The US needs a serious industrial policy to counter this. Couple of ideas: - A venture fund, similar to In-Q-Tel, focused on investing in cutting edge manufact

The US needs a serious industrial policy to counter this. Couple of ideas: - A venture fund, similar to In-Q-Tel, focused on investing in cutting edge manufacturing tech startups. It'll make sense to focus on defense applications initially, but many of those techniques do get carried over into private enterprise. - Increased grants for fundamental research, and tax write offs for corporates who expand R&D facilities adjacent to production facilities in the country. - Inevitably any company doing manufacturing today will experience labor shortages, most experienced staff are now retired. A federal program to re-train displaced workers to become technicians servicing the robots doing the assembly, monitoring quality, and doing basic troubleshooting work onsite. - Tax writeoffs for companies who provide training for front-line employees to move into design and engineering roles. EDIT: Old time manufacturing jobs are gone and not coming back, however they are loads of opportunities in other areas of manufacturing that will generate much more value per employee and hence will pay better. Giving companies incentives to create these jobs, and providing a pathway for individuals with minimal training to attain the skills necessary to do them will solve the problem over time. Of course, it's all in the details.