Death of American Manufacturing

Brett M. Decker, (pictured) Editorial Page Editor of The Washington Times, reviewed Patrick J. Buchanan's national best seller, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?

In his review, Decker calls on readers to do the "China Test" and see how many products readers use on a daily basis are Made in China. The fact is almost everything we use (computers, iPhones, dishware) is made in China. And that's where Buchanan's book makes an impression with Decker.

Decker writes:

In his new blockbuster book, “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” Patrick J. Buchanan chronicles the demise of American manufacturing. “From 2000 to 2010, America saw 50,000 factories close and 6 million manufacturing jobs disappear,” he writes. “Manufacturing, 27 percent of the U.S. economy in 1950, is down to 11 percent and accounts for only 9 percent of the non-farm labor force.” This is not only bad for the working class because service jobs pay half as much on average as manufacturing jobs, it is dangerous for national security as well. Military contractors are dependent on parts made abroad, which means America’s ability to project force is tied to foreign suppliers whose interests might not always coincide with our own. “The defense industry has been off-shored,” warned former South Carolina Sen. Fritz Hollings. “Today, we can’t go to war except for the favor of a foreign country.”....President Obama has admitted that “At no time in human history has a nation of diminished economic vitality maintained its military and political primacy,” yet his policies have gutted the U.S. economy to its worst condition since the Great Depression. Clare Booth Luce quipped that, “The difference between an optimist and a pessimist is that the pessimist is usually better informed.” Pat Buchanan’s new book provides all the information anyone needs to be pessimistic about the future.

Read the full review here.