Also stop regulating small businesses to death, and make it easier to start up new ones. New technologies are making small-scale manufacturing easier and more cost-efficient all the time.

I just read that the American Enterprise Institute said that 1000 jobs have been lost in seattle since the wage went to $11.00 an hour. who is going to higher these people politician?

Yes.
My very dear friend is a process controls engineer and my husband has worked hand-in-hand with her installing updates, robotics and panels &subsystems in many different manufacturing facilities.
Robotics are wonderful! They will ultimately replace the jobs that wear out humans and human joints like lifting, certain types of welding and painting, etc.

ycandrea You've been reading my mail. As a 46 year veteran of the construction "wars" in America, Icouldn't agree more. All I am saying is that all levels of government rewards the unions with nearly any demand they make because the unions can guarantee voter loyalty. Some of these mononpolies have been weakened or broken by strong people like Scott Walker, but there is a long distance to get "right to work laws universal in America. The larger cities are total in union hands...graft coupled with government bribe takers is profitable. We no longer can afford to pay manufacturing jobs the same as lobbyists, Congressmen or bankers and the problem is exacberated by the high level of technology required for most tech jobs...the teachers are all secure because they are keeping the educations to themselves while many H S "Grads" are not totally ready to flip burgers...even for $15 per Obama mandates.

I really doubt Trump would want to use the nuclear button. War is very expensive and debilitating and he is more into doing business and making money all his life. Its the bushes and clintons who want to make war to pay off all their crony supporters. So many mistakes are made by our politicians and then hidden. Trump at least, if he did nothing else, would expose them.

I think that more and more things can indeed be handled by more intelligent robots and manufacturing systems. Robots can be made easier to fix by just replacing subsystems. Product can pretty much move out the shipping door by itself already. Raw material loading is not as difficult as it seems when raw materials arrive in pre-configured lots. I am not saying we are at 100% robots yet, but the science of robotics has been progressing behind the scenes, and just prevented from being implemented because of the cheap chinese labor.

Anyone alive knows its not 1% currently by just going around for an hour to stores. Let alone restaurants. Its hidden by the foreigners buying up our debt and the federal reserve just printing up more and more of it to keep interest rates low. These politicians should be strung up really for what they are doing. At least Trump might actually expose what is going on so people can see it.

Good and he can do that without holding the nuclear button, without being King Donald the First. Let him run his mouth and make all the ignorant mistakes he can.

I am convinced that Trump is in this entirely for Trump. Apparently, buying politicians does not give him the level of power he desires. The only alternative is to be in direct control of the power. He could go to a third world country, buy the military and become emperor, but why bother. All he has to do is depose the current emperor here. Following the current POTUS's example, he could have virtually unfettered access to the most powerful country in the world simply by passing Imperial Edicts, er ... uh ... Executive Orders. For as long as it lasts.

The only thing he has to do is convince the voters that he's doing it all for them. He's an excellent salesman, and again, has a very good example to follow.

I could probably be cynical if I let myself ...
VG

Very true. However I have worked in a few factories and all the employees tend to have one skill or the other (many with multiple skills).
Robots and machines need maintenance. Product doesn't move out the shipping door by itself. Loading the machines with raw materials is a human job.
Again, those are some of those "dirty jobs" that most young folks rarely have the right stuff to do.

if manufacturing came back to the USA, it would be automated to a big degree, getting RID of the need for those skills. It will never return to the way it was years ago. Robots and automation have advanced a LOT since then. The employee regulations and taxation have forced buying from china and have not given our young people the time to find other careers. When they have to find new work, it just wont be there for them.

Inflation is being hidden by the low cost of chinese goods and labor. If there was a gold standard, the chinese yuan would rise dramatically in value and the US dollar would drop as it should because of our politicians deficit spending. That would make things more expensive here when bought from china. It would bring manufacturing back to the USA, but we would have to grapple with 15-20% inflation for a number of years (which is what the inflation should be to compensate for all the deficits and federal reserve money printings). A pretty big recession would ensue while things stabilized. The longer we wait to fix this, the worse its going to be when it cant be fixed any more.

All I would want from Trump is his willingness to just say it the way he sees it. We never get that with politicians now, and we need it. He needs to tell us all when the emperor has no clothes, so that people can make intelligent decisions. If he did one thing only- that would be IT.

The only real way to make America more competitive, would be to weaken the dollar, making our goods seem better-priced to other countries. But that has its problems here at home - anything that is a commodity on the world market gets more expensive for us (gasoline, metals, ores, etc.)

We need to face facts, that the US is a high-cost place to live, and either let our masses be educated that if you want to have a low-wage job in manufacturing, you might be better off moving to Africa or something...

And realize that we'll never be cost-competitive making simple junk for Walmart here. Where we are competitive is in making creative products that solve real problems - software, cyber security, shipbuilding, defense technologies, satellite systems, aircraft, advanced batteries, electric vehicles, and of course - the world loves Ford & Chevy trucks...

Focus on what we're good at, and build the best the world has ever seen. Is a BMW or Lexus inherently better than a Buick? probably not, but there is perceived value that drives a higher price tag. We need to do the same thing - Germany has similar wage & cost issues, they succeed, but they succeed by building products they can be proud of and not worrying about the rest.

It's an easy problem to solve, but it doesn't mean that someone can graduate from high school and suddenly buy a home and raise a family... it doesn't work like that, but that is what the left seems to dream about all the time.

I get a lot of comments from friends of my son on how much stuff / house / etc., we have... well... I graduated early from one of the best high schools in the country (Minnesota school system), spent 6 years in the military, then I got a bachelor's degree, then I got another one in another technical area, and then I got my masters degree, and I founded a couple of companies - closed one, sold the other with over 170 people in it, and now I make a decent living writing technical solutions for defense contractors.

And the focus of their question is "how do I get a job like that?"... Umm... with a high school diploma from a failed California high school? You don't.... you need to be willing to check off the technical education marks, the military never hurts - especially combat deployments in the Middle East or Africa to get 'perspective'... and never thinking you are 'done' with school - that's the kiss of death for a career that you want to always advance.

The 'school of hard knocks' BS always irritates me too when I see that on someone's resume... I trash it before I bother. It says "I knew everything coming out of the womb - I was ready to succeed!".. Bullshit. That's like saying I didn't learn anything in my 350'ish credit hours, 2 years in the bush, and the United Arab Emirates & Congo. It's extremely disrespectful to the ones that decided not to settle with the oil change / jiffy lube job after high school.

The solution to keeping manufacturing here is an easy fix, but politicians, whose spines are made of pasta will never do it. Here's the way to do it:
First, realign workers hourly pay and pension plans so that they reflect productivity, rather than time spent on the job.
Second, lower taxes so that the company's shareholders and officers are able to compete with overseas manufacturers. That's it. But, it will never happen the way things go today.

No strategy. Not a leader, just a pot-stirrer.

Since having a healthy manufacturing base calls for a certain percentage of the population to use their minds and their hands to create a product, let's lay out the facts.

This concept requires persons with multiple skill sets, the knowledge of how things work, how they are put together and how to fix them if they break.
Given the fact that for quite a number of years now, wood shop, metals shop, home-ec and the like are no longer taught in many high schools, our young have a dearth of knowledge in the areas of hand-eye-mind coordination.

Add to that the fact that our culture stresses the need for our youth to achieve a 4-year (or more) degree so that "they can make more money and don't get dirt under their fingernails" and I don't see manufacturing coming back full-bore any time soon....IMHO.

roneida, my point is that a company should be able to hire employees and employees should be able to accept a job without any regard for the union. Unions should have no say in the negotiations between employee and employer.

I am in tune with your opinions on today's corrupt and abusive unions but, their power is derived from the corrupt and abusive federal and state governments which rewards their greedy demands in return for vote loyalty. The idea of admonishing or encouraging unions to up production, lower benefits etc. is laughable when the government has no interest in production or cost...just votes. Look at the techers. 7-8 months of 30 hour weeks per year with guaranteed pensions and life time health care which pales in comparison to the Congress. When the government can order fast food chains to pay the food servers $15,00 per hour with no reason, economic, scientific or managerial. just "because they want it"" rational discussion is gone. There is no more reason for 15 than there is 50 or 7...just politics and bottom feeding. The unions will eventually come to a point of level negotiaions with business if the government can stop bribing them with protection but probably not in the lifetimes of anyone on earth today...

Trump as well as all candidates and all other congressman as well as the president have no earthly idea as to how to bring manufacturing back to the USA. It was government interference in businesses starting in the 1960's with hostile policies and rules that gave reason for companies large and eventuallt small to leave the USA. The end result today is unskilled workers for even the most simple jobs. It is the government policies today that reward people for sitting on their butts because those people are voters so they will always vote for the guy that pays them the most. So the answer is that he and his ilk will never accomplish what they talk about and they know it.

If it is more than tax and regulation reductions for ALL businesses in the US... then it's nonsense.