Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/950499
76 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2018 The topic for this discussion came to me, as most of my best ideas do, during a casual con- versation about life over a cold beer. Having fin- ished day one of a nine-day motorcycle trip, my friend Mike and I had just settled in at a friend- ly watering hole to soothe away the aches and pains of spending all day on 1,000 pounds of Milwaukee iron. We have had some very inter- esting discussions over the years on a variety of topics, but mostly our conversations tend to center around Harleys, sports, or politics. This particular evening, Mike turned to me and asked "Steve, I want your opinion on something. Is American manufacturing back?" Now this is not quite the radical departure from our normal topics as you may think. You see, Mike is not only a good friend and fel- low Harley enthusiast; he is also a fellow small business owner whose sales have been signif- icantly impacted by Asian competition. Like Mike, I had grown up in this business "mak- ing stuff," and before I had time to even think about an answer, I blurted out a resounding "Hell yeah, it's back," as my American pride and loyalty involuntarily kicked in. But after thinking more about it in the following days, I thought it would be worthy of some research to support my well-intended gut reaction. The Lost Millennium The year was 2000; the most popular song was "Breathe," by Faith Hill, the St. Louis Rams won the Super Bowl, gas was $1.26 a gallon, Y2K turned out to be a non-issue, and American manufacturing was in the tank. Us- ing the metric of 'Services as a Percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP),' in the year 2000 the United States led all industrialized countries at 80% (CIA World Factbook) [1] . Simply put, 80% of our revenue as a country came from service- related industries, and only 20% from manu- facturing. The data provided by the Handbook of U.S. Labor Statistics [2] for the percent of the U.S. labor force in each sector was equally dis- turbing. Using 1950 as a baseline, 60% of U.S. em- ployees worked in manufacturing and 40% in service industries. By the year 2000 this mix The Rebirth of Made in America The Right Approach by Steve Williams, THE RIGHT APPROACH CONSULTING LLC