Also, note one of the tables documents quite clearly that manufacturing as a percentage of the GDP is now about 12%? Or so I read one of the graphs.
Why can’t i find products made in the USA?
I’ve seen this type of thing before. We sent all those jobs to China and elsewhere, but it didn’t impact our manufacturing base at all. Thanks for the post.
I take anything the Federal Reserve says with a grain of salt. After all, they are still telling us there is no inflation as well.
We don't make textiles anymore, we import steel and auto components, even Schwinn bicycles and Buck knives are Chinese.
Not only call centers and assembly, but our intellectual capital has been outsourced. Our money has been oursourced.
I'm not participating in this everything-is-OK party. If American manufacturing and productivity is so high, why can't I find American-made products?
You can still get an American-made Oreck vacuum cleaner, while the offer lasts. You can still get Hershey bars. After that, it gets tougher.
NE Ohio has seen enough plants close to make NAFTA a political millstone, NAFTA is now a liability to those politicians who were involved with it’s passage.
Che’ is hammering Hilde over Bubba’s passage of NAFTA.
BTW, “productivity gains” are not raising wages for those in that segment of the economy, in fact, buying power has declined, and “Joe Average” knows it intuitively, that makes “free trade” a political loser of a issue, the consensus for passage of more deals has been broken.
What are we making more of than we were 10 years ago? 20? 30?
Are we making more cars? Maybe, with the addition of foreign assembly plants.
More car parts? Nope
More power tools? Nope
More appliances? Nope
More computers? Nope
More cirucit boards? Nope
Machined airplane parts? Nope
Machine tools? Nope
Clothes? Nope
Shoes? Nope
Furniture? Nope
Toys? Nope
Lamps? Nope
Telephone equipment? Nope
Hand tools? Nope
More TVs and stereos? Nope
More ships? Nope
More steel products? Nope
I’m sure there are some products like chemical based products, Heavy Machines (like dozers), industrial electric gear, and food processing equipment where we still excel. But the list is getting shorter.
H*ll, it has lost it already => Can’t even make the pressure vessels any more for nuclear power plants, the pipes for steam plants, the big diesels engines for ships, the ships themselves, the turbines, the generators, the wire, the computers, the steel, the chemicals, ....
Nor even the machines to build the machines to MAKE the machines to build the plants .....
Great post. Really puts a lie to those who claim the US is being destroyed by “outsourcing” ... we’ve pretty much simply switched from manufacturing low tech stuff to concentrating on adding value in high tech ways.
What is truly amazing is how people cling to their original understanding of things and deny any facts to the contrary.
Kraeplin once gave a lecture to his students demonstrating the force of a faulty, delusional idea. He had a patient appear who claimed he was dead. Kraeplin then asked him if dead men bleed. The patients said no. Kraeplin then seized his hand and pricked a finger with a needle drawing blood.
Kraeplin then asked the patient if this did not prove he was alive. The patient answered, “there is an exception to every rule...I am dead...”
Is fast food manufacturing?
‘Future projections include increasing manufacturing output with fewer and fewer employees needed.
Eventually, all the goods the world requires will be manufactured by one guy, who will be very productive. Everyone else will watch him on TV.
What the US is losing, or has already lost, are men and women of grit as typical of those of us who live here, young or old. Oh, there are some. They are not the norm. They are our Johns and Johannas Wayne.
It was a real moment for me to realize I will no longer defend my countrymen as a matter of course.
HA!
Hillary and Obama’s “Tax the Corporation” mentality ought to really encourage American manufacturing!...../sarc
A friend loaned me a tool the other day. It was so old it said “Made in the USA” on it.
I would like to see what is included in the goods they are saying are manufactured here? I just don’t see it. Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are becoming ghost towns.
The weak dollar makes companies like Cat, Cummins, Detroit Diesel and others highly competitive on the international market. BTW, transplant auto assembly plants generate huge value-added here as well, along with their suppliers.
Hillary and Obama are not trying to stop NAFTA, the only want to open it up and put in protections for labor and the environment. No different from Reid wanting to put labor and environmental protections into the pending FTAs with Panama, Columbia, etc.
It is one thing to source manufacturing in lower labor countries. It is quite another to export the 'know how'. Sure, an automated punch press bought overseas can produce manufacturing output with fewer workers--but how are the holes produced, what are the limitations of the material being punched, does the punch pattern make sense for the application?
Or, to put it another way--since the early 1990's, fields such as tool and die manufacture have seen a lot of knowledge exit the field-there is only a certain distance book learning can take you. Actual experience counts big. What is being lost in some sectors is *knowing* how things work-it is the difference between taking a driving course for automobiles and actually getting behind the wheel.
Certainly, in the short term, profits go up, one can report productivity gains. But in the long run, things start to resemble (tangentially) 'Atlas Shrugged', where use of technology is understood, but when things break down, no-one (or very few) know how to make things work again.
The danger is if the balloons go up. What if the tool and die manufacturing know how now exists in a place that decides it needs our resources and is willing to use force to obtain them? Hypothetical, but a valid concern.
Recent headlines check:
Neillsville Employer Shutting Down (Leeson Motors move to Mexico)
http://www.wsaw.com/home/headlines/15895537.html
Anger and frustration over factory closing in Middlefield
http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=83824&provider=gnews
Modine to Close 3 U.S. Plants: Hundreds of Jobs to Be Cut As Work is Moved Abroad
http://www.redorbit.com/news/business/1241906/modine_to_close_3_us_plants_hundreds_of_jobs_to/
This is the tip of the iceberg, and the reasons are many, but one of the main reasons are corporate tax rates. Another is that Investment companies go in and buyout factories with the intent to close them and keep the “namebrand” as they shift production overseas. One gross example of this was for the dinnerware company Pfaltzgraff, and American icon in that industry. It was purchased by a large conglomerate from the local owners. It almost immediately shuttered the plant and sent the manufacturing to a chinese contractor. They still trade in Americana, but now it is made in China. No good reason, except that is how the purchasing conglomerate did business. It wasn’t bankrupt or going broke.