The U.S.A. Is Still the World's Largest Manufacturer Dr. Mark J. Perry Rating: Perfect 12345 Oct 11, 2009 The chart above shows manufacturing output of selected countries and the BRIC countries, as a share of world manufacturing output in 2007, using United Nations data via the BLS (I haven't been able yet to find comparable data for 2008). It's interesting that U.S. factories produced almost twice as much output in 2007 as China, and the U.S. produced an amount equivalent to the total manufacturing output of the four BRIC countries combined (Brazil, Russia, India and China). As a Cato Study concluded in 2007, "Reports of the death of U.S. manufacturing have been greatly exaggerated." And as David Brooks wrote in 2008, "Instead of fleeing to Asia, U.S. manufacturing output is up over recent decades. As Thomas Duesterberg of Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, a research firm, has pointed out, the U.S.âs share of global manufacturing output has actually increased slightly since 1980." According to the Federal Reserve data, the U.S. produced almost $3 trillion of industrial output in 2008, measured in 2000 dollars (or about $3.7 trillion in 2008 dollars). In other words, if the U.S. manufacturing sector had been counted as a separate country, it would have been tied with Germany as the world's fourth largest economy, behind the U.S. (non-manufacturing), Japan, and China, and ahead of the entire economies of France, U.K., Italy and Russia. Bottom Line: The U.S. is still the world's largest manufacturer.
The US represents a larger % of global manufacturing output than in 1995. The percentage share gained by China has been lost by Japan, not the US.
Maybe not. "Output" is measured in "final price" and has a significant labor component. In the US it's likely $20/hr or more. In China, $1/hr? If measured in "units of output", China may have already surpassed the USA. IOW... does the USA PRODUCE more or is it just that what we produce COSTS more?
First of all, China is not even on the list ??? Second of all, grouping the EU (15 countries) does not mean a whole lot. It is not like the US can start adding more states to their total, while the EU does. Hey! We just annexed Canada and Japan! Why not just lump together the Americas and see if it surpasses EU? Or the Asian continent? Because it is irrelevant. This is about country output, not regional.
However, Europe is often compared to the USA in many aspects. They collectively have about 1/3 more population, so one might expect a commensurate level of economic output...
Metals, minerals and chemical products are the largest U.S. manufacturing sectors, but you are not going to see them in Wal-Mart or Tiffany's. The U.S. also manufactures motor vehicles and other means of transportation, foodstuffs, and computers and electronics, machinery, appliances and furniture. Before the end of this business cycle, the real value of U.S. manufacturing output was never higher. If that is true, why is it we can go into a store and have a difficulty in finding goods produced in the United States? The simple answer is that many of the goods that are manufactured in the U.S. are not finished consumer goods. Often they are parts or components and capital goodsthat may be exported and further processed or assembled abroad, often in affiliates of U.S. multinationals. Metals, minerals and chemical products are the largest U.S. manufacturing sectors, but you are not going to see them in Wal-Mart or Tiffany's. The U.S. also manufactures motor vehicles and other means of transportation, foodstuffs, computers, and electronics, machinery, appliances and furniture. Wrong Metrics The popular under-appreciation of the economic prowess of American manufacturers may stem from two other facts. First, manufacturing has shrunk as a share of the overall economy. In the past decade alone, manufacturing's share of GDP has fallen from 15.5% to nearly 11% now. Second, there has been a persistent loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States. The share of private sector jobs accounted for by manufacturing has fallen from 26.5% in 1969 to almost 9% now. There were more than 17 million manufacturing workers then. There are now less than 12 million; the least in almost 70 years. The manufacturing sector is smaller compared to the overall economy and there are fewer people working in manufacturing ergo the U.S. lost its manufacturing edge. Wrong. Manufacturing has not shrunk, productivity has gone up. http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle/articleid/3523292#
What are units of output? If you're talking about number of goods produced, while taking "final price" out of the equation, how would one arrive at a fair comparison?