Chapter 6: Industry, Technology, and the Global Marketplace: U.S. Technology in the Marketplace

The major industrialized countries continued to emphasize high-technology manufactures into the 1990s. (See figure 6-2 figure.) In 1998, high-technology manufactures were estimated at 16.6 percent of manufacturing output in the United States, 16.0 percent in Japan, 14.9 percent in the United Kingdom, 11.0 percent in France, and 9.0 percent in Germany.

Taiwan and South Korea typify how important R&D-intensive industries have become to newly industrialized economies. In 1980, high-technology manufactures accounted for less than 12 percent of Taiwan\'s total manufacturing output; this proportion jumped to 16.7 percent in 1989 and reached 25.6 percent in 1998. In 1998, high-technology manufacturing in South Korea (15.0 percent) accounted for about the same percentage of total output as in the United Kingdom (14.9 percent) and almost twice the percentage of total manufacturing output as in Germany (9.0 percent).

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind02/c6/c6s1.htm#c6s1l2