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Science and foreign relations in the reagan years

During the early 1980s, competition with Japan intensified. American companies accused Japanese manufacturers and the Japanese government of unfair trade practices in microelectronics, tools, and automobiles, among other areas, and trade negotiations between the two countries grew increasingly acrimonious. When the U.S.-Japan umbrella agreement on scientific cooperation came due for renewal in 1986, officials in the Office of the Trade Negotiator, the Commerce Department, and OSTP insisted that more stringent conditions be added, on the grounds that cooperative research in science and engineering could provide Japan with proprietary information that would undercut American competitiveness. They also pressed for greater access for American scientists to Japanese research facilities. One OSTP official also insisted that Japanese engineers cease and desist from publishing in their own language on the grounds that that constituted a trade barrier. (Engineers, unlike academic scientists, frequently publish in national rather than international journals when their work deals with specific local problems.)

The renegotiated umbrella agreement, completed in 1988, created a Joint Committee on Access, a post-doctoral fellowship program for American scientists in Japan, and a summer institute program in Japan, to begin in 1990, for American graduate students. The program came to be so highly regarded that by 2009 there would be six more participating countries: Korea, Taiwan, China, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore.

Decline of ostp

Senior Carter administration OSTP officials had hoped to institutionalize the office as a non-political entity that would maintain continuity from administration to administration, as did OMB. Their model was the Office of Science and Technology through the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon years. But the incoming Reagan administration had little interest in a presidential science advisory system, and by the time Keyworth assumed the OSTP directorship in July 1981, it was staffed almost entirely by junior level officers, several serving as little more than caretakers. Within two years, even the junior Carter-era appointees had departed, reinforcing the impression that politics and ideological purity had become important criteria for staff selection. Staff allotments, begun under Carter, were further cut under Reagan, and the office failed to deliver requested reports to key congressional committees, who responded by further cutting the OSTP budget. D. Allan Bromley, The President’s Scientists (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), xx. . This led to more failure to produce reports and additional staff reductions. As a result, OSTP came to rely heavily on temporary detailees from other federal agencies. By 1987, the General Accounting Office (GAO) was reporting, “OSTP does not, in practice, have the authority or responsibility in the budget process that was intended in Public Law 94-282 [the OSTP Act of 1976].” Congressional Research Service, op. cit. As a consequence, “we have not seen any evidence under the current administration that the Director of OSTP has enough influence with agency heads to reconcile conflicting views on cross-agency issues... This would require [also] strong presidential support.” Thus, “OSTP studies and reports on issues and opportunities in specific topical areas but generally does not address the crosscutting issues among the fields of science and engineering.”

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Source:  OpenStax, A history of federal science policy from the new deal to the present. OpenStax CNX. Jun 26, 2010 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11210/1.2
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