Why America Needs a National Manufacturing Strategy

A national manufacturing strategy would help U.S. industries stay on the cutting-edge of emerging technologies, enhance overall knowledge generation and thereby prevent economy-wide erosion of innovation capacity even if some market share is lost to overseas competitors.

A robust traded sector economy is essential to U.S. global competitiveness, and a strong manufacturing base is central to traded sector strength, as I have noted previously.

Unfortunately, manufacturing in the United States has lost competitive advantage in the last 15 years and unless this turns around significantly it will continue to be a drag on our efforts to fully recover from the Great Recession.

There is no inherent reason the United States could not run a significant trade surplus in manufacturing.  America possesses the tools, talent, and resources to revive industrial production and our innovation economy.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.industryweek.com/competitiveness/why-america-needs-national-manufacturing-strategy?goback=.gde_4765254_member_267015572#%21