The report is a partner to AeA’s annual flagship publication, Cyberstates, which examines national and state high-tech industry employment, wages, establishments, payroll, research and development (R&D) expenditures, and venture capital investments. The most recent edition, Cyberstates 2007, was published in April and is available for purchase at: www.aeanet.org/cyberstates.

AeA made the decision to publish the high-tech trade data in a separate report because it allows us to provide a much more detailed and comprehensive picture of the growing importance of trade in our national and global economy. We believe that an understanding of the magnitude and direction of high-technology trade flows can help inform public policy at a time when U.S. lawmakers are considering passage of a number of bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and when U.S. negotiators are trying to revive multilateral trade talks in the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Trade in the Cyberstates 2007 relies on official import and export data from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of the Census. All export data contained within this publication are expressed on a Total Census Basis and the values are in current U.S. dollars. The import data includes “intra-company” transfers, which are U.S. production facilities overseas shipping finished products back to the United States.

U.S. high-tech exports totaled $220 billion in 2006, increasing 10 percent from $199 billion in 2005. Tech exports rose over the last four years and remained the single largest merchandise export sector in the United States, representing 21 percent of total U.S. exports.

Thirty-eight cyberstates saw tech export growth between 2005 and 2006. The largest growth was in Texas, California, Oregon, Arizona, and Florida, as measured by dollar increase. California was the leading high-tech export state with $51.8 billion in exports in 2006, followed by Texas with $38.6 billion. Florida, Massachusetts, and New York rounded out the top five. The largest decrease in exports occurred in Vermont, declining by $533 billion in 2006.

Trade in the Cyberstates 2007 also looks at the concentration of tech exports state by state. As a percentage of total exports, Vermont had the highest concentration --- 79 percent of its exports came from the high-tech industry. High-tech accounted for more than 50 percent of total exports in New Mexico, Idaho, and Colorado.

The data show unequivocally that high-tech trade is a critical component of our national economy and of the economies of each and every state. This report provides 52 state overview pages that highlight each state’s high-tech exports, with detailed data on historical export trends, exports by individual tech sector, tech export concentration, and leading export destinations by country.

These overview pages also detail the number of jobs in each state that are supported by high-tech exports. Trade also supports domestic jobs. The U.S. Department of the Census finds that U.S. high-tech exports support 684,000 domestic jobs.

Opening new markets to trade and expanding existing markets is critical to maintaining American competitiveness in a global marketplace. Trade contributes greatly to economic growth and prosperity both domestically and worldwide. It opens markets to exports that support hundreds of thousands of jobs in the United States, and it saves money for American consumers by allowing in low cost goods from around the world.

We hope that this report highlights the importance of high-tech trade to our economy and convinces policymakers and opinion leaders of the need to support lowering trade barriers wherever and whenever possible.

For more information on AeA’s public policy positions regarding trade, please visit our website to download several recent Competitiveness Series reports on trade issues: www.aeanet.org/cs.
 

___William T. Archey
___President and CEO
___AeA, Advancing the Business of Technology