4 ms·

> Has domestic manufacturing ramped up in the US since covid? How would that even be possible? The U.S. had very little manufacturing know-how leftover even be

by bmitc 4y ago

> Has domestic manufacturing ramped up in the US since covid? How would that even be possible? The U.S. had very little manufacturing know-how leftover even before COVID, and now that's coupled with one of the most serious pandemics in history, political and economic turmoil if not chaos, and supply chain issues. How would a domestic manufacturing industry rise out of this? Where would people get the chips to build out the manufacturing? Of course, maybe it did ramp up (?), but I would be wholly surprised.

corrral 4y ago
US manufacturing has roughly doubled in inflation-adjusted dollar terms, while dropping by 30-something percent as a share of GDP (because GDP was rising much faster than that, over the same time span) since 1997. Our factories are much more productive than they used to be, so may require fewer workers, and they've not been growing as fast as e.g. services and finance, but we still have plenty.
- bmitc 4y ago
  Is this "doubling" simply in terms of production dollars? If our factories are more productive, that's great, but I don't think it addresses my point, which is more about diversity and capability versus production numbers. Even you point out that manufacturing production has not grown with the rest of the economy. And I didn't mean to imply the U.S. has no manufacturing.
  - corrral 4y ago
    People employed in manufacturing in the US—not productivity, employees—is about the same as in 1941 just before Pearl Harbor. We had worse tech then, about the same number of people working in manufacturing, and our factories produced a tiny fraction of the output per worker that a modern factory does. IOW we should be way more capable of rapid expansion of industrial capacity than 1941 America was, and 1941 America did a pretty damn good job of it over the following few years (months, even). We do also have a lot more domestic demand than then, for multiple reasons, but again, modern factories are way more productive per worker than a factory in 1941. What could lag is specifically high tech manufacturing. A car factory or aluminum plant is one thing. A chip fab is another. That kind of extremely-high-capital-cost ultra-specialized manufacturing, we probably should have been forcing to be at least partly on-shore for security reasons, even if it caused higher prices.
    - layer8 4y ago
      Same in percentage or in absolute numbers?
      - corrral 4y ago
        Absolute numbers. Which means we should be able to add even more capacity, faster than they did then, by a large multiple over a similar time period, thanks to productivity increases. Which, again, might be needed because demand is far higher than it was then (population's far higher, standard of living in material terms is higher) but kinda like how we can now produce more food than we need with low-single-digits percentages of the population working in food production, we can produce more with far fewer manufacturing workers than we had back then. How much more productive are we? US employment in manufacturing peaked, in absolute numbers of workers, in 1979. In 2009, we produced about 50% more than in 1979, despite being well on our way to dropping to 1941 levels of people-in-manufacturing (sheer count, not percentage of pop) by that time. My point with the comparison to 1941 is that we should have plenty of expertise around to increase production at a rate similar to the increases in the 6-12 months after Pearl Harbor, if we really needed to. IOW, at least a 50% increase inside a year, or probably about double our 1979 domestic manufacturing output (total, after the increase), and 1979 was solidly in the "the US is a manufacturing titan" phase of US history. Again, however, certain specialized high-tech manufacturing might be an exception (chip fabs, for example). Supply of raw materials might also become a problem. Ability to build or restore/refit normal, industrial factories is not a place I'd expect us to be lacking in know-how, though, because we still do tons of manufacturing.
    - usrn 4y ago
      America was very different in 1941. The culture and demography have completely changed.
Aloha 4y ago
We do have a bunch of manufacturing knowhow, we still make things - just not consumer goods.
0xfaded 4y ago
That's simply not true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_St... Manufacturing in the US has imo been surprisingly resilient, and when it comes to components it's remarkably easy to order just about anything from a US supplier, perhaps electronics being the exception. Europe only retains its place because of low labor costs in Eastern Europe. Western Europe is in real trouble after years of policy push for "Services Based" economies.
- bmitc 4y ago
  When you say "that's simply not true", what do you mean by "that"? You linked to a general article with several data points. When I said "very little", I of course meant relatively speaking. In my experience in buying industrial equipment, very little of it is made in the U.S. aside from things that would be prohibitively expensive (like heavy equipment) or things simply assembled in the U.S. And in hearing conversations internal to companies that do have manufacturing, the general sentiment has been "not only can we not afford to make this in the U.S., we simply can't make it".
- Barrin92 4y ago
  >Western Europe is in real trouble after years of policy push for "Services Based" economies I'm not sure where this narrative comes from because Western Europe is still industrialized, in particular compared to the US[1]. the industrial belt roughly from the UK midlands through northern France, Benelux, Switzerland, the Rhine-Ruhr area and South West Germany, Northern Italy and to some extent Spain is one of the most productive industrial regions in the world. [2] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_sector_composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_secto... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana
  - 0xfaded 4y ago
    Thank you for changing my mind on this one, the data clearly contradicts what I said. I'm not European, but I have been living in Scandinavia for the last 4 years. I think I overgeneralized based on what I've seen here.

by bmitc 4y ago

corrral 4y ago

US manufacturing has roughly doubled in inflation-adjusted dollar terms, while dropping by 30-something percent as a share of GDP (because GDP was rising much faster than that, over the same time span) since 1997. Our factories are much more productive than they used to be, so may require fewer workers, and they've not been growing as fast as e.g. services and finance, but we still have plenty.

bmitc 4y ago
Is this "doubling" simply in terms of production dollars? If our factories are more productive, that's great, but I don't think it addresses my point, which is more about diversity and capability versus production numbers. Even you point out that manufacturing production has not grown with the rest of the economy. And I didn't mean to imply the U.S. has no manufacturing.
- corrral 4y ago
  People employed in manufacturing in the US—not productivity, employees—is about the same as in 1941 just before Pearl Harbor. We had worse tech then, about the same number of people working in manufacturing, and our factories produced a tiny fraction of the output per worker that a modern factory does. IOW we should be way more capable of rapid expansion of industrial capacity than 1941 America was, and 1941 America did a pretty damn good job of it over the following few years (months, even). We do also have a lot more domestic demand than then, for multiple reasons, but again, modern factories are way more productive per worker than a factory in 1941. What could lag is specifically high tech manufacturing. A car factory or aluminum plant is one thing. A chip fab is another. That kind of extremely-high-capital-cost ultra-specialized manufacturing, we probably should have been forcing to be at least partly on-shore for security reasons, even if it caused higher prices.
  - layer8 4y ago
    Same in percentage or in absolute numbers?
    - corrral 4y ago
      Absolute numbers. Which means we should be able to add even more capacity, faster than they did then, by a large multiple over a similar time period, thanks to productivity increases. Which, again, might be needed because demand is far higher than it was then (population's far higher, standard of living in material terms is higher) but kinda like how we can now produce more food than we need with low-single-digits percentages of the population working in food production, we can produce more with far fewer manufacturing workers than we had back then. How much more productive are we? US employment in manufacturing peaked, in absolute numbers of workers, in 1979. In 2009, we produced about 50% more than in 1979, despite being well on our way to dropping to 1941 levels of people-in-manufacturing (sheer count, not percentage of pop) by that time. My point with the comparison to 1941 is that we should have plenty of expertise around to increase production at a rate similar to the increases in the 6-12 months after Pearl Harbor, if we really needed to. IOW, at least a 50% increase inside a year, or probably about double our 1979 domestic manufacturing output (total, after the increase), and 1979 was solidly in the "the US is a manufacturing titan" phase of US history. Again, however, certain specialized high-tech manufacturing might be an exception (chip fabs, for example). Supply of raw materials might also become a problem. Ability to build or restore/refit normal, industrial factories is not a place I'd expect us to be lacking in know-how, though, because we still do tons of manufacturing.
  - usrn 4y ago
    America was very different in 1941. The culture and demography have completely changed.

Aloha 4y ago

We do have a bunch of manufacturing knowhow, we still make things - just not consumer goods.

0xfaded 4y ago

That's simply not true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_St... Manufacturing in the US has imo been surprisingly resilient, and when it comes to components it's remarkably easy to order just about anything from a US supplier, perhaps electronics being the exception. Europe only retains its place because of low labor costs in Eastern Europe. Western Europe is in real trouble after years of policy push for "Services Based" economies.

bmitc 4y ago
When you say "that's simply not true", what do you mean by "that"? You linked to a general article with several data points. When I said "very little", I of course meant relatively speaking. In my experience in buying industrial equipment, very little of it is made in the U.S. aside from things that would be prohibitively expensive (like heavy equipment) or things simply assembled in the U.S. And in hearing conversations internal to companies that do have manufacturing, the general sentiment has been "not only can we not afford to make this in the U.S., we simply can't make it".
Barrin92 4y ago
>Western Europe is in real trouble after years of policy push for "Services Based" economies I'm not sure where this narrative comes from because Western Europe is still industrialized, in particular compared to the US[1]. the industrial belt roughly from the UK midlands through northern France, Benelux, Switzerland, the Rhine-Ruhr area and South West Germany, Northern Italy and to some extent Spain is one of the most productive industrial regions in the world. [2] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_sector_composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_secto... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana
- 0xfaded 4y ago
  Thank you for changing my mind on this one, the data clearly contradicts what I said. I'm not European, but I have been living in Scandinavia for the last 4 years. I think I overgeneralized based on what I've seen here.