I don't buy it - US manufacturing simply wasn't competitive with overseas prices. If it was just automation, it would still be here - only automated. It's not.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/global-manufacturing-scor...
It’s the jobs that went away, not the manufacturing sector or the dollars.
Resurgence implies it was not great for a long time.
If your automation argument was true, this would not have happened - output would have increased exponentially and we wouldn't have lost share. Automation is making it more economical now - but that's a recent development, after the decimation of the American middle class.
I'll always be waiting. Best of luck!
American manufacturing grew in the last 20 years.(and probably before that)
Automation didn't produce the increase in jobs, to match population growth... But a claim that US manufacturing shrunk is false. No one in this thread made a claim, including you, that this is about "global scale". You just threw in this argument to avoid accepting the fact that you're wrong.
It is though. The U.S. steel industry which everyone thinks is dead, for example, is producing at about 70% of its all-time peak. It's just doing it with 15% or less of the peak workforce. And the current numbers represent about 5% of world steel production - which is consistent with our population, just not with the fact that we once produced the majority of the world's steel.
https://blog.boydmetals.com/the-past-present-and-future-of-t...
This is a pretty squishy claim, but there's a mountain of work in economics showing that the Jones Act punishes Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and Guam.
> lowering costs by offshoring labor had hollowed out the middle class in America
Again this isn't a settled claim. Automation probably had more to do with the shift in workforce. Moreover all advanced economies have shifted to more service work, without necessarily experiencing some of the same difficulties as the US.
The Jones Act has actually been shown to have made US ship building and ports less competitive by shielding them from competition. US ships and ports are basically 3rd rate at this point.