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by jbm 81 days ago
> We make plenty of stuff at scale. We just haven’t designed any of military around it since WWII.

When people claim that America is losing manufacturing jobs, you get the "Oh we produce high value products, mostly military".

Then you get posts like this. How is one to reconcile these ideas? Is Lockheed Martin the Ferrari of weapons?

1 comments

The US is responsible for over 10% of world manufacturing, putting them in second place of all countries (after China).

>When people claim that America is losing manufacturing jobs

That percentage goes down every year due to reduced manufacturing but also jobs are lost to high-tech automation in manufacturing. But it's still a buttload.

The 10% in value does not account about the fraction of a final American product that consists of parts or raw materials imported from elsewhere.

Many of the best known American products, e.g. computers, are only assembled in USA from imported parts.

If the imports from certain countries would be completely interrupted, it is unknown how much of that US manufacturing would be able to continue.