The Destruction of the Manufacturing Base is Eroding America’s Great Cities

The turn of the 20th century in America saw steel mills thriving, mass production methods churning out automobiles and a boom in innovation that gave rise to revolutionary items like the telephone and electric light bulb. But this industry that helped America grow into a superpower continues its percipitous decline. Between 2000-2004 alone, three million good paying US manufacturing jobs were lost according to the think tank Economic Policy Institute.

American manufacturers can no longer compete with Japanese technology or Chinese wage rates of 33 cents an hour. Instead of supporting itself on wealth produced from production, the US sustains itself on imports (a $765 billion balance of trade deficit in 2006), loans ($644 billion from Japan, $350 billion from China among many others) and debt (approaching 9 trillion).

And America’s manufacturing city populations have dwindled due to the lagging manufacturing sector. A recent CNN.Money article documented the decline:

“New York is one of the few major old industrial towns that have not experienced a substantial shrinking in the number of its core residents. The top 10 cities of a hundred years ago would have included places like Baltimore (now at 631,366, the 19th largest), Boston (590,763, 22nd), Cleveland (444,313 40th) and St. Louis (347181, 52nd).”

American manufacturing cities are shrinking as the industries that once supported them can no longer compete in the world. Job loss, rapid accumulating debt and population decline in the cities that brought America to power are not characteristics of sustainable long-term economic policy.

Use the search engine on EconomyInCrisis.org to contact your local congressman and tell them that America needs to focus on manufacturing competitively. The United States should look to Japan’s economic model by focusing on capital and knowledge intensive manufacturing industries. Though Japan lacks size (slightly smaller than California in overall area) their Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) focused on improving and developing their manufacturing industry. The result turned a Japan that had nothing following WWII into a country today with the second largest GDP in the world.

The United States can and must do better- it is up to all of us to get the message out today.

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