Last week in The Wall Street Journal Mark Perry wrote an article titled “The Truth About U.S. Manufacturing.” In it, he repeated many of the same myths and fallacies the mainstream media usually recites about domestic manufacturing that permeates our society and leads to support for failed trade pacts.

“…empirical evidence tells a different story – of a thriving and growing U.S. manufacturing sector, and a country that remains by far the world’s largest manufacturer.” Nowhere does empirical evidence tell the story of a growing manufacturing sector. Manufacturing as a percent of GDP has dropped from 21 percent in 1980 to 13 percent in 2008. The U.S. share of world manufacturing production has declined from 31 percent in 1980 to 24 percent in 2008. While it is still true that the U.S. is the world’s largest manufacturer, we are also by far the world’s largest importer.

“Excluding recession-related decreases in 2001 and 2008-09, America’s manufacturing output has continued to increase since 1970.” Since 1975, America’s trade deficit has also increased, at a rate faster than our increase in exports. A surplus of $12.4 million in 1975 turned into a $834 billion deficit by 2008. This reinforces the fact that the media emphasizes America’s exports while neglecting imports. Even the president has fallen in this trap with his proposals to push the disastrous South Korean Free Trade Agreement, which will overall hurt the American economy.

According to Mark Perry, the real reason, the ‘truth’ as to why America is hemorrhaging jobs, is not because of outsourcing, but because of productivity gains. “We’re merely able to do it with a fraction of the workers needed in the past….the average U.S. factory worker is responsible today for more than $180,000 of annual manufacturing output, triple the $60,000 in 1972.” Whether or not those numbers are inflation-adjusted (which the author fails to mention), the end result is a nonsensical attempt to sweep outsourcing under the rug and contend it’s somehow better to work fewer people harder, with more people unemployed.

In Perry’s opinion, “That means yesterday’s farmhands and plant workers become today’s computer engineers, medical doctors and financial managers.” The fact of the matter however, is that plant workers are not becoming doctors. Plant workers, as well as Americans entering the work force, and people trying to retire, have been forced into low-skill, low-pay service jobs, if they can find work at all.

This is yet another shallow and misguided attempt by a major news source to peddle the philosophy of ‘free’ trade that is reducing this nation from a superpower to a colony (as we increasingly import manufactured goods and only export raw materials). It’s high time the media actually dug a little deeper into the numbers, and used cognitive thinking to realize that the chorus of ‘free’ trade we have been inundated with for the past few decades is not the answer to America’s economic woes, but is the cause of the problem.

Original article can be found here (Wall St. Journal account required to read the full story).

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