With our manufacturing productivity at or near a 50 year low, where would your secular bottom come from?
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US manufacturing PRODUCTIVITY is at an all time high and continues to make yearly gains.
However, manufacturing in the USA is at or near the bottom.
However, for now it looks like the trends are reversing. There are a lot of industries that rely on natural gas for power. The yawning gap between natural gas prices in the USA and other places in the world will force about 100 billion worth of industry in the next 10 years to return to the USA. There are other reasons. Here are two articles on the subject
Insourcing Boom
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-insourcing-boom/309166/
6 reasons manufacturing is returning to North America
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/6-reasons-manufacturing-is-returning-to-north-america/7422
Everyone’s productivity is high due to robotics, which is a good thing and a bad thing, but what matters is that there is almost zilch really going on here.