Latest global-innovation rankings have bad news for the U.S. — and worse news for Latin America | Opinion

A new Bloomberg global-innovation ranking shows the United States is losing ground, Asia is rising and Latin America is falling off the map. It should trigger alarm bells throughout the Americas.

You might be thinking that, in the midst of a deadly COVID-19 pandemic, a world recession and Donald Trump’s impeachment for trying to subvert America’s democracy, this is a trivial issue.

It is not.

Innovation is a key factor in predicting countries’ economic future. Increasingly, we are living in a post-industrial, knowledge-based economy, in which new inventions and intellectual property produce much more wealth than manual work or raw materials.

The Bloomberg 2021 Innovation Index of 60 countries shows that the United States fell to 11th place this year, from the ninth place last year. South Korea hold the No. 1 spot, followed by Singapore, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Israel.

The ranking measures seven categories, including research and development, productivity, higher education and patents in relation to each country’s population.

A similar ranking released last year, the Global Innovation Index 2020 — co-authored by the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) — put the United States at No. 3 in the world, behind only Switzerland and Sweden.

Still, the United States has been losing ground in recent years, in part because of the Trump administration’s disdain for science and its visa policies that kept many foreign graduate students, scientists and engineers from coming to the country.

“Where once the U.S. was the uncontested leader in science and engineering, we are now playing a less-dominant role,” said Diane Souvaine, chair of the National Science Board, in a statement last year.

During the presidential campaign, President Joe Biden vowed to invest $300 billion in a plan he called “Innovate in America.” On Feb. 11, the his dministration announced the start of “an ambitious innovation effort” which will include creation of a Climate Innovation Working Group, and a new $100 million funding program for new low-carbon energy technologies.

“We are tapping into the imagination, talent, and grit of America’s innovators, scientists and workers” in an effort to “lead the world in tackling the climate crisis,” Biden’s National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said in a statement.

Latin American countries are near the bottom of both the Bloomberg and WIPO innovation indexes. Brazil came in highest in the Bloomberg index — 46th place, the same spot it held last year. Argentina, at 51, fell six spots since last year, and Chile , 54, fell by three, while Mexico didn’t even make the list.

Part of Latin America’s poor standing in innovation because the region spends much less than others on research and development of new products.

While Israel spends 4.9 percent of its GDP in research and development, South Korea 4.8 percent, the United States 2.8 percent and China 2.2 percent, Brazil spends only 1.2 percent, Argentina 0.5 percent and Mexico 0.3 percent, according to World Bank figures.

Many Latin American leaders claim that they can’t spend more in innovation because their countries can’t afford it. But that’s the wrong way of looking at it. South Korea was as poor as some of Latin America’s poorest countries only 50 years ago, and it developed precisely because it invested in innovation, science and quality education.

Worse, some Latin American presidents, such as Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, are leery of technology, as if they could stop the march of progress.

In November, Lopez Obrador criticized the use of robots in Mexico’s food plants. He said he was appalled by the sight of “everything automated, robots everywhere” during a visit to a food plant and that building roads creates “many more” jobs than automated factories.

That mindset, of course, is a recipe for backwardness. It’s as if a president had fought against computers to protect post office workers when people started using email in the 1970s.

The latest global-innovation ranking should receive much greater attention throughout the Americas, because once the COVID-19 pandemic subsides, global competition for new and more sophisticated exports will increase. And countries that don’t innovate will fall farther behind.

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