Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1536435
Supporting the Entire PCB Ecosystem—Materials to OEMs With the addition of RTX to PCBAA's membership roster, we now represent the interests of companies in the entire PCB eco- system. From material providers to OEMs, the insights of our collective members help us educate, advocate, and support legislation and policy favorable to America's microelec- tronics manufacturers. e industry veterans who lead these companies provide valuable perspective, and their accumulated wisdom makes us an even stronger association. PCB Migration Overseas e past several decades have been tough for the PCB industry. e offshoring was profound, and while other nations consis- tently subsidized their own growth, in the U.S., there was no congressional action taken to reverse this migration. It was not until American Made Advocacy by Shane Whiteside, PCBAA 26 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2025 this decade that the lack of U.S. manufactur- ing capacity for semiconductors (chips) and competition with China caught legislators' attention. New semiconductor fabs are rising in places like Arizona and Ohio, but there has been no similar government investment for PCBs except, thankfully, at the Department of Defense, where the need for secure and trusted PCBs has driven over $100 million of investment via the Defense Production Act. e growth in the defense and aerospace portion of the American PCB industry is important, but the U.S. represents only 4% of the global industry. Our domestic pro- duction can currently provide the DoD with what is needed to serve the high-technol- ogy national defense systems our men and women in uniform need to do their jobs. at is where the good news ends.