"Detroit was the arsenal of democracy in World War II and the incubator of the American middle class. It was the city that taught mass production to the rest of the world. It was a place that made cars, trucks and other tangible products, not derivatives. And it was the architect of the quintessentially American idea of putting people to work and paying them a decent wage. It’s frightening to think seriously about what we’ve allowed to happen to this city and what is now happening to the middle class and the American economy as a whole."

Most of the millions of manufacturing jobs lost during the recession will never return as companies find ways to continue increasing production with a scaled-down workforce.

To renew America's economy, the U.S. must stop rewarding overseas manufacturing and investment.

One thing that has been lost in the shuffle through decades of free trade zealously is the simple fact that it matters where things are made. With the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs and the closures of hundreds of thousands of factories the ability of our country to innovate and to make the products we consume has been greatly diminished. This in turn has shrunken our middle-class to disasterous levels.

Foreign entities spent $267.8 billion to acquire or establish U.S. businesses - certainly a recipe for disaster. Foreign direct investment flocked to America in 2007. According to a preliminary analysis of the data available, the Bureau of Economic Analysis found that in 2007 foreign direct investment reached nearly record levels.

Real solutions will only be achieved and sustained when manufacturing industries reinsert themselves back onto American soil.

"What the Federal Government Can Do to Encourage Green Production" Suggestion is a mandatory environmental product label policy. The system would be similar to the food labels we are all familiar with. The information would include natural resources, energy consumed, and wastes created in manufacture of a product.

There are entire industries that have been decimated through the outsourcing of production to overseas operations. .... What would have happened to the United States of America if it wasn’t for the vision of Alexander Hamilton? Back in the latter years of the 18th century following American independence, most politicians and even Adam Smith himself advised America away from developing a manufacturing economy. According to Smith, stopping the importation of European manufacturers would have obstructed instead of promoted growth in the United States.

Why do American conservative organizations lobby against manufacturing in America, thereby costing jobs, closing factories and wiping out communities? Are some of them getting money from other countries?

If done right, the “buy American” provision could have been a boon to the American economy and especially its beleaguered manufacturing base.

While formerly living in the lap of luxury we allowed the greatest economy on earth to fall apart by living on imports and foreign financed debt. The United States is in open competition with the same countries from which we buy our goods and finance our government. These countries supply our consumption while simultaneously competing fiercely against our companies in international markets.

"Farouk Shami, a Palestinian-born hairdresser who built a $1 billion manufacturing company around a popular line of hair irons, is moving all of his production of hand-held appliances from China to a sprawling new factory here. The move flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which says gadgets like this are best made in a low-cost country. But, he says, outsourcing has led to a loss of control over manufacturing and distribution."

Over the past 20 years 3.7 million manufacturing jobs has been lost. These figures are a grim reminder that America can no longer manufacture competitively. How did this happen? Two causes stand out: low international wage rates in countries like China and Mexico that America will not and can not compete with, and America’s abandonment of capital and knowledge intensive industries.

The United States lags behind all but one industrialized nation (France) in terms of the proportion of its economy devoted to manufacturing. The manufacturing base in the U.S. has been so diminished over the past decades by ill-advised trade and tax policies that even major proponents of outsourcing are realizing the after-effects of their choices.

If the Obama administration has a strategy for reviving manufacturing, Douglas Bartlett would like to know what it is. Buffeted by foreign competition, Mr. Bartlett recently closed his printed circuit board factory, founded 57 years ago by his father, and laid off the remaining 87 workers. Last week, he auctioned off the machinery, and soon he will raze the factory itself in Cary, Ill.

A revived manufacturing sector is critical to leading a recovery of the slumping US economy, underscoring the need for new policies, business leaders told a national economic summit. The second day Tuesday of the Detroit, Michigan summit seeking an economic strategy offered more comments on the critical importance of the industrial sector in view of the global crisis. "One of the lessons we have learned from the crisis is that you cannot create create wealth in an economy simply by spinning things around and around," said Jayson Myers, president of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters Association. "You create wealth by building things people want to buy." Those comments were echoed by others.

Sen. Ernest F. "Fritz" Hollings: ... What’s the matter with the President and Congress? ... Now we are in real trouble. We’ve lost the markets for textiles, cameras, radios, TVs, steel, electronics, computers, communications equipment, machine tools, advance technology, robots, steppers, etc. The little that we produce has now been bought up by foreigners. Big Blue, IBM and the Hummer went to China; Westinghouse Nuclear and all of its patents went to Japan; Bell labs and all of its discoveries went to France; Bethlehem Steel to is now Russian; Genentech went to Switzerland. And we can’t prepare for war. Boeing’s fighter planes depend on parts from India and Sikorsky for its helicopter must get its tail motor from Turkey.

Foreign entities will very soon own everything of value in the USA and then become the major (or only) source of employment for US citizens.........Economic value is created only when you grow something in the earth, mine something from the earth, or make (manufacture) something.

Let me begin this article by describing this economic anomaly called a trade deficit. When imports and exports of a country are in balance all trading countries benefit. Each country specializes in what it does best; exchanging its most competitive products for products it could not produce as cheaply as the trading country. When trade is in balance all countries benefit and living standards rise in each benefitting country. The second major point is that trade deficits must be financed. A country simply cannot have a trade deficit unless private or government investors are willing to finance it. In the case of America we have had a trade deficit for three decades. In 2007 we exported $1.645 billion and imported $2.346 billion imports, with a deficit of -$700 billion(1). To make this happen we print money that we loan to our trading partners. Our two biggest trading partners are Japan and China who send the excess of the money they earn back to us by buying U.S. Government bonds and other government assets so that we buy more imports. Normally trade deficits are self correcting because as the deficit grows the country’s currency begins to decline in price in the world market. This makes exported goods less expensive and foreign goods more expensive and trade is supposed to balance itself.

U.S. industrial output fell to its lowest level in almost seven years in February and manufacturing in New York state slumped further this month, according to data released on Monday that pointed to a deteriorating economy. Adding to the economy's problems, the Treasury said foreigners were net sellers of U.S. securities in January, a worrying development at a time when the government is rolling out a massive spending plan to break the 14-month recession. The Federal Reserve said industrial production fell 1.4 percent last month, following a 1.9 percent drop in January and worse than market expectations for a 1.1 percent decline. Compared with February 2008, output declined 11.2 percent, with the index at 99.7, the lowest since April 2002, the Fed said.