All Articel 3

The concerns expressed by the U.S. electorate about the status of manufacturing employment are not without factual basis. The loss in U.S. manufacturing employment has been significant: since 2000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [2012] reports that more than 5.5 million jobs had been lost through 2011. This manufacturing displacement has resulted in painful employment transition for many Americans--especially during the prolonged recession of the last few years. However, the manufacturing sector has been making a surprising comeback and actually added 109,000 jobs in 2010 following 12 straight years of declines, and manufacturing companies added another 225,000 jobs in 2011. While real GDP increased by only 1.7 percent in 2011, the manufacturing component of U.S. industrial production grew at more than two times that rate (4.0 percent) during the same period.
The fact that the manufacturing sector is now being given credit as the "shining star" of the U.S. economic recovery provides some evidence counter to the common assumption that America's manufacturing sector is in a perpetual state of decline. In fact, the rebound in U.S. manufacturing output and employment over the last two years might be reflecting the initial effects of several favorable long-term factors that are expected to revitalize the domestic manufacturing sector in the near future. According to a recent report from the Boston Consulting Group [2011]:

  Within the next five years, the United States is expected to
  experience a manufacturing renaissance as the wage gap with China
  shrinks and certain U.S. states become some of the cheapest locations
  for manufacturing in the developed world. We expect net labor costs
  for manufacturing in China and the United States to converge by around
  2015. As a result of the changing economics, you're going to see a

Some analysts have proclaimed that China has now surpassed the United States in manufacturing output in dollars [Yeebo 2011], and the most recent international data from the United Nations [2011] confirm the fact that China's manufacturing output of U.S.$1.922 trillion in 2010 was slightly ahead of the U.S.$1.855 trillion of manufacturing output produced in the United States. Although China may have displaced the United States as the world's largest manufacturing nation, the measured productivity of the average American manufacturing employee has increased significantly in recent years and exponentially surpasses that of his/her Chinese counterpart [Yeebo 2011]. Therefore, in terms of manufacturing output-per-worker, it is likely that the United States will remain among the world's most productive manufacturing economies for many decades to come. Nevertheless, while U.S manufacturing remains preeminent in the global economy, many critics believe the nation is overdue for a "national manufacturing strategy."
At "The National Summit" convened by the Detroit Economic Club in June of 2009, some of the nation's business, government, and academic leaders met to create a consensus set of policy recommendations for increasing America's competitiveness in the four disciplines of technology, energy, environment, and manufacturing [National Summit 2009]. The final initiative, "America's To-Do List," released in December 2009, consists of 10 strategic initiatives, and includes: "Develop a national manufacturing strategy that re-establishes an environment for U.S. businesses to thrive and compete on a global basis" [National Summit 2009]. Such a national manufacturing strategy consists of, for example, an integrated set of tax, trade, education, labor, and business regulation policies that is designed to help strengthen the U.S. manufacturing sector and maintain its global leadership. "The United States today is alone among industrial powers in not having a strategy or even a procedure for thinking through what must be done when it comes to manufacturing," says Thomas A. Kochan, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [Uchitelle 2011]. Over the last few years, a variety of U.S. industry associations, including the National Association of Manufacturers; an academic institution (the Industrial College of the Armed Forces); an industry-labor organization (the Alliance for American Manufacturing); as well as the Executive Office of the President, among others, have all proposed their own variants of a national manufacturing strategy. In 2010, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed H.R. 4692. the "National Manufacturing Strategy Act," but this bill did not become law. This legislation included a primary charge that the President proposes a quadrennial "National Manufacturing Strategy."