Joe Biden s “Made in America” rhetoric is about to meet the ongoing reality of globalisation Most new manufacturing jobs in the US are the result of foreign investment. Chip Somodevilla / Getty images The last five years has seen the comeback of economic nationalism. Much of this has been rhetorical, with President Trump shouting the loudest. “Bring back our jobs,” he proclaimed in his inaugural presidential speech. One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind. In the 2016 US elections, these sentiments won Trump the support of “left behind” workers, snatching him victory across the key Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – America’s former industrial heartland. Four years later, president-elect Joe Biden managed to win them back, not least by taking a leaf out of Trump’s book.
While traditional museums are discussing closures and mergers, the for-profit industry around experiential or immersive art is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into a business that currently has no audience in the United States because of the pandemic. It’s a gambit that has surprised market watchers.
January 14, 2021
Word came down to the Bureau of Economic Analysis in 2019: We’d like you to measure the American space economy, please.
The task fell into the capable hands of Tina Highfill, a 17-year veteran of the statistical agency. Her role as a research economist includes developing new measures of economic activity that don’t fall into neat buckets already, like travel and tourism or healthcare. These are called “satellite accounts,” and now they need one for satellites.
The first challenge? Defining “the space economy.” For that, the BEA developed a three-part test that includes products used in space or supporting space activities, products requiring space inputs, or products associated with studying space. So, rockets, satellites, and antennas are in the first group, remote sensing in the second, and the college tuition paid for astronomy class is in the third.