In January 2017, Toyota pledged to invest $13 billion in its U.S. operations over five years. On June 30, the company announced it will reach that goal a year early.
General Electric will no longer make lightbulbs. In May, GE announced that it is selling its lighting business to Savant Systems Inc., a seller of home-automation technology.
Numerous studies have revealed a peculiarity about our next-generation workforce. While they might have a positive perception of manufacturing, most would not consider careers in the industry.
All things being equal, most U.S. consumers would prefer to buy products that are made in the USA. So when a company claims a product is made in this country when it's not, it can get burned.
Productivity growth in manufacturing is stuck. Despite improvements in equipment, software and management approaches, annual labor productivity growth in the U.S. was around 0.7 percent between 2007 and 2018.
As of April 19, more than 2.4 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported in 235 countries. Worldwide, more than 165,000 people have died from the disease, but more than 612,000 have recovered.
How quickly things change. On March 1, I was one of 15,000 people watching the Chicago Cubs play a spring training game at a ballpark in Mesa, AZ. It was warm and sunny, the beer was cold, and I had not a care in the world.
In January, the U.S. and China agreed to a trade deal that cut some U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods in exchange for Chinese pledges to purchase more American farm, energy and manufactured goods and address U.S. complaints about intellectual property practices.
Incredibly, the decade has ended with a moment of bipartisanship. On Dec. 10, after more than a year of deadlock, Democrats and Republicans agreed to revisions in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that should enable the trade pact to win approval from Congress and get signed into law by the president.
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