Share of global exports of technology-intensive products 1965-84

Between 1965 and 1984, the U.S. exported roughly a quarter of the world's technology-intensive products. The U.S.' share was relatively consistent when compared to Japan, whose share of global exports grew from 7.3 percent in 1965 to more than twenty percent in 1984. Over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, European countries saw their global share of technology-intensive exports decrease; the OECD cited factors such as the rigidity of European laws, reduced job mobility, and slow organizational innovation as some of the reasons why non-OECD (particularly Asian) countries were gaining on Europe in this way.
The criteria used for these figures is somewhat outdated, therefore it is difficult to get an exact comparison with modern figures; although when compared with high R&D-intensive exports in 2018, over half were exported from Asia (Japan's global share is just under three percent, compared with China's 23 percent), almost a third of exports come from the European Union, and eight percent were from the U.S.. The EU's share increases to over 43 percent for medium-high R&D products, while Asia's share of global exports drops to one third.