China Ends America's Century Old Manufacturing Dominance

[notesdev]

Ending a 110-year run for America as the world's dominant producer, China has overtaken the United States as the world's largest manufacturer. According to economics research firm IHS Global Insight, China manufactured 19.9% of the world's goods in 2010, while the U.S. accounted for 19.4%.

This marks the first time since 1850 that China has held the crown as the world's largest manufacturer, the latest sign of the nation's economic resurgence. (See: China Overtakes Japan in Economic Clout: Is the U.S. Next?)

The U.S. “should be worried” by the news, Deborah Wince-Smith, chief executive of the Council on Competitiveness, tells The Financial Times. “This shows the need for the U.S. to compete in the future not on the basis of commodity manufacturing but on innovation and new kinds of services that are driven by production industries."

True as that might be, it doesn't mean the world's most populated country is destined to hold the crown for as long as the U.S.. China is already suffering the growing pains of higher labor costs, labor shortages and a push for better working conditions in its factories.

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http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/china-ends-america%27s-century-old-manufacturing-dominance-536026.html?tickers=fxi,eem,^dji,^gspc,iyj,vaw,pgj&sec=topStories&pos=9&asset=&ccode=

[Wilms]

1. Clinton, Bush, Obama and US Corps End America's Century Old Manufacturing Dominance

Seriously.

[ET Awful]

5. You left off Reagan who laid the groundwork for it all to be possible

by lifting import tariffs and giving tax breaks or leaving gaping loopholes in tax code to make it cheaper to manufacture overseas.

[Wilms]

8. Thank you.

I was unaware of that particular contribution.

[Kat45]

11. ET Awful, haven't seen you around in a long time.

How are your sweet kittehs, Quinn and Althea, doing?

[ET Awful]

12. They're doing well, thanks for asking. I've been here, just not posting nearly as much.

I may post once or twice a week now days, I'm just too busy.

[howaboutme]

13. We made China the success it has become, not China

I agree. But I'd also add Congress too. As you said, it was primarily the global trade pacts that put the US worker at a big disadvantage, while the elected officials including Congress bent over for the multi-national CEOs and Wall St. bankster financiers lobbies who profited enormously at the expense of most Americans.

The PTB continue to dumb us down while this tribe that is afflicted with boundless greed and no loyalty to country continues to plunder us. As fewer and fewer Americans (except for the elite) can afford higher education they will be paid less and have less ability to fight this race to the bottom. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

[Cobalt-60]

2. We've had no real industrial capacity for decades

For decades our industrial economy has been hollowed out.
You know the "Dow Jones Industrials" you may hear about consider hamburgers and shakes as industrial output.
The test of our level of industrialization is to looks at the goods on the shelf of your local hardware store.
Did any of them come from the United States?
No? It must not be an industrial nation.

[JDPriestly]

3. I have been wondering how much of our trade consists of selling

the innards of our manufacturing sector to the third world.

We need to impose trade restrictions. Our economy is hemorrhaging jobs and opportunity.

Deborah Wince-Smith's comments are a cruel joke. I'd like to see her suggestions for innovations and new services that we could provide. There might be a couple, but not enough to keep the workers of our country fed, clothed and warm in winter.

[howaboutme]

14. The only solution is a massive tax increase on high earners.

I'd like to know how much of our "GDP" has been wound around the wheeling and dealing and trading that represent the capital markets and Wall Street.

Unlike manufacturing or most any other real job that provides service, or product or function they as a tribe are able to generously over pay each other, even though they produce effectively nothing of real value. The wealth alone creates a scheme that allows them to control both the system and government.

This tribe and I call them that because that is exactly what they are, a self serving group with loyalty only to their own and none to others or country. They serve each other and have figured out how to strip much of the country's wealth and put into their own pockets along with manipulating the policies that add to their wealth.

[Citizen Worker]

4. Within the next generation, perhaps sooner, we will have lost the knowledge and skill base to

manufacture. To regain those skills will be like learning to walk and talk. Already in my area there are shortages of skilled workers. Yep, even in this current economic disaster skill shortages are being seen. In another 20 years how many people will know how to read a micrometer or set up a lathe to make a nut and bolt? Tool and die makers were in short supply 25 years ago. Wonder what it is now? Without tool and die makers we won't be able to build the machines to build the products they might be used to produce.

Thank you Bill Clinton, GW, Obama and legions of democrats.

[fasttense]

6. The US really has no manufacturing policy.

We seem to have given up on manufacturing in the is country so much so that we don't even bother to develop a policy about it.

[notesdev]

7. Sure it does

Shipping factories to China is a manufacturing policy - if a piss-poor one.

[bemildred]

10. Our manufacturing policy is to exploit cheap labor overseas, gut unions, and concentrate wealth. nt

[bossy22]

9. not necessarily true

some news sources are starting to question this data since it is at odds with the much respected UN economic data

http://shopfloor.org/2011/03/u-s-manufacturing-remains-worlds-largest/18756

The issue is that they used exchange rates to determine dollar amounts for manufacturing so it would fluctuate year to year based on the strength of the currency. A better way of determining manufacturing output according to many sites is a value added calculation- that leaves the U.S. with a healthy lead