Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook are the world’s largest companies by market capitalization. The United States is also, by many measures, the leader in university research in basic science. From this perspective, American innovation seems alive and well. But it’s a different story when it comes to actually making things. Apple, as is well known, manufactures its products abroad. The same is largely true for other U.S. corporate giants, such as Amazon.
