The Centrality of Manufacturing to America’s Future Prosperity
February 16, 2011 / Bruce Stokes
New America Foundation
In his State of the Union address January 25, 2011, President Barack Obama mentioned the word “manufacturing” just once. This was the only time in his three such speeches to Congress that he has uttered the “M” word. The president’s failure to acknowledge, even in passing, a sector of the economy that accounts for 11 percent of America’s GDP is a metaphor for his administration’s disdain for manufacturing as an important contributor to the nation’s future well-being.
To be fair to president Obama, his predecessor, George W. Bush, only mentioned manufacturing once in eight State of the Union addresses. And the State of the Union is not necessarily neither the time nor the place to lay out a detailed game plan for reinvigorating industry in America.
Nevertheless, the president framed his speech as a call to arms for the U.S. economy. “The future is ours to win,” he said. “This is our generation's Sputnik moment.”
But the vision of America’s future that Obama then painted was in laboratories, in the hands of scientists and engineers. It was not on shop floors and in factories, where eleven million Americans still work.
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