Manufacturing, the engine of US economy, is sputtering to a halt thanks to three decades of Republican and Republican lite aka Democratic administrations, including the current one.

From a vibrant nation making products for domestic and world-wide consumers that provided living wage jobs in this country, the US has become  a debtor nation with Great Depression unemployment numbers, mired in a fast food and corrupt financial services economy, a shadow of its former strong industrial nation self, dependent on other countries for everything from military supplies to clothing....a sorry state of affairs that also impacts US security.

Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and now Obama have consigned "Made in the USA" to history.

As James Parks writes at AFL-CIO blog: "For nearly 300 years, the United States invested in producing goods and, as a result, became the richest nation in history. But for the past few decades, policymakers have systematically dismantled our manufacturing base through bad tax policies and short-sighted trade agreements that encourage consumption of cheap foreign imports and provide incentives for U.S.-based companies to export jobs.

"As a result, some 40,000 U.S. manufacturing plants closed between 2001 and 2008, resulting in the loss of millions of family-supporting jobs. From 2001 to 2007, some 2.3 million jobs were lost just from the nation’s huge trade deficit with China alone.

"A big factor in the decline of manufacturing is so-called free trade. The reality is that in a global economy, some other countries don’t always play by the rules, says Economic Strategy Institute President Clyde Prestowitz, who co-authored the chapter on trade [in new book, Manufacturing a Better Future for America]  Many nations are actively pursuing investment and production while the United States depends on imports and lets its manufacturing move offshore, he says. At the same time, those nations have laws that restrict the amount of goods that can be imported from other countries.

"Prestowitz quotes a top executive of a U.S.-based company building a plant in China saying: “Everybody knows that if you are going to sell anything in China, you have to make it in China,” and the same thing is true in many of the U.S. trading partners. Those countries have thriving manufacturing bases while U.S. lawmakers allow ours to dwindle away, he adds.

"Several of the panelists pointed out the Obama administration’s hesitation to insist that the nation’s automakers use U.S.-made parts as an example of the need for the White House to more actively support U.S. manufacturing. 

"Peter Navarro, a professor at the University of California-Irvine, who wrote the chapter on foreign incentives, points out that China, for example, manipulates its currency to keep its prices low and make imports expensive, benefits from lax environmental and health rules and forces companies to turn over their technology to do business in China.

"At the same time, the promise of new green jobs is not enough to revive the economy alone, Prestowitz said. It actually could increase the trade deficit because so many of the green materials are made overseas. While U.S. workers may get jobs installing green technology, the real wealth is going to the producers.

"The bottom line, says Richard McCormick, editor of the book, is that the United States

'is broke because it has stopped producing what it consumes. The mindset among America’s economic elite that the country does not need an industrial base has put the country and the world economy in a ditch. Only with a revitalized manufacturing base can America assure itself a prosperous and hopeful future.' "

Unfortunately, all this wisdom and warning will fall on deaf ears, as the Obama administration, filled with Clintonites and Republicans who damaged a formerly industrialized US, continues woodenheaded, dangerous, corporatist, and "free not fair trade" policies that will bury manufacturing in the US.