Since the BIL passed, state and local capital investment has rebounded and returned to pre-pandemic levels. The two-year increase in state and local capital investment as a share of state and local spending—1.6 percentage points—is the largest since 1979.

Companies involved in creating the products and components that are critical to our everyday lives face an urgent need to make their supply chains less vulnerable to events that could interrupt their businesses.

I’m all for auto workers getting paid, but the UAW’s demands this time around seem a bit much. I can’t see how the OEMs will be able to meet them, and I worry about the implications for the economy. The 2019 strike lasted more than a month, and a prolonged strike now could jeopardize the economic recovery.

Because automation can produce more with less, it can help domestic manufacturers compete with low-cost overseas labor. It’s certainly a valid premise. But, like golf, dancing, baking bread or cutting dovetails by hand, implementing automation is harder than it looks.

In 1961, the first industrial robot was installed at a GM factory in Ewing Township, NJ, to lift hot pieces of metal from a die-casting machine. Today, the automotive industry has the largest number of robots working in factories around the world.

Manufacturers in multiple industries worldwide are increasingly thinking about sustainability, resource conservation and their impact on the environment.

In the past 20 years, the global economy has suffered through many difficult events, such as pandemics, conflicts and natural disasters. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered one of the worst job crises since the Great Depression.

What gets you out of bed in the morning? Whatever the reason, new evidence suggests that people who work in manufacturing are more eager to get up and go than people in other professions.

Just a few years ago, much of the business community viewed climate advocates with indifference, skepticism or even outright hostility. 

Shoichiro Toyoda, who led Toyota Motor Co.’s expansion into North America and set the company on a path to becoming one of the world’s most powerful automakers, died Feb. 14 at 97.