Why Celebrate a False U.S. Manufacturing Renaissance?
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July 2 (Bloomberg) -- The repeated claims that U.S.manufacturing is enjoying, or is on the verge of, a renaissancehave been undermined again. The latest reality checks wereprovided by official statistics on manufacturing output.
The Commerce Department’s first report on domesticindustry’s full-year 2012 performance showed an impressiveincrease in U.S. manufacturers’ output. Yet the figures releasedJune 6 were hardly profound, even by the standards of theprevious decade, which no one considered a golden age for U.S.industry.