US manufacturing crown slips

[The Northerner]

The US remained the world’s biggest manufacturing nation by output last year, but is poised to relinquish this slot in 2011 to China – thus ending a 110-year run as the number one country in factory production.

The figures are revealed in a league table being published on Monday by IHS Global Insight, a US-based economics consultancy.

Last year, the US created 19.9 per cent of world manufacturing output, compared with 18.6 per cent for China, with the US staying ahead despite a steep fall in factory production due to the global recession.

That the US is still top comes as a surprise, since in 2008 – before the slump of the past two years took hold – IHS predicted it would lose pole position in 2009.

However, a relatively resilient US performance kept China in second place, says IHS, which predicts that faster growth in China will deny the US the top spot next year.

Read more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af2219cc-7c86-11df-8b74-00144feabdc0.html

[DJ13]

1. The free market idiots proclaim "Mission Accomplished!"

Traitors, the whole lot of them.

[humblebum]

2. Agreed and Highly recommended. nt

[asdjrocky]

3. "a relatively resilient US performance"

That means working harder for less.

[anthroguy101]

4. What do we do about it? nt

[FormerDittoHead]

5. Frankly. I'm honestly surprised to see we were still higher than China.

I suppose that's because the figures are in dollars (as opposed to "things"), and China doesn't make cars. Yet. The sale of 1 American made car offsets many LCD TVs, computers, iPods and clothes...

[doc03]

6. I was very surprised, I figured we lost that

crown years ago.

[Statistical]

7. Not just autos.

US makes a lot of big ticket items.... weapon systems, satellites, rockets, passenger jets, nuclear reactor components, heavy industrial components, industrial vehicles (tractors, excavators, dump trucks, etc).

Until know China has won on volume and US on high end components but looks like even that is slowly shifting.

[NoNothing]

8. Silliness. China makes more than twice as many cars as the U.S.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_motor_vehicle_production

Granted, most of them are pretty crummy by our standards, but still, your post is not even remotely accurate.

[FormerDittoHead]

14. I didn't know that!

Curious why they don't make / export any to here. It's not like they don't know how to produce quality goods.

[Heywood J]

16. Search Youtube for Chinese crash test results

and you'll have your answer. Several of them compact the entire vehicle into the passenger compartment. GM, Ford, Chrysler, the Germans, and the Japanese would have a field day with advertising those.

[Jester Messiah]

12. Ditto that. I thought Asia in general had eaten our lunch long ago. [nt]

[trotsky]

18. Yes, that was also a surprise to me.

And I suspect your reasoning is correct.

(On edit, reading the above, I still think your reasoning is correct, given the value of our cars versus those shitty deathboxes.)

[OhioChick]

9. Surprised it took this long n/t

[anthroguy101]

10. I've lost more pride in my country that I didn't need to lose

[burnsei sensei]

13. +1

nt

[NoNothing]

11. In German, oder English, I know how to count down...

"Und I'm learning Chinese," says Wernher Von Braun.

[dkofos]

15. Do they still count making burgers as manufacturing??

If they do we will ALWAYS be #1!!!!!!!!

[Subdivisions]

17. How the hell have we managed to stay in the lead for so long with

a quarter of China's workforce and with what has been readily characterized everywhere as having "sent all our manufacturing abroad"?