Thursday, June 16, 2011

U.S. Manufacturing in 2009 = Germany, Italy, France, Russia, U.K., Brazil and Canada COMBINED

The chart above helps put the size of the U.S. manufacturing sector into perspective. In 2009, the U.S. produced $2.33 trillion of manufacturing output including mining and utilities, according to data from the United Nations.  The U.S. ranked #1 in the world for manufacturing, and produced 14% more output than second-ranked China ($2.04 trillion) and twice as much output as third-ranked Japan ($1.15 trillion). 

What's most impressive is that the U.S. produced almost as much manufacturing output as the manufacturing sectors of Germany (#4), Italy (#5), France (#6), Russia (#7), U.K. (#8), Brazil (#9) and Canada (#10) combined ($2.44 trillion).

4 Comments:

At 6/16/2011 7:10 PM, Blogger OBloodyHell said...

Queue the whiners who complain that all we do is assemble parts built elsewhere, as though that's not just as significant, if not more so, as producing intermediate items from raw materials.

Doesn't matter if the statement about "all we do is assemble" is true or not, the point is to discount or discredit the amount of manufacturing that goes on here to try and suggest that we need to invoke trade barriers, voluntary or involuntary, to "keep our jobs at home".

They fail to grasp the significance of the principle of Comparative Advantage.

More simply, they fail to grasp the moral behind the tale of
The Nation That Lost Its Jobs, But Got Them Back

 
At 6/18/2011 8:18 AM, Blogger VangelV said...

You will excuse me if I do not jump up and down in excitement. I would love to see output based on constant dollars rather than what the BLS pretends are constant dollars. And I would love to see much of the useless sector, such as defense system manufacturing, pulled out of the data. And the output adjusted to reflect units, not artificial pricing levels. I care about the change in the megawatts produced, not their 'price.' Let us pull out the subsidies that go into the production of electricity, ethanol, TV sets, or whatever and see what is really happening instead of looking at some aggregate figure and trying to assign to it a meaning that it does not have.

 
At 6/19/2011 11:04 PM, Blogger Mkelley said...

Imagine what the US could do if we told the radical enviros to stuff it. There could be a lot more high paying jobs in mining, logging, and oil if we encouraged production of our rich natural resources. A mining company in my area recently spent a boat load of money buying several mines up in Canada. One of the big reasons they went there was because of the "mine friendly" environment up North. This country would rather buy raw materials from others than produce them here.

 
At 6/20/2011 8:13 AM, Blogger VangelV said...

A mining company in my area recently spent a boat load of money buying several mines up in Canada. One of the big reasons they went there was because of the "mine friendly" environment up North. This country would rather buy raw materials from others than produce them here.

The environment in the US is pathetic. Given the natural resource endowment I would normally have a huge amount of money invested in the United States. But the environmental movement and political conditions have discouraged such investments. So now I have far more capital invested in a place like Haiti than I do in the US. The same is true for Chile, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Tanzania, Iraq, Sweden, Canada, etc. It is sad that the US voters keep putting in place governments that discourage capital formation. And that they cannot understand that they have created their own problems.

 

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