Harold Meyerson explains why we must revive American manufacturing:
So who’s for reviving American manufacturing? American manufacturers? Well, some of them, under certain conditions. The American people? Most of them, under most conditions. The American government? Well, parts of it. Sometimes.
Reviving American manufacturing may be an economic and strategic necessity, without which our trade deficit will continue to climb, our credit-based economy will produce and consume even more debt, and our already-rickety ladders of economic mobility, up which generations of immigrants have climbed, may splinter altogether. That’s no guarantee, however, that American manufacturing will actually be revived. The forces arrayed against it — chiefly, finance and big retailers, Wall Street and Wal-Mart — have tremendous political clout.