By General Mike Flynn
A nation’s strength cannot be judged just by the magnitude of its economy, the level of its stock market, or the extent of its banking institutions. True national strength lies in a people’s ability to produce the goods needed to maintain their way of life.
The United States needs to have the ability to manufacture medicine for its hospitals, transformers for its electrical grid, semiconductors for its technology, machinery for its factories, vehicles for its economy, and weapons for its defense. It isn’t just losing jobs when a country loses these capabilities; it is, in effect, giving up a certain degree of its independence.
Manufacturing forms the basis of the visible economy. Since most people do not take much time to think about foundations because they are generally out of sight, everyone in the structure eventually feels the effects when the foundation starts to deteriorate.
More than four decades have seen America allow that foundation to erode.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that American manufacturing employment had reached a record high of 19.6 million jobs in June 1979, while by July 2026 it had dropped to about 12.6 million. Although the American population increased significantly over that time, the country had nearly seven million fewer manufacturing workers. This represents a decline of roughly 36% from the 1979 peak.
Part of the decline can be credited to technological advances and increased productivity. Nowadays, modern factories are able to produce a greater amount of goods using fewer workers than was possible in 1979. We ought to welcome any innovation which makes American companies more competitive. As long as automation expands domestic production and gives rise to new opportunities, it is not opposed to the American worker.
Yet productivity by itself does not account for the whole situation. Many companies shifted their production abroad in order to benefit from lower labour costs, weaker environmental protections, government subsidies, and favourable trade policies. The Washington authorities frequently encouraged this kind of transition on the basis of the belief that Americans could design their products at home, manufacture them overseas and buy them at a low price without in any way weakening their national strength.
The theory did not take into account the relationship between production and power.
A blueprint may be useful, but it doesn’t mean it is a factory. A patent cannot carry out the refining of a critical mineral. Software can’t manufacture a transformer without the use of steel, copper, machinery, electricity, and skilled workers. Although financial capital can buy equipment, it cannot immediately recover the industrial knowledge that has been lost over decades.
The effects of a factory closing are not confined to the building itself. Experienced workers either move away or retire. The suppliers vanish. Technical knowledge ceases to be passed on from one generation to the next. Local tax income falls, and the communities lose the economic security which supports families, schools, churches, and small businesses.
Industrial capacity is like fertile farmland. A careful farmer won’t use up his store of seed corn on the assumption that money will bring about a further harvest; instead, he guards the source of future production. For a long time, America regarded its industrial inheritance as if it could be sold without any consequences.
THE PRICE OF DEPENDENCE
The United States is still a major player in manufacturing. According to the Department of Commerce, manufacturing adds approximately $2.9 trillion to the American economy, supports around 13 million workers, and accounts for about 11% of gross domestic product.
The figures show that America still has a huge foundation on which to rebuild and must not be regarded as evidence of the weaknesses which have appeared in key industries.
In 2025, the Food and Drug Administration stated that over half of the pharmaceuticals distributed in the United States were made in other countries. The number of manufacturers in the United States that produced the active pharmaceutical ingredients was 9%. China had 22% and India 44%.
It therefore follows that a large number of the medicines available in American hospitals and pharmacies rely on factories, governments, transportation systems, and political situations which are outside our control.
The trade in ordinary consumer goods is a normal aspect of a sound economy, while relying on foreign countries for essential medicines poses a threat to national security. If a hostile government acts, a regional conflict breaks out, shipping routes are disrupted, or another pandemic occurs, access to those medicines could be interrupted when Americans need them most.
The electrical grid is also coming up against the same problem. According to the Department of Energy, the time taken to deliver distribution transformers has risen from about 3 to 6 months in 2019 to 12 to 30 months in 2023. Transformers are by no means optional equipment since they are necessary for supplying electricity to homes, hospitals, military bases, businesses, and factories.
A modern economy would be no different from a body lacking a properly working circulatory system. Although energy might be available at the source, it could not get to the places where it is required.
There is also the matter of critical minerals. According to the United States Geological Survey, the economic activity of industries that depend on minerals was about $4.09 trillion in 2025, and the United States still relied on China as a major source for 14 of the 33 critical minerals for which the country had the highest level of import dependence.
Such materials are employed in aircraft, electronics, communications systems, batteries, medical equipment, energy infrastructure, plus precision weapons; production halts long before the assembly line reaches the final product if secure access to them is not available.
The danger doesn’t apply only to one particular industry. Modern manufacturing consists of an interconnected system, so a lack of one cheap component can bring about the stoppage of the production of an item worth millions of dollars. This happened to Americans when shortages of semiconductors disrupted car production during the pandemic; a chip that cost only a few dollars was enough to stop the sale of a whole automobile.
Military logistics is a field in which national security planners are aware of this principle; an aircraft, for example, will stay on the ground if one of its critical parts is not available, just as the civilian economy does.
