The U.S. is still the world's biggest manufacturer!?!

The surprise about this speaks volumes about the business and political coverage of U.S. industry.

By what metric? Is this even relevant considering our trade deficit?

The metric is dollars--that is, the value of goods produced. And yeah, it's totally relevant: we have a trade deficit not because our manufacturing output is shrinking but because we're consuming even more.

Justin, I haven't gone through the report, but I'm curious if you noticed in which areas where the gap is the smallest, and where the gap is the largest. I'd imagine in some traditional areas of manufacturing we've been losing ground regularly, and in others, not so much. I'm curious to know which areas.
For example, say in manufacture of computer components which are extremely complex the US has huge investments in R&D for innovation, which I think most likely far exceeds other countries, therefore, the dollar value of the product produced, and our desire to control their manufacture, means we clearly lead all nations, yet for less complex items, oh I don't know, TVs, we simply do not invest in growing this production capability as in the past, and other nations are surging to do so, even for their own, significantly larger populations.

I'm also curious, does the report state that this measure of value of goods produced is based on goods produced within the US, or by US companies? we know a great deal of manufacturing for US companies is done overseas, if this had been added in, would we still hold the title?
I'm really typing as I'm thinking, going to look over this report now.

*** Amazing, no? ***

Uh, I'm going to have to go with "no."

This assessment is far too vague to have impact at face value. A couple of key things already touched on. Lets say "Intel" is an American company, and this report is based on dollars. Well sure, we could count it in the US column, but the reality is Intel has many, many cogs outside of the US, and has just recently announce closures of US facilities and large invenstments in new overseas projects. Oddly enough, these include Vietnam and yes .... China.

The globalization that has been much more embraced by "the west", coupled with captialism-first governing (particularly in the USA) has made the accounting for what's truly American based nigh obsolete. I certainly would have to see a lot more data with regards to how this data is tallied. As it stands, it feels a lot like the current sentiment of "the economy is great".

Reality is, 1998 figures showed that 20% of the population held 83.4% of the wealth in the country. Last years report on the economic gap showed that trend to be actually growing. While costs continue to go up (naturally), the average income per capita has been essentially stagnant (just look at the minimum wage for an indicator).

There's always a more advantageous and a less advantageous way to categorize and present numbers. Banks and businesses have made it an art form. Take a look at the actual benefit to the end user in any case from 1 point in time to another, later point in time, and you'll usually have a much clearer picture.

Wowsers. Here's the deal: It's manufacturing output here in the U.S. of A. Not the output of U.S. corporations all over the world. And it shouldn't actually be surprising to anybody that the U.S., as far and away the biggest economy on the planet, is still the biggest manufacturer.

None of this is a statement about the current health of the U.S. economy, the future prospects, or anything. We're just really large, and for all that certain of our manufacturing sectors have moved abroad or lost out to foreign competitors, we still make a lot of stuff. Manufacturing does, however, account for an ever smaller share of our (growing) economic output, and an even smaller share of employment. But manufacturing employment is shrinking all over the world, EVEN IN CHINA.

One of these days soon I'll try to put together some charts, based on BEA data, showing which manufacturing sectors in the U.S. have been thriving and which haven't.

Have you looked to see who's part of this Council on Competitiveness? (CEO's and their Neo-con buddies)
Give me an unbiased report and I'll read it.

hahahahahahaha
do u ppl have other things to do? like to count how many days left for america, or maybe just count how many toes u have on your feet. that would be complex enough for u guys.
hahahhaha it's really funny to read things here.

liuyanfang...official thread idiot
just to be pedantic, its 2024, so it's seventeen years: i have ten toes not seventeen

[...] is still mainly of lower skill levels. US is still the dominate manufacturing country of the world. http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2007/05/23/the_us_is_still_the_worlds_big/ People who have more data on this matter can comment on [...]