An Analysis Of International Competitiveness Of US Service Trade

In the 21 century, with the intensive use of knowledge, information, management and high-tech, the economic structure in every country and region in the world has undergone profound changes: the service has gradually become the major source of value-added for most products, the service industry and service trade growth have become the important impel of the economic growth, and the development of these has become significant symbol to measure a country's or region's economic development level and international competitiveness. As the unbalance of world economy development and country's diversity of resource endowment, economic structure, stage of development, cultural background and so on, developed countries dominate in service industry and service trade, the most prominent of which is the United States. For a long time, not only the USA has hold world's leading status in cross-border trade in services, but also the local service export of subsidiary bodies in the host country, guided by foreign direct investment of the United States' service industry, shows rapid growth momentum. The combination of cross-border services and the service sector's external direct investment has far-reaching impact on both optimization and upgrading of industrial structure and trade structure in the USA.After 1980s, USA trade deficit expanded sharply, but industrial restructuring, transferring the focus of industrial development to service sector from manufacturing, transferring internationally competitive elements of the resources to countries with high marginal productivity from the low ones, drives the output of knowledge and human capital-intensive services, such as financial service and patent, promotes capital flows and raw materials trade, transfers competitive advantage in international trade to service trade sector from goods trade sector. From now on, based on service trade characterized by high-tech intensive and high value-added, USA has kept competitive advantage in this sector, which has strongly supported development of USA Using rich detailed data, this paper marks off stages of development in USA service trade, abstracts the corresponding structural characteristics, measures international competitiveness of USA service trade, and it turns out that USA trade service, whether from the import and export value, the proportion of the overall trade and import and export growth rates in the world ranking, or from the RCA and TC index, in overall level ranks top in the world, especially the developments of main service trade in USA such as financial service, computer service, information service, franchise and the humanities recreation sector, with strong international competitiveness. Therefore, the USA service trade not only reflects the growth process of expanding trade scale, but also reflects the optimization process of continued upgrading of the trade structure, and the United States has become the undisputed world's largest and most competitive service exporter.We can analyze the reasons of USA strong competitiveness in service trade from two aspects, the industrial basis and development motivation. First, in the aspect of industry basis formed by USA strong competitiveness in service trade, USA producer service, characterized by high technological content, high concentration of knowledge, high value-added and high-level management, constitute the trade basis in services industry. The main activities of producer service focus on the maximum value parts of products and services value chain, and the producer service relevant to sales and market expansion of goods and services, such as finance, technology, logistic, communication, information and so on, have become the principal part of USA service trade. Second, in the aspect of development motivation, continuous development of USA economy offers service trade development with technology and factor endowments basis. For modern service needs not only physical capital, but technology and human capital is more important to its development, however the technology advance requires lots of R&D investment, and technology expression embodies in the human knowledge and skills, so the keys to the development service industry and service trade are human capital and R&D investment. This paper discusses the relationship between USA human capital and R&D investment and USA service trade development, especially the causal link between R&D investment and service trade export. Under the impetus of economic globalization and technological progress, the service trade development and expansion demands increasingly high of high-tech R&D and application capabilities and human capital management, and USA just maintains and develops the competitive advantages of service trade by improving its own technology, labor productivity and the quality of service, building high-level service personnel "Heights". On the other hand, at the same time of realizing the importance of service development and vigorously promoting service export, USA also faces many barriers of other countries. Therefore, USA government made and carried out series of bilateral and multilateral negotiations supporting and guiding the expansion of service exports in order to urging foreign countries to open service markets, providing the impetus and protection for service export; meanwhile, USA established a fairly complete system of laws and regulations of service trade and management mechanisms in the country, which cleared the obstacles to its service trade development in aspect of system. Last, international competitiveness of service trade is reflected not only in cross-border trade, but fostering a number of large multinational service companies in the host country and outputting its service to the locals also becomes the other important channels to improve the international competitiveness. Services mainly rely on innovation and differentiation to form competitive advantages, and within the industrial system, deepen and level the proliferation of forms. So, at this stage, promoting development of the international competitiveness of service trade must depends on comprehensive innovation of transnational corporations in all aspects, such as the types, organizations, business strategy and technology. USA large service transnational corporations with solid capital made large -scale reorganization of the global service in international competition market through transactions of property rights, such as mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and holdings, and so on, and spare no effort for the market share, seeking monopoly profits. It can be expected, along with speed up the process of liberalization and globalization of service trade, the United States service sales to locals of the host country in the form of "presence" will turn to reality from tremendous growth potential.In a word, the development of producer services constitutes the basis of USA strong competitiveness of service trade, and the comprehensive and dynamic effect of factors, such as R&D investment, human capital formation, government support, foreign direct investment of service transnational corporations, jointly decides the source, current strength and growth potential of USA service trade competitiveness. Because of the comprehensive effect of these factors, USA can supply rich and personalized high-level service, deep develop service trade resources, more reasonably allocate resources and elements, make operational way of the service trade more advanced and complicated, react more effectively to international service market, turn the existing comparative advantages into dynamic competitive advantages, be established in the forefront of international services market, and constantly create new competitive advantages.After China enters the WTO, foreign trade particularly goods trade develops rapidly, and trade surplus soars all the way. The huge goods trade surplus not only has brought great pressures to the international balance of payments and trade friction, but also wastes the resources and damages the environment, which makes the contributions of the goods trade to China's economic development reduced greatly. The service industry, whether the extent of resources dependence or the extent of damage to the environment is very low, so it should become China's most potential growth point of future sustainable economic development. At present, tourism and transport is the two main traditional industries of China's service trade exports, and knowledge-and technology -intensive service exports, such as finance, insurance, communication, computer and information services, franchise, patents are seriously low. This trade structure is very fragile and low-level, and we must strive to optimize and upgrade, and constantly improve the proportion of knowledge-and technology-intensive services, which is the key to improve the international competitiveness of China's service trade. The main reasons of the China's service industry and service trade development lagging behind are not only inadequate investment, inadequate internal and external degree of openness and lack of relevant education, but also lack of comprehensive strategic planning and related policy support for a long time, and basically at the spontaneous state of overall development. Therefore, China should attach great importance to the development of producer services, speed up industry structural adjustment and optimization, steadily upgrade the structure of consumer demand, undertake service out-sourcing, improve the quality and supply of labors, while maintaining the traditional competitive advance, promote the technology and system innovation, speed up reforms of the management system of the service industry, and create new competitive advantages. This is the only way to change China's trade growth mode, optimize the structure of trade development, and effectively upgrade the international status and competitiveness of China's service trade.