By James M. Roberts, William T. Wilson, Ph.D., Diane Katz, Anthony B. Kim, Bruce Klingner, David W. Kreutzer, Ph.D., Nicolas Loris, Joshua Meservey, Ambassador Terry Miller, Bryan Riley and Brett D. Schaefer at The Heritage Foundation

Foreword

The promotion of economic freedom at home and abroad is essential not only for a genuine and sustained revitalization of the U.S. economy, but also to strengthen U.S. national security. In 2010, the United States fell from the highest category of economically free countries (those with overall scores above 80) in the Index of Economic Freedom. It has been stuck in the ranks of the “mostly free,” second-tier economic freedom category ever since.

In the 2016 edition of the Index, the U.S. came in at No. 11 on the list of 178 nations evaluated with a score of 75.4, down 0.8 points from 2015. The U.S. trails behind Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Chile, Ireland, Estonia, and the United Kingdom. Although it edged up slightly from its No. 12 ranking in the past two editions, America remains outside the Top Ten list of freest economies in the world.

Why? Mainly because of the size—and growing expense—of government. More than any other reason, America’s decreasing economic freedom in the past decade is due to less fiscal freedom and more government regulation. For a country founded on the idea of limited government, this is an irony with tragic consequences.

Other factors have derailed American economic freedom, too, and my expert colleagues at The Heritage Foundation delve deeply into many of them in this collection of essays.

The message for Americans is to support policies—and policymakers who advocate them—that will avoid further decline, and create conditions for more economic freedom at home and abroad.

This edition of The Heritage Foundation’s annual “Global Agenda for Economic Freedom” lays out a comprehensive series of actions for the U.S. government to take, mostly at home but also overseas, and offers Washington a blueprint for a practical and effective strategy to end stagnation and restart meaningful economic growth.

For example, American leadership can be decisive in promoting property rights and anti-corruption measures in other countries by taking high-profile steps at home to strengthen them. In addition, the 2017 Global Agenda urges the U.S. government to pursue more vigorously such agreements with countries around the world that will reduce barriers to trade and investment, as opposed to those that might only create additional regulatory hurdles to doing business. It also stresses the importance for all governments (including in the U.S.) to liberalize energy markets, revitalize bilateral and multilateral development assistance, and identify and reduce subsidies for state-owned enterprises that are especially toxic breeding grounds for cronyism and favoritism.

One of the highest priorities for the President of the United States who takes office on January 20, 2017, must be to put America back onto the path toward economic growth and greater shared prosperity by following the roadmap of recommendations contained in this Global Agenda.

—Ambassador Terry Miller

Introduction

The Index of Economic Freedom has been published annually by The Heritage Foundation since 1995. In the decades since, the world has witnessed profound advances in the cause of freedom. Open economies have led the world in a startling burst of innovation and economic growth, and political authorities have found themselves increasingly accountable by those they govern.

Unfortunately, even before the 2008 financial crisis, the United States began to drift downward in the Index rankings—propelled by reckless government spending that spiraled out of control and led to unprecedented budget deficits.

The long U.S. slide has been marked by stagnant economic expansion and extremely sluggish employment growth. As Heritage Foundation Research Fellow in Labor Economics James Sherk has reported, more than seven years after the Great Recession officially ended, the U.S. economy is not out of the woods. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have stopped looking for work.

So, in this important election year, The Heritage Foundation is dedicating this edition of its annual “Global Agenda for Economic Freedom” to a detailed examination of the causes of the decline in Americans’ freedom to start a business or earn a paycheck—and what the next Administration can do about it in 2017.

Drawing on the core principles of the Index of Economic Freedom, the “2017 Global Agenda for Economic Freedom” contains essays that analyze obstacles to the free flow of capital, goods, services, and ideas in the U.S. and around the world. It proposes a series of revitalizing policy measures essential to creating good new jobs for Americans. It also explains that it remains vital to promote economic freedom abroad, because U.S. companies and workers increasingly rely on international trade and finance to improve productivity and to build markets…. read the entire report here

This article is republished with permission from our friends at The Heritage Foundation.