After the trade policy panel concluded I got into a discussion with a guy who warned about the decline of U.S. manufacturing, claiming that 40,000 factories have shuttered in recent years. I told him this was due more to productivity improvements than free trade, and that manufacturing output actually remains quite strong. He told me to check my figures. Well, here's a graph I found:
I wish I had asked the guy for his card so I could pass this along. Nonetheless I offer it up to help dispel manufacturing myths from the minds of any readers of this blog.
2 comments:
What is the unit of industrial production on the right scale?
It's just a manufacturing index in which 100 represents the output for the year 2002.
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