Why does manufacturing matter? Throughout my career in the electronics industry, I’ve witnessed thousands of companies prosper and then outsource overseas, believing they’ll grow faster and garner easier profits. We held manufacturing in low esteem and underestimated its essentialness.  There was nary a hint of connection or coordination between our industry, government, and academia over its strategic value. When Covid struck the alarm bells rang.  The chaos that ensued exposed that our manufacturing base had seen its clock cleaned by countries who put manufacturing, engineering, and education at their center stage.  

Professionals and pundits over the years have called our form of capitalism a free market, but was it more like a free for all market?  Little thought was given to the ramifications of the loss of our manufacturing sector. But, along with the loss of jobs went the loss of IP, control of technology and the manufacturing innovation it sparks. Ultimately it weakens and threatens homeland security, our leadership role, strength, liberty, freedom, and our culture.  

Pushing critical manufacturing offshore has exposed some ugly truths. A weakened manufacturing base creates a weak supply chain. We’ve found that critical resources have long been locked up and our ability to reverse course is going to be a multi-decade and monumental task. 

It’s not just prioritizing manufacturing; it’s understanding that maintaining control of our critical electronics and technology supply chain is the fuel that keeps the country strong and safe. As we’ve witnessed, our economic success and homeland security require uninterrupted access to a countless number of critical components. Electronic components are like members of a battalion, they’re only as fast as their slowest or missing member. A PCBA with 99 of 100 BOM items still won’t work without all its members present. Unfortunately, our source of supply is not under our control and it’s those millions of various components that feed every conceivable piece of military equipment, hardware, medical device, industrial equipment, plane, and drone.

To gain control of our supply chain, it’s helpful to see how others have dominated it and why. This topic has been long watched and researched but not always in the public eye. The story is best told in Susan Shirks’ book, Overreach. It illuminates the history with impeccable precision and detail.     

When I began my career, my wife was able to stay home with our children. She could do this because I was in the manufacturing industry at a time when “Made in America” meant something. We produced things here and made real money with great returns for our economy and our people. Life was good, but then we started outsourcing manufacturing. It started with undesirable manufacturing, and then transitioned to critical areas like electronic components, software, and then the actual design engineering. We were told by experts that we needed to be a “service economy”. In hindsight, that was a bad idea. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that every single manufacturing job creates three other jobs within the economy due to the wages spent. 

Fast forward to today and we see a sputtering and hopeful movement to re-shore manufacturing to the US, Mexico and safer regions. It must be long lasting, not the fleeting gesture of just one administration.  

I was fortunate to witness manufacturing history with my father and grandfather.  My grandfather started as a door-to-door salesman for Wrigley’s chewing gum in the 1950s and then jumped into the exciting world of electronics, selling for US Capacitor back when they manufactured their electrolytic capacitors right here. Both my dad and grandfather built small electronic manufacturing sales agencies, and dad went on to invent some clever and innovative interconnect products (think magnetic RJ45 jacks/firewire technology/SIG interconnect connectors). The industry has served three generations of my family well and it’s been hard to watch its decline. 

Dominating manufacturing and leading-edge technologies is essential to protecting liberty, freedom, and life in America. It’s not rocket science, but it is complicated and requires a sophisticated solution.  

We’ve found ourselves over a barrel (oil, electronics, restricted access to minerals, etc.) and there’s no easy fix. We have smart engineering and technology, great educational institutions, think tanks, experts, and rich natural resources. How hard is it to pull these dynamics into a winning formula that puts our critical supply chain back on the map? 

The potential economic benefit involved in fixing our supply chain is a staggering figure if we simply start manufacturing the critical components that we ditched over the last 30+ years. This alone would ignite an economic bonanza. It begins with critical items, and electronics is one of many priorities. It’s responsible for trillions of dollars and directly impacts our defense industry. The electronics industry is indispensable, and the reality is we became middlemen, not manufacturers, looking in from the outside. How to fix this is no small task and finding the people is not the problem. They knock on the door daily and we turn them away because we don’t have a strategic and cohesive plan to help them help us. It is America and they will come if there’s a good reason.   

Have we learned a lesson that is stark enough and motivating enough, or will it require more pain? How do we accomplish and navigate these waters with the top two contenders for leadership in Washington? Damn good question. I wish I could point to a candidate like JFK, Ron Reagan or Abe Lincoln now, but I can’t. We can only hope to channel their spirits during this turbulent time.    

Can we pull a rabbit out of the hat? The election is coming! Our two leading candidates represent crazy and feeble, and neither will bend a knee for a better candidate within their nitwit network. They have no real solutions-based thinking going on. If we find and elect a better candidate, can she or he unite us within a divided system? Your involvement can only help. Share your thoughts and solutions. Or run for president….. quickly.