Posted on 04/09/2025 10:41:59 AM PDT by daniel1212
Coming out of the Second World War, the US was the king of production,” says William B Bonvillian, a lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an expert in US innovation policy....
by 1945, more steel was produced in the state of Pennsylvania alone than in Germany and Japan combined....
By the turn of the millennium, the US’s global domination in mass-scale industrial production, technology and efficiency was lost. Long-standing issues culminated between 2000 and 2010, when the US lost one-third of its manufacturing jobs....
Between 2000 and 2010, nearly six million jobs in US manufacturing were lost, with the sectors most prone to globalisation displacement, such as textiles and furniture, taking the biggest hit, according to research by Bonvillian and MIT’s Peter L Singer....
The fixed capital investment of manufacturing (plant, equipment, information technology, and so on) actually declined in the 2000s – for the first time since data collection began in 1947...
Meanwhile, US manufacturing output grew only 0.5% per year between 2000 and 2007, and during the global financial crisis of 2007–09 fell by a huge 10.3%...
In 2015, the US ran a trade deficit of $832bn in manufactured goods,..
“Most of the jobs that were lost were in the lower end of production, as opposed to higher skilled jobs,” says Bonvillian. “In other words, one of the main routes into the American middle class just got cut off....
Trump’s politics came right out of that. He was the first US politician to.. speak directly to the anxieties of what the American working class had gone...
coming out of the Second World War, the whole focus for the US innovation system was on early-stage R&D, not manufacturing. “Production was the last thing we worried about, since we were the king. Nobody was remotely close to us,” adds Bonvillian...
Meanwhile, post-war Germany and Japan were rapidly rebuilding their industrial bases to counter mass unemployment. This meant their innovation systems were focused on manufacturing,..
“This imbalance explains why, for many decades now, the US has been innovating new technologies that get built elsewhere,...says Bonvillian. “More recently, we have been trying to pick up the Fraunhofer model [universities and industry working together]. But guess what? China did the exact same thing...
it is becoming increasingly common for US companies to move from ‘innovate in the US and produce abroad’ to ‘do both abroad’....If Apple, the company that was dominating stock markets and largely considered to be heralding the dawning of a new era in innovation, was outsourcing its manufacturing, surely it was on to something?
The feasibility of reshoring factory jobs aside, Trump was in fact reacting to a very real issue...
it wasn’t a sudden burst of robots that took most jobs away, it was other causes, and when you boil it down, it really was the rise of the Chinese economy,” contends Bonvillian...
Not only has China charged ahead of the US in terms of the production process, but it has also done so increasingly with innovation in the past decade....
For all of Trump’s bluster, he had little success in bringing factories home...
Another deeply rooted issue for US manufacturing has been the growing stigma and prejudice about its value. The result: a gaping skills gap...
“Why would a parent want their children to work in a factory where jobs were being lost all the time?” asks Bonvillian.
Meanwhile, the white-collar college dream only grew stronger, with the preference largely being for young people to go into what was considered to be the more academic fields of medicine, law, accounting and services.....
the lack of desire to see young people go into manufacturing jobs adds to a lack of viable educational avenues into the sector, which is exacerbated by the lack of large-scale adoption of innovative technology...
During Clinton’s presidency, the internet and the wider use of computers changed almost every aspect of American life..the increased use of information technology exacerbated the globalisation of manufacturing...
Obama did see some success in creating manufacturing jobs, but he felt short of his one million target and instead manufacturing jobs rose by 590,000 in his second term..
However, since the onset of the manufacturing decline under Reagan, every single Republican president has seen a decrease in average annual manufacturing employment...
A closer look at the crime scene shows that US manufacturing was not killed, but it has endured grievous bodily harm. The American factory has lost its edge. Reclaiming this must be one of the country’s economic and geopolitical priorities.
Clinton killed it....
Perhaps we can go further and blame kissinger
Deep State?
Try Sam Walton. With Clinton’s blessing he looked to use China to make his store label products at a much lower price than rivals. His success in growing his business set up a tidal wave of imitators.major brands followed as they lost sales to Walton.
The NLRB and the EPA. Given our cheap energy manufacturing never would have left if it wasn’t for eco-Nazis and unionists, aided of course be leftists in government.
“The NLRB and the EPA. Given our cheap energy manufacturing never would have left if it wasn’t for eco-Nazis and unionists, aided of course be leftists in government.”
SPOT ON!
Good and tight comment! We all know “be” is “by”.
Allowing China entry into the World Trade Organization was what killed USA manufacturing jobs.
NAFTA and the Giant Sucking Sound with jobs going to Mexico was the other major factor.
Between the two there was no reason for a corporation selling their product in the USA to make it in the USA unless the freight was prohibitive.
We got so wealthy because we exported to the rest of the world, and that enabled our mass production, low-skilled, and semi-skilled workers to have a standard of living, including long-term and pension benefits, that has never been seen before or since by production workers.
The problem was that it was all enabled by an export-dominant economy that was not sustainable. Money that should have been invested in modernizing factories was instead spent on unsustainable, locked-in union benefits and inefficient boondoggles like the "job banks".
Our steel and auto industries aren't dying because of low wage competition. They're dying because the factories are largely old, out of data, and inefficient. The Japanese wanted to buy US Steel, invest some billions, and make competitive steel here in the U.S., but Trump and Biden both opposed that deal.
Good answer.
Yeah, “free trade” and other things.
Creation of the UAW didn’t help any. Pay someone $35/hr for 25 years. They retire and continue getting that pay for 25-35 years, plus benefits. Same as having paid them $70-80/hr for the 25 years.
Add regulations from the EPA, rules from OSHA. Call it $100/hr
Mexico $10/hr?
China $4/hr?
If anything you said is true, then Red China should have gone under decades ago.
No: we lost our manufacturing base due to leftist traitors in DC.
IMO===UNIONS
Triffin’s Delema effect following capitulation at the defact end of Breton Woods system in 1972.
IIRC-—SAM WALTON NEVER USED CHINESE ITEMS.
THAT CHANGED WHEN HE DIED & THE KIDS TOOK OVER.
Congress-both houses, AND their Confederate lobbyists!!!
State legislators and their gaggle of lobbyists.
Mayors, eldermen, the whole lot of them.
And all the time, all those Democrats with their cans of Pabst blue ribbon, their red bandanas, and white socks, claiming they are for the working man!
US "guidance counselors" in high schools, who themselves only knew of the college route sent and are sending a LOT of gullible students in the wrong direction.
I’d say it’s a combination of things. Federal and state government laws and regulations, and union and corporate greed. Outrageous.
It all started going downhill with Carter and high energy prices. That and US car companies producing crappy cars and union strikes.
“Hate to say this, but Nixon started it with opening up China.”
Except 90% of the posters here would have agreed with Nixon back then because they saw friending China as a counterbalance to the USSR
It was the fed...
It was both republiCAN’Ts and democommies...
It was all about abolishing the middle class...
Sad part is they darn near succeeded
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