national industrial policies that encourage IP theft by public, quasi-private, and private entities. While some indicators show that the problem may have improved marginally, the theft of IP remains a grave threat to the United States. Since 2013, at the release of the IP Commission Report, U.S. policy mechanisms have been markedly enhanced but gone largely unused.
We estimate that the annual cost to the U.S. economy continues to exceed $225 billion in counterfeit goods, pirated software, and theft of trade secrets and could be as high as $600 billion.
1 It is important to note that both the low- and high-end figures do not incorporate the full cost of patent infringement—an area sorely in need of greater research. We have found no evidence that casts doubt on the estimate provided by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in November 2015 that economic espionage through hacking costs $400 billion per year.
2
At this rate, the United States has suffered over $1.2 trillion in economic damage since the publication of the original IP Commission Report more than three years ago.”
“IP theft by thousands of Chinese actors continues to be rampant, and the United States constantly buys its own and other states’ inventions from Chinese infringers. China (including Hong Kong) accounts for 87% of counterfeit goods seized coming into the United States.10
China continues to obtain American IP from U.S. companies operating inside China, from entities elsewhere in the world, and of course from the United States directly through conventional as well as cyber means. These include coercive activities by the state designed to force outright IP transfer or give Chinese entities a better position from which to acquire or steal American IP.”
