Manufacturing in America is at a crossroads.
Our business climate -- including taxes, regulation costs and tariffs -- puts U.S. manufacturers at an almost 18% competitive disadvantage relative to our major trading partners.
Energy and raw materials cost are rising. Fewer young people are attracted to manufacturing as careers, and many Americans believe, erroneously, that U.S. manufacturing is disappearing.
However, the truth is quite the opposite. The fact is that the United States is the world's largest manufacturing economy, producing 21% of globally manufactured products. China is second at 15%, with Japan third at 12%.
U.S. manufacturing produces $1.6 trillion of value each year, or 11.2% of U.S. GDP.
Taken alone, U.S. manufacturing would be the ninth-largest economy in the world, and the quantity of manufactured goods produced in the United States has kept a steady pace with overall economic growth since 1947, as both GDP and manufacturing have grown by about seven times.
Leading the Recovery
Manufacturing is leading the recovery -- slow as that recovery may be -- and legislators and policymakers across the country are starting to take notice.
View article on one page