This 2007 report by the Council on Competitiveness benchmarks current U.S. competitiveness against twenty years of domestic and global economic data. The baseline year of 1986 was chosen because it marked the beginning of cyclical expansion in the domestic economy, a high dollar, and an exploding trade deficit, which put the concept of competitiveness on the national agenda. It also marked the creation of the Council on Competitiveness. The report is a wide-ranging assessment of how the changing global economy presents new challenges for the future.

Hosted by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the 2008 National Summit on American Competitiveness held in Washington, DC on September 18, 2007 gathered the nation's premier leaders in business, government, and academia to address steps that the public and private sectors should take to help secure America's competitive position in the global economy. Core components and lessons included education and workforce issues, energy independence, and partnerships in innovation. Participants included former U.S.

Clusters are a key element of technology-based economic growth policy aimed at boosting the nation's technology clusters, which are regional concentrations of technology R&D and production, including pools of skilled labor, research facilities, and partnership mechanisms for research and production scale-up. This economic and policy analysis brief from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an agency within the U.S.

Regional industry clusters represent a potent source of productivity at a moment of national vulnerability to global economic competition, which has put the nation's capacity for generating stable, well-paying jobs for many U.S. workers at risk. While the federal government has supported cluster development, the current programs are inadequate for bolstering competitive regions and competitive clusters in particular.

The Regional Clusters Initiative is a pilot program launched in September 2010 by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to promote and support 10 regional industry clusters across the United States. Clusters act as a networking hub to connect large firms, researchers, regional economic organizations, investors, and small businesses.