Mythbuster: The decline, demise, and death of manufacturing in America

So, it seems like every other product has a "Made in China" sticker, right?  Manufacturing in America is dead, right?

Are you sure?  Is that your final answer?

Jeff Jacoby notes that (ht):

There’s just one problem with all the gloom and doom about American manufacturing. It’s wrong.

Americans make more “stuff’’ than any other nation on earth, and by a wide margin. According to the United Nations’ comprehensive database of international economic data, America’s manufacturing output in 2009 (expressed in constant 2005 dollars) was $2.15 trillion. That surpassed China’s output of $1.48 trillion by nearly 46 percent. China’s industries may be booming, but the United States still accounted for 20 percent of the world’s manufacturing output in 2009 — only a hair below its 1990 share of 21 percent.

Our perception of the death of manufacturing in the US is based on: (a) the prevalence of low-price goods from China and other countries, and (b) a declining share of employment in manufacturing.  But, when one looks at it in dollar value, it is an entirely different story:

“America still makes a ton of stuff, and we make more of it now than ever before in history.’’ In fact, Americans manufactured more goods in 2009 than the Japanese, Germans, British, and Italians — combined.

American manufacturing output hits a new high almost every year. US industries are powerhouses of production: Measured in constant dollars, America’s manufacturing output today is more than double what it was in the early 1970s.

I talk about this in my introductory class when we talk about lower-order and higher-order goods, and how America increasingly specializes in higher-order goods.  But, whoever goes to classes and, more importantly, listens to cranks like me in the classroom, right?