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JULY 2022 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 71 cally vital U.S. electronics manufacturing sec- tor, and they would be remarkably less costly than investments in the "golden child"—the semiconductor industry. What Led to This Situation? Prior to the Asian Shi of 2000-2001, just over $11 billion worth of printed circuit boards (PCBs) were produced in the United States. Along with Japan, the U.S. enjoyed a leader- ship position in this very critical and enabling technology. Today, just over $3.5 billion worth of PCBs are produced in the United States. e decline was due in part to the original equipment man- ufacturers (OEM), which as recently as the mid-1990s produced their own captive inter- connects to support their hardware. However, as technology advanced, many OEMs decided to shutter their PCB fabrication facilities and switch to merchant fabricators. ese fabrica- tors were primarily overseas, and over the last two decades, China has risen to become the dominant force in the PCB industry. e loss of OEM in-house fabrication led to a loss in technological leadership. Large OEMs had been staffed with engineering and manu- facturing talent that disappeared with the tran- sition to overseas merchant fabrication. In addi- tion, the OEM captive facilities had possessed everything needed to lead and take advantage of advancements in R&D, materials, and pro- cessing. However, once the outsourcing deci- sion was made, the U.S. lost those technolog- ical capabilities as well, including in the areas of high-density interconnect (HDI) and auto- mation. Today, there are fewer than 200 PCB fabri- cators in North America, down from approxi- mately 1,500 in the 1990s. Many of these indi- vidual manufacturing sites were under the umbrella of a handful of companies. Beyond this core group of 10 to 12 large firms, the U.S. printed circuit board manufacturing is now concentrated in many small, single-site facili- ties with less than $15 million in annual reve- nue. e high-volume production has found its way to China and other countries in Asia. In addition, Figure 1 shows how China has positioned itself in the areas of HDI/microvia/ build-up technology as well as flexible circuits. HDI/microvia/build-up technologies are crit- ical for miniaturization, enabling next-genera- tion telecom, high-performance computing, and IC substrate/semiconductor packaging. Flexible circuits, especially high-volume reel-to-reel pro- duction, serve multiple end markets including automotive, medical and computer/laptops. Figure 1: China and North America PCB production by category.