The goals of U.S. policy on international cooperation in science and technology are significantly different from those of Germany in terms of conditions, priorities, and instruments. The two dominant elements in U.S. objectives are the contributions of international science and technology policy to the security of the United States and to supporting the country's international trade. U.S. Federal funds are almost exclusively used to promote the research work of American scientists and scholars and their institutions. Dedicated U.S. Federal funds for an exchange with foreign scientists or scholars, for bilateral scientific cooperation, and for support of international scientific and scholarly projects or institutions, are very small, relative to German efforts. Funds for promoting international cooperation and scientific exchanges have to be mobilized from the budgets of national institutions and organizations.
Applications have to be submitted in competition with national research activities.
Much of this went to DoD spending and to large NASA space projects. Agency representatives stated that this total figure may be too low and that about twice that might be more accurate. Projects with foreign partners are often included in general operating line items of each agency s budget and are conducted to meet agency missions. Daly also reports that the US does provide funding for international research projects through multinational funding and lending agencies like the World Bank. Again, pooled money is hard to track to see what exact contribution the US or other OECD members may have made.