“If all those numbers don’t blow one’s mind, now think of all the infrastructure and logistics that was necessary to SUPPLY all that manufacturing!!!!”
Everybody says “bring back manufacturing”. But it takes logistics and a supply chain. We barely have either, and it would take nearly as long to regain those things as it took to lose them. We barely have any SCREW manufacturers anymore.
Which is why it need to be done.
My wife’s father spent the first year of the war at a screw making machine in Chicago individually turning hundreds of thousands of screws. After serving on a sub as a machinist mate for the rest of the war he returned to Chicago and ran a diesel testing shop for International Harvester for 30 years or more.