competition

In the 1970s, the U.S. government took antitrust actions against IBM and AT&T, causing considerable controversy. Walter Wriston, the then-president of Citibank and a key leader on Wall Street, questioned the value of doing this, apparently (according to Lina M. Khan, Federal Trade Commission Chair), likening the move to breaking up the Yankees, because they were so successful. In a presentation she delivered at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on March 13, Lina M. Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, disagreed with Wriston’s perspective. In her comments, Khan contended that breaking up monopolies is essential for promoting innovation, that by breaking up companies like AT&T and IBM, the U.S. opened a path to “waves of innovation, including the personal computer, the telecommunications revolution, and the logic chip.”

The Office of Advanced Manufacturing at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, intends to announce an open competition for a new Manufacturing USA institute. The expected competition, according to the notice of intent (NOI), will seek to establish a Manufacturing USA institute “focused on the use of artificial intelligence to improve resilience of U.S. manufacturing.”

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) announced the 2024 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition (GAFC) on January 8. The competition offers $50,000 to $200,000 in prize awards “for impactful and inclusive approaches to foster a thriving, collaborative national innovation support ecosystem to advance research and development (R&D) from ideas to impact.” The competition is not intended to provide capital directly to companies for R&D projects. The prizes will be awarded in two stages.

A bipartisan report from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party says the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has failed to live up to the foundational principles of the World Trade Organization—open, market-oriented, non-discriminatory treatment. In its report, "Reset, Prevent, Build: A Strategy to Win America's Economic Competition with the Chinese Communist Party," the committee calls for resetting the U.S.'s economic relationship with China. They propose to do so, in part, through new research security measures and controls on technology exports.

The Lab-to-Market (L2M) subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council’s Committee on the Science and Technology Enterprise is launching a $325,000 prize competition to highlight successful examples of innovation ecosystems, particularly existing resources that support underserved communities or remarkable responses to the pandemic environment. There are three categories for applicants with an informational webinar scheduled for Sept. 25, before the portal opens on Sept. 30.