[T-Bird45]

“capital-intensive”

Correct - didn’t say it wasn’t.

“return on investment”

You write like we’d be coming from a standing start with no manufacturing infrastructure in place that’s underutilized.

“how far down the manufacturing firms have fallen”

That didn’t happen in a vacuum.

And yet, you didn’t address my one main point on jobs generated or provide data on jobs generated in IT, telecom, etc. for comparison.

[Alberta's Child]

U.S. manufacturing has become heavily automated over time. Manufacturing employment in the U.S. has declined considerably since it peaked in 1979 at about 19.5 million jobs in the U.S. Right now it's somewhere around 12 million. And yet industrial output has increased dramatically in the same period.

The idea that there are idle manufacturing facilities all over the U.S. that would be fired up and re-opened with the right trade conditions is a myth. So is the notion that there are millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans who are ready to just line up at the gate of a steel mill or auto manufacturing plant and go to work next week.

That didn’t happen in a vacuum.

You're right -- it didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened at a time when advances in technology spawned the creation of entire industries that didn't even exist when many of the manufacturing plants in the U.S. that have been closed down in the last 40 years were first built.