Why Does Manufacturing at Home Really Matter?

American Thinker ^ | 01/25/2024 | John F. Di Leo

[SeekAndFind]

In an election year, candidates from both sides will generally declare that we need more domestic manufacturing, and they promise to make it happen.

Different sides will propose different ways to accomplish it. Republicans will call for lower tax rates and lighter regulations; Democrats will call for open borders and higher punitive tariffs. Each side hates the other’s methods; nothing gets done.

Does this really matter?

There are economists, investment advisors, even politicians out there, who will say it doesn’t matter. They will say we need business, of course; but as long as there are transactions happening, that’s economic growth. They don’t think we need to delve deeper.

But we do—let’s delve.

Outsourcing

A manufacturer employs a host of people to develop and market products; purchase and process raw materials or components; assemble buildable elements into a finished good; and package it all up for shipping and delivery.

There has been no collaborative decision between manufacturers to outsource any of those steps; these decisions are made business by business, product line by product line, and even component by component.

Consider an appliance manufacturer that used to injection-mold its own housings and dials, assemble its own motors and pumps, wrap its own power cable, program its own control panels, and assemble the finished product, ready to sell.

Over the decades, as cost pressures increased, the company started outsourcing the motors and cable to China; the control panels to Japan; the cable, housings, and dials to Mexico. Before you knew it, this American factory was simply assembling components imported from abroad; lots of domestic jobs disappeared.

But the jobs that did remain were the better-paying ones, weren’t they? We still have the engineering department here to design it.

[metmom]

Exactly....

[fireman15]

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Print a wife or girlfriend figurine!

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[Taxman]

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