South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Writing in The American Prospect, Louis Uchitelle asks if it is too late to reinvigorate domestic manufacturing.

One problem is clout. As manufacturing’s presence shrinks, so does its influence. Not that the nation’s manufacturers are milquetoasts when it comes to lobbying, but the voices from the growing financial and service sectors are louder, and globalization continues to be the flavor of the day. “If anything, business schools are teaching their students the importance of offshoring,” says Yoshi Tsurumi, a professor at the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York.
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Even labor has a diminished stake in defending manufacturing, since the portion of the workforce employed in the sector has shrunk to 10 percent today from 26 percent in 1960 and 13 percent as recently as 2000.
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That decline can be reversed, but the will to do so — the laser-like focus on making things in America — may no longer exist or may be too compromised to be easily revived. The most powerful lobbyist on behalf of manufacturing is the National Association of Manufacturers. But its members include multinationals like Dow Chemical and Caterpillar with factory networks across the globe, thus dividing their loyalties. Even the NAM’s numerous small members aren’t as rooted in America as they once were, which helps to explain the NAM’s support of free-trade agreements that suppress barriers to the movement of goods across borders.