Manufacturing in the USA
It’s still here
We receive a lot of messaging that the USA doesn’t manufacture anything anymore. Sure it’s correct that more and more of our economy is in non-manufacturing jobs, but we still have a lot of manufacturing.
What major companies still manufacture in the USA?
Ford
General Motors
Tesla
Boeing
Lockheed Martin
Raytheon
Caterpillar
Deere & Company
Honeywell
General Electric
Power & Aviation
Intel
Texas Instruments
Micron
Dow
DuPont
Eastman Chemical
Proctor & Gamble
Johnson & Johnson
Colgate-Polmolive
Pepsi
Coca-Cola
Kraft Heinz
Pfizer
Merck
Amgen
Schneider Electric
Cummins
Nucor Corp
US Steel
And many, many others!
80% of the vehicles Ford sells in the USA are assembled in the USA. General Motors is a bit lower, more like 70% (Chevy in particular is lower at about 58%). Tesla also produces many products (not just cars) in many locations around the USA (Fremont CA, Austin TX, Sparks NV, Buffalo NY, Palo Alto CA, Colorado Springs CO). Together, these facilities make Tesla one of the most vertically integrated U.S. automakers—producing everything from the vehicle chassis to the battery cells, energy-storage systems, and solar-generation hardware within the United States.
Proctor & Gamble produces 90% of it’s merchandise in the USA.
If you think of it, agriculture manufactures food (or at least ingredients). Agriculture (direct farming) is, from a financial point of view, very small, accounting for only 1% of the GDP.
We tend to think that all the USA does is “financial”. But the finance industry accounts for only about 21% of our GDP.
My point is that while our economy has changed, manufacturing never “left” and still is a big portion of our economy. Manufacturing accounts for about 11% of GDP.
We could make the case that lack of manufacturing isn’t the key problem (although I’d encourage more) but rather too large of a government! The government accounts for about 14% of GDP (roughly 15% of employment)!
The USA has about 140 million employed workers, about 22 million of those are government jobs! We only have about 15 million manufacturing jobs.
Keep in mind that during the Great Depression of the 1930s, most people still were employed! The crash of 2008 was even worse than the 1930s Great Depression. How bad these economic catastrophes are depends on your individual circumstances. Almost everyone reading this article was alive in 2008 and most were working then. Did the world end? The 2008 crash wiped me out completely. My nice contract was eliminated and led to many years of unemployment. In a way, it reset me basically to the point I was at after college. Seventeen years later I’m doing okay. So yes, it was a disaster for me, but not for everyone.
While I applaud President Trump for “bringing back” manufacturing, a much bigger improvement could be made by cutting government!
If you listen to Donald Trump and Peter Schiff you hear two very different stories. Overall, I believe you’ll get a more accurate appraisal of the economy from Peter Schiff. However, when Peter says you can’t bring back manufacturing and implies we have no manufacturing in the USA, that is also misleading.
Moral of the story? Almost any sound bite you hear, whether it is from President Trump or some expert, the message is very misleading and biased toward what they are trying to sell you.
Certainly I love Trump selling hope! We need hope! The USA is on a major down slope of our empire. Can we fix things and have a new long term boom (instead of these constant boom and bust cycles)? Maybe. Is it the end of the world if China is the dominant country in the world for the next fifty or one hundred years?
From a personal point of view, what you can do is make investments (do not park cash in a savings account or money market account or any other investment that pays a return less than inflation). Do not let yourself get into “bad debt” (credit cards are evil and should always be paid off fully). Buy gold! Force our nation to return to a gold standard, rejecting fiat money.
Stop buying crap! A whole lot of us have way too many useless items in our homes. Heck if you looked at my wine glasses and champagne flutes you might think I was trying to compete with Donald for being able to host a fancy party! Even when I hosted Marian Call for the beginning of her tour of the USA and held a house concert, I didn’t need anywhere near the number of glasses I have!
True!!!! The unfortunate part is money became more importantly than quality. And, as much as I’d like to see manufacturing happen in America, sometimes our quality sucks!!!!!
Example: I had one of the last, if not the last, Honda CRX that had been made in Japan. Bought her in 1989 with only 37 miles on her and half of those were from my test drive. She was a little silver built made to last and it was amazing all the things I could get into the back if that car. I had her for eleven years and put over 90,000 miles on her. But, after having to stuff the Vice President of a Fortune 500 company into the back of her on a very hot summer day and no a/c, I figured it was time to get a more business appropriate car. So in 2001 I finally decided to give her up. I solder to a friend, who at that time, was driving more than 200 - 400 miles a week. She stayed strong and lasted him over 100,000 miles. Then she was stolen. When the police finally found her she had been parted out and left to rot. She looked so bad my friend wouldn’t even let me see the photos. In 2001 I bought a nice brand new silver Honda 4 door Accord with leather seats and everything else. That car had been made in the USA, Georgia…..if I remember correctly. That car was crap in comparison to my little two seater, cloth seat, no air conditioning or anything else CRX. Even when I sold her in 2001 she was better than the Honda Accord. I didn’t know it all when I purchased her. She looked fine. It was after getting to know her over the years that I noticed how plasticy she was and where corners had been cut.
Second example: Even though I grew up near Seattle as a kid, lived in Seattle and in a few of the cities just outside of Seattle as an adult and knowing countless people who have worked for Boeing over the years, I have to admit, in the last 10 - 20 years, especially, after they moved the headquarters away from Seattle. That company isn’t nearly as profound and awesome as it used to be. Because profits became more important than quality or even safety it seems.
Before I moved away from the Puget sound area I knew engineers, people who made the tools that made the tools to make the airplanes, assembly workers, executives, as well as, the first female pilot in charge of all flight testing for the 777 program, I think.
I used to believe in Boeing whole heartedly!!! Boeing maintained the Nordstrom Policy that the Pacific NW is known for. Now days, though, I don’t know what their policies are. But, they sure as hell, aren’t the same standard that the company was once known for.
Yes, manufacture in the USA. But, get rid of people who hate their jobs, people that do just enough to barely get by and don’t give a sh*t and the ideology that the “once was almighty dollar” is more important than the quality of the products being made.
Reading this a bit late and although I agree about investing in things that have a higher return than inflation, I chuckled a little bit at the buy gold part: have you seen the week silver has had?! My gosh, I wish I had the money the invest in silver about theee months ago when my friend was telling me silver was gonna explode. And I don’t really think we’ve seen silver stay cool yet! Wowie wow wow.