The U.S. Can Still Catch Up in Manufacturing
A revived industry might look more like “The Jetsons” and less like the old union shops.
Think of Spacely Space Sprockets Inc.
Source: Warner Bros., via Getty Images
If anything will revive U.S. manufacturing, it’s certainly not an ever-changing package of hastily proposed and canceled tariffs. But as President Donald Trump pursues that non-strategy, it’s worth asking the longer-term questions of whether U.S. manufacturing even needs to be revived at all, and if so, what can accomplish the task.
There’s little doubt that the U.S. manufacturing sector has stagnated. It’s not just jobs that have disappeared; overall production in the sector remains below the level of a decade ago, and has increased by only about 10 percent from the turn of the century: