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Podcast: Why American and Canadian Manufacturing Aren’t Dead
Much common perception holds that manufacturing in America and Canada are on the decline. But in this podcast, Joe Atikian, an economist and author, uses his trained eye and raw data to challenge this common perception.
“Our attitude toward agriculture and manufacturing should be changing. We don’t have many people involved in agriculture anymore, but nobody says that we should go back to harvesting corn by hand just to get jobs back.” – Joe Atikian, Economist and Author
Atikian, author of “Industrial Shift: The Structure of the New World Economy,” explores the following with Entrada’s Doug Donahue:
- What shifts are occurring in manufacturing and why Atikian questions the perception that the field on the whole is on a decline
- How industrial output in US and Canada have doubled since the 1970s
- How advancements in automation has not hurt manufacturing but has just streamlined processes
- Mexico’s gradual transition from agriculture to manufacturing, mirroring changes in a now-developed Asian manufacturing powerhouse
- How the Mexican government should promote manufacturing and what improvements should be made in education and within the Mexican infrastructure for transport
- Best practices for establishing sustainable manufacturing operations in Mexico in order to conduct support long-term business expansion
- Mexico’s growth potential, due to factors such as a rail network with one-tenth the density of that in the US
- The competitive advantages for American manufacturers in Mexico.
In the audio, Atikian reveals why he initially began questioning the common perception that manufacturing is a shrinking field. “I started looking intothe numbers to see if I could find out how bad it really is, but on two out of those three counts I found it tobe almost the opposite of the bleak picture that you usually read about. That’s the key reason that I started to question the so-called decline of manufacturing, is that real output is growing and it’s growing just about everywhere in the world.”