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Real US manufacturing (adjusted for inflation) has experienced solid, positive growth during the last quarter-century and reached an all-time high of $2.4 trillion last year, 71% higher than 1997.

The administration is incapable of differentiating between... manufacturing output and manufacturing employment.

Output has been going up and up... until around 2018 when it peaked.

I wish someone would ask the administration 'hey so if we have a factory with ALL robots'... that produces tons of stuff but with few workers is that what we want?

They never say if 'bringing back manufacturing' refers to people or just making stuff because one doesn't necessarily mean the other.


The other thing they never say is if the new 'manufacturing jobs' pay well. For it to pay well, workers need training and lots of it and... where is it?

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China leads the world in robotics by a huge margin - they can build them far far far cheaper than the US can.
When China is automating manufacturing anyone who wants to compete must also- especially when US wages are still far higher than Chinese wages.

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tell that to the trump administration. they seem to think that manufacturing... is basically the same as it was in the 1960s

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Yes hard to know the logic behind what they are doing unless preparing for war and needing to reduce dependence upon Chinese dominated supply chains.

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Manufacturing really never went away, but manufacturing jobs did.

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Yeah US labor is like the most expensive input so we offset with capital expenditure

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Tax cuts and deregulation could help on that front. We'll see what they do.

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I saw some commentators today say the only thing they can think is trump wants to lower us wages so we can be completive with our manufacturing...

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Dumping a bunch of federal workers into the labor force will help with that.

So would the grand plan of replacing income/payroll taxes with excise taxes (this would actually lower the cost of labor, more so than wages).

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I believe it when I see it

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probably worth controlling for inflation in those numbers

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It says adjusted for inflation

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omg, whoops

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Never went away, just used fewer/different workers.

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Yes but compared to China, USA has been falling behind on a massive scale- see this graph for the evidence-

https://unctad.org/topic/trade-analysis/chart-10-may-2021

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easier for politicians to ride on the waves of what was already destined. reversing the trends is extremely hard, that's accomplished over many decades... tho recently the mind control has been quite successful from switching up agendas.

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It is good to have manufacturing, but it is not good to have manufacturing jobs. Who would like to work a manufacturing job here, guys?

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Very interesting

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