“We really, need to start to rebuild AMERICAN manufacturing.”
Easy answer. The increase in the US economy got ahead of the ability to repatriate mfg. activity. Is it possible that Trump is holding trade over China's head to get them to deal with lil'kim? I suspect so.
It is every bit as likely, that China is holding lil’kim over America’s head, to get a huge break on their massive (and still growing) trade surplus.
Your computer (all of us) was imported from China. Your shoes. Your furniture. Your air conditioner. Your tools.
Basically, everything except airplanes, cars, oil and food, is now made in China. And with cars it’s just that China has insisted all cars be made in China, to sell in China. They’re the largest car manufacturer in the world.
We seem to be becoming ever weaker, at manufacturing.
Trump really, really needs to be the guy.
Stand up for American workers, Trump.
Recent manufacturing job losses nationally and by state U.S. manufacturing employment was relatively stable between 1970 and 1998, and never fell below 16.5 million workers, as shown in Figure B. U.S. manufacturing employment reached a cyclical peak in March 1998. The United States lost 5.7 million manufacturing jobs between March 1998 and 2013, as shown in Table 9. The principal causes of manufacturing job loss were growing trade deficits, especially with China, Mexico, and other low-wage nations, and also the Great Recession, which was followed by a weak recovery. The Asian financial crisis of late 1997 caused the real, trade-weighted value of the U.S. dollar to rise 20 percent in value through the first quarter of 2002. What began with steady growth in U.S. manufacturing imports and job losses in the late 1990s turned into a major collapse when the U.S. economy fell into recession in early 2001. Manufacturing employment declined continuously thereafter throughout the recovery that ended in December 2007. The Great Recession caused another collapse in manufacturing employment, followed by a relatively weak recovery since 2009. Between March 1998 and December 2007, 3.9 million manufacturing jobs were lost and an additional 1.8 million manufacturing jobs were lost through 2013 (Figure B; Bureau of Labor Statistics 2014a and author’s analysis).
Recent manufacturing job losses nationally and by state