"American Made" Anxiety

Forbes magazine website recently published an article titled "The End of China's Manufacturing Industry and the Industrial Revival of the United States." It is said that the United States will eventually regain its dominant position due to advanced manufacturing, and it insults China's exposure to the manufacturing bubble. Manufacturing refers to the point.

Since the beginning of this year, there have been quite a few articles published in Forbes, and individual US members have even made a fuss about it. They are eager to burn the products labelled “Made in China” together. The government's vaunted publicity of "Made in the United States" and the media's tendency to follow suit have just reflected the anxiety in the United States about the "Made in the United States," even if it is awkward and unconfident.

Obviously, the U.S. economy has been evasive for a long period of time and has been financially and lightly industrialized, resulting in an imbalance. The Obama administration has repeatedly expressed its desire to revitalize the manufacturing industry and put forward the development goal of “increasing production and exports, lowering the financial ratio, and increasing employment”. Among these, we can already see the government's anxiety over the current "Made in America" ​​sluggishness.

In the past two years, part of the U.S. manufacturing jobs returned, in addition to the increase in the cost of overseas labor and other reasons, there are temporary and contingent factors such as changes in exchange rates and rising prices of overseas energy transportation. To reverse economic imbalances in the United States, it is necessary to lower the high point in the manufacturing industry. Relying on a dominant industry - advanced manufacturing to revive the entire manufacturing industry, this has become the consensus of many people of insight in the United States.

After all, the biggest problem faced by the U.S. manufacturing industry is the issue of talent. This is the real focus of anxiety. The relocation of the US manufacturing industry is by no means merely due to cheap labor in foreign countries. Apple executives themselves have admitted that the flexibility, diligence, and industrial skills of foreign workers greatly exceed their counterparts in the United States.

However, worries about the talent issue have been overwhelmed by the voice of "American manufacturing is back." According to a survey conducted by Deloitte Consulting Co., Ltd. in October 2011, 600,000 jobs in U.S. manufacturing were unfilled that year, because companies could not find workers with the right skills.

The development of new technologies requires talented people with new knowledge, but it is necessary to develop advanced manufacturing industries and bypass talents. The emergence of new composite materials, 3D printing technology changes the manufacturing process, which requires more skilled workers to master complex new manufacturing processes. No wonder the "Washington Post" once published an article calling for the revitalization of the U.S. manufacturing industry. It could not be seen as an expert. "The U.S. needs to re-plan the education system."

Unfortunately, the article published by Forbes in the United States, despite recognizing that the United States needs to regain its dominant position through advanced manufacturing, did not mention anything about the most critical personnel training issues. In addition, the subtext of this article is that the advanced manufacturing industry is the manufacturing industry in the future, and it seems that those engaged in low-end manufacturing are not manufacturing industries. They are all “bubbles”. This conclusion is difficult to accept.

Blindly raising oneself to belittle others may not be able to really achieve self-improvement. "Made in America" ​​does have many advantages, but it also faces many challenges. If we turn a blind eye to too many obvious challenges and allow a few politicians to blindly show up and media hype, the "American-made" anxiety disorder will probably continue for quite some time.