fine, let it count. its a manufactured product. so is Aquafina water, they take water from a regional water supply, pass it through a filter, and fill a bottle with it. Boom, its "manufactured".
The point is - does counting this stuff really reflect what is going on? no, it skews it. Pepsi fills ten million more water bottles, and the semiconductor industry moves to China. The stats balance out. Do the numbers really explain what is going on? Of course not, that's my point. These numbers are almost useless without context.
and BLS and the Commerce Department know it. instead of providing specific analytical breakdowns, they just toss out the headline numbers and walk away.
There's at least one more new plant being built in the U.S., I just don't remember who's building it . . . I think it was some Motorola joint-venture.
Then there's that recently-built, multi-billion dollar chip plant that IBM built in East Fishkill, NY.