alt Hacker News> Can you provide the source? In the WTO's broader medical goods category, Germany actually exported slightly more than the US in 2022 ($202.6 billion versus $189.6 billion), so such a huge difference in a few years?
Sure, these are my sources. World Bank (2023): https://wits.worldbank.org/trade/comtrade/en/country/ALL/yea... Observatory of Economic Complexity (2024): https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/medical-instruments
> China accounted for approximately 44.2% of the 104 new molecules in 2025, compared with 26.9% for the U.S. and 15.4% for Europe.
Source for this? My source was Citeline's 2026 annual review at https://pulseforinnovation.org/by-the-numbers-citelines-rd-a... which states:
> Findings from Citeline’s latest report, Pharma R&D Annual Review 2026, highlight the continued U.S. leadership in the life sciences ecosystem... The U.S. leads all other countries, currently advancing over 11,600 medicines – more than half of medicines in development worldwide.
> I will just give 3 examples
In general, I was referring to "major industries" in the sense of economic categories, as defined by (for example) the UN: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/publication/seriesm/seriesm_4rev... Here shipbuilding is considered to be part of "manufacture of other transport equipment." I admit my wording was a bit imprecise; if you are going down to the level of specific products like ships or solar panels, clearly it will be easy to find examples of things that the US does not produce on any significant scale. Nevertheless, a few comments on your examples:
> China completed roughly 91% of the world’s shipbuilding tonnage in 2025
Source on this? 91% is a lot and I can't find anyone else making this claim. However I'll concede that the US is far behind China, South Korea, and Japan in shipbuilding.
> [China] holds more than 80% of solar module manufacturing capacity
You are correct that the US has "only" 60 GW of domestic solar module production capacity according to https://www.utilitydive.com/news/onshored-solar-supply-chain... However, as context - the only purpose of producing solar modules is to generate solar power, and the US was the 2nd-largest producer of solar power in 2025 according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country Surely that makes us a leading player.
> [China] produces more than three quarters of global batteries
True but the US was the 2nd largest producer. In battery cells, we have an estimated capacity of 96 GWh in 2026. https://poweralliance.org/2026/03/18/american-energy-storage... Likewise in lithium-ion batteries: https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-top-lithium...
> Sure, these are my sources. World Bank (2023)...
My WTO comparison used the much broader "medical goods" category, so it was not an apples to apples.
> My source was Citeline's 2026 annual review at https://pulseforinnovation.org/by-the-numbers-citelines-rd-a... which states...
EFPIA, using Citeline’s Pharma R&D Annual Review data, says that among the 104 new active substances launched for the first time on the world market in 2025, 46 came from Chinese headquartered companies, 28 from US companies and 16 from European companies.
https://www.citeline.com/en/rd26
https://www.efpia.eu/media/owqczcqz/the-pharmaceutical-indus...
China currently leads in this particular output measure of newly launched active substances.
Your clinical trials claim also remains unsupported as worded. Citeline’s figure of more than 11,600 medicines being advanced in the US refers to the drug development pipeline. It is not a count of active clinical trials being conducted in the United States. One medicine can involve multiple trials, and pipeline geography may be assigned through the developer's headquarters rather than the location of trial sites.
Citeline itself describes this as the number of drugs in the active R&D pipeline:
https://www.citeline.com/en/rd26
The most relevant peer reviewed international comparison I can find points in the opposite direction for new trial registrations. A 2025 study found that China registered 16,612 trials in 2023, including 7,798 randomized trials, compared with 9,100 trials and 4,619 randomized trials in the United States:
https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356%2825%2900124-6/a...
That does not by itself prove that China has a larger stock of trials currently classified as active. It does show that "the US has more active clinical trials than any other country" requires a specific global dataset + status definition + date + deduplication method etc. A count taken only from ClinicalTrials.gov is not a neutral worldwide comparison, because US law requires many FDA regulated trials to be registered there, whereas studies outside its legal and policy scope may be submitted voluntarily:
https://clinicaltrials.gov/policy/fdaaa-801-final-rule
https://clinicaltrials.gov/about
For global comparisons, the WHO's ICTRP is more appropriate because it provides access to ongoing and completed trial records supplied by registries around the world and groups multiple records referring to the same trial:
https://www.who.int/tools/clinical-trials-registry-platform/...
IQVIA's latest result does support a narrower US leadership claim: trial starts became increasingly concentrated among US headquartered sponsors in 2025. But that measures the headquarters of the sponsor (not necessarily the country where the trials took place) and it does not measure the total number of currently active trials:
https://www.iqvia.com/insights/the-iqvia-institute/reports-a...
So the fair conclusion is that the US remains one of the world's largest clinical rial and drug development centres and may lead certain sponsor based or industry sponsored measures. The categorical claim that it has more active clinical trials than every other country has not been demonstrated by your sources.
> In general, I was referring to "major industries" ....
I also do not think the UN classification resolves the "every major industry" question. ISIC is a statistical classification system, not a rule for what ordinary speakers must regard as a single competitive industry.
ISIC Division 30 combines:
shipbuilding railway equipment aircraft and spacecraft military vehicles motorcycles and bicycles
https://unstats.un.org/unsd/publication/seriesm/seriesm_4rev...
Under that aggregation, US aerospace strength can be used to declare the US a "leading player" in the division even though its commercial shipbuilding industry is negligible by global standards. Likewise, ISIC Division 27 combines batteries with motors, generators, wiring, lighting and domestic appliances.
Whenever the US is weak in one globally important industry, it can be bundled with another industry in which the US is strong. Almost any large, diversified economy could be described as a "leading player" in every sufficiently broad category using that method.
> You are correct that the US has "only" 60 GW of domestic solar module production capacity...
The solar comparison also switches metrics. China having more than 80% of global solar module manufacturing capacity is a manufacturing claim. The US being second in solar electricity generation is a deployment/generation claim. Operating solar panels (many of which depend on an overwhelmingly Asian supply chain) does not establish leadership in manufacturing them. The IEA says China has over 80% of module capacity and 95% of wafer capacity.
https://www.iea.org/reports/advancing-clean-technology-manuf...
> True but the US was the 2nd largest producer. In battery cells, we have an estimated capacity of 96 GWh in 2026....
The same issue applies to batteries. The 96 GWh number in your source is projected for 2026, not actual 2025 production. Specifically US energy storage cell capacity, not all lithium ion batteries and capacity, not output.
Your source says US ESS cell capacity was "essentially zero" in 2024 and projects 96 GWh in 2026.
https://poweralliance.org/2026/03/18/american-energy-storage...
Meanwhile, the IEA estimates that China manufactured well over 80% of all batteries in 2025. It says the US and EU each supplied a similar share of the relatively small remainder, while US and European factories remain heavily dependent on imported components. For grid storage LFP batteries specifically, supply is almost entirely Chinese.
https://www.iea.org/commentaries/global-battery-markets-are-...