United States Hosts 46,000 Students from ASEAN, Bringing $1.3 Billion to Economy

This post appeared on AseanMattersforAmerica and was co-authored with Damien Tomkins.

Twenty-eight students from Vietnam receive MBAs from Griggs University in Silver Spring, Maryland. Photo by Rajmund Dabrowski/ANN via Flickr (Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.0).

More than 46,000 students from Southeast Asia came to the United States for the academic year 2010-2011, comprising 6 percent of all foreign students in the United States, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE). However, growth has been slow, with only a 10 percent increase over the last decade in the number of ASEAN students in the United States. Many countries, in fact, have experienced significant decreases in the number of students they send to the US, but the exponential growth from Vietnam has buoyed the overall total. Foreign students from ASEAN and their dependents contributed about $1.3 billion to the US economy last year, an average of about $28,000 per student, based on Asia Matters for America estimates of data from the National Association of International Educators.

Interactive Graphics: US Exports to Asia, 2011

This appeared on Asia Matters for America.

US states exported $413 billion worth of merchandise to Asia in 2011, according to preliminary data released by the Commerce Department. We broke down the exports to four major Asian destinations – Japan, Korea, Australia and the ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – to show which states are gaining the most from trade with Asia. Explore more in this interactive data graphic:

Click for full interactive graphic

California is the top exporting state to Japan, Korea and Australia, with combined exports of $25.2 billion in 2011. Computer and electronic products are the state’s leading exports to the three destinations, yet over the last five years the value of these exports has declined, by as much as a third to Korea. However, the state has increased its exports of manufactured food items – by more than double in the last five years to Korea and Australia – and more modest growth in the lucrative chemicals trade.

For first time, Asia matches US high-tech investment expenditure

This originally appeared on Asia Matters for America.

US has lost over one quarter of high-tech manufacturing jobs in past decade.

Ten countries in Asia together invested $399 billion in S&T research and development, as much as the United States, in 2009. Image Source: National Science Board

For the first time in history, the Asian region in 2009 spent as much on research and development in science and technology (S&T) fields as the United States, the traditional leader in high technology investment. The spending has cost American jobs because multinational companies, many of them US-based, locate more of their knowledge-intensive, research and development jobs in Asia, according to a new report by the US National Science Board. During the last decade, the United States has lost nearly three in ten high-tech manufacturing jobs.