Manufacturing has always been an integral part of American life. Paul Revere opened a foundry that produced bells and cannons following his famous midnight ride. Ford’s assembly line made cars affordable to the masses. And U.S. industrial might helped win World War II, when nearly half of private-sector employees worked in factories. That portion plunged after the war, thanks to automation and U.S. companies seeking lower costs overseas.
Here is the good news. The Wall Street Journal (April 8-9, 2023) writes: “Record spending on manufacturing construction heralds a made-in-the-U.S. rebound, stoked by green-energy incentives and concerns about foreign supply chains; this is here to stay.” New factories are rising in urban cores and rural fields, desert flats and surf towns. Much of the growth is coming in the high-tech fields of electric-vehicle batteries and semiconductors, national priorities backed by billions of dollars in government incentives. Other companies that once relied exclusively on lower-cost countries to manufacture eyeglasses and bicycles and bodybuilding supplements have found reasons to come home.
Retailers don’t want to carry excess inventory in their stores, and the U.S. factory allows the company to quickly replenish stock. Time is also of the essence for companies like FutureStitch, which sells socks commemorating events like the NBA Finals or the Kentucky Derby. It has factories in China and Turkey, but just opened a new one in California–the company’s first in the U.S. “There is more and more equity around Made in the USA,” said FutureStitch’s CEO.
Nearly 800,000 jobs were added in the manufacturing sector over the past 2 years. But the industry is actually hurting for workers—about 800,000 more are needed, which has lead to concerns that labor shortages and other bottlenecks could short-circuit the boom.
An despite the surge in factory building, many industries are unlikely to create entirely homegrown supply chains. An automated shoe factory Adidas built in Atlanta so it could get its products to market faster shut down in 2019, two years after its opening. (See our 2017 blog announcing its opening.) The firm moved production to Vietnam and China to achieve what it called “better utilization of existing production capacity and more flexibility in product design.”
Classroom discussion questions:
- What factors are driving the manufacturing in U.S. resurgence?
- What factors are working against it?