Beijing-Based Analyst: ‘America Can’t Build Anymore’

At Bloomberg.com and in The Japan Times, Beijing-based technology analyst Dan Wang writes, “America can’t build anymore.” He says that while Americans dominate high-tech sectors, the U.S. today “struggles to make even relatively simple products such as swabs, masks and protective gear.”

“Learning to build again will take more than a resurgence of will,” he writes. The U.S. will need to re-establish process knowledge, skilled talent, and industrial clusters to support manufacturing. Meanwhile, U.S. policymakers and other leaders will need to treat manufacturing work, “even in low-margin goods, as fundamentally valuable,” while providing incentives “to bring production back home.” 5/11/2020