Depends heavily on how you measure. U.S. manufacturing looks good by value of the manufactured products, because it remains strong in a handful of high-value ma

Depends heavily on how you measure. U.S. manufacturing looks good by value of the manufactured products, because it remains strong in a handful of high-value manufacturing segments. That's an important measure, but may or may not capture what everyone is interested in. Besides employment, other measures may include, for example, how dependent is the country on imports for items vital to national security? An exclusive dependence on imported steel can have downsides even though steel is now a low-value commodity. Another measure is the diversity of the overall manufacturing industry. Does a country manufacture a whole range of products, or is it highly specialized in a few segments? The latter can still be good by value, but may be more brittle, and make it harder to start new companies in certain fields due to a lack of a local ecosystem (the U.S. has nothing like the Shenzhen ecosystem in electronics, for example).