It's owned by Mercedes Benz, and it's eye-poppingly huge. We sure must buy a lot of Mercedes cars in this country.
But it's not just there, either. It's also in Georgetown, Kentucky (Toyota); Smyrna, Tennessee (Nissan; I think our old Minivan was built there); San Antonio, Texas (Toyota again), Chattanooga, Tennessee (Volkswagen is going to build a Billion dollar factory there); and Greenville, South Carolina (BMW). Probably a lot more.
We've lost a lot of manufacturing jobs over the last 30 years, but we produce more manufactured goods today than we did then (value of goods produced, adjusted for inflation). If we had to mobilize for a World War II style effort, there are factories to do it.
Would it be easy? I doubt it. It was hard then, and it likely would be harder now. Back then, cars were a lot closer to tanks, or planes. But the capacity is there, if you look. I expect that the creativity and expertise are there, too. But then, I'm an optimist who thinks it's a bad idea to bet against the American people.
One of the most persistent wrong ideas you hear is that "we don't manufacture anything in America". We manufacture everything here except the cheapest consumer goods. And 3/4 of that is going to be made on your RepRap (or similar) inside of 10 years.
ReplyDeleteI've been working in the electronics manufacturing biz for over 35 years, and except for everyone always living in fear that our jobs were going to be exported, and telling me that nothing gets manufactured in America, "it's good honest work" (to quote Apu from the Simpsons).
Good point, but we don't produce any of the 'raw' materials like steel or rubber anymore... sigh
ReplyDeleteThe irony meter was on high last night when I showed two films in my Manufacturing 101 class. The first showed the Willow Run bomber plant putting out a B-24 an hour, and blowing up factories in Germany. The class was given the choice of car manufacturers to watch and the majority wanted to watch the BMW plant in South Carolina put together Z4s. Especially today, on December 7, the juxtaposition was memorable.
ReplyDeleteActually Old NFO we are about third now in steel production in the world. The European Union as a group is ahead of us, but we were the top producer for many, many years. As to Rubber, it comes from Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, we never grew the stuff much here.
ReplyDeleteTechnically that's in Vance, AL. But it's Tuscaloosa County and right outside T-town City. But you are right, the place is HUGE. I have a friend whose dad works there.
ReplyDeleteGreat post.
ReplyDeleteExcept if we scaled up for another Total War, we probably wouldn't be producing tanks-that-are-sort-of-like-cars: we'd probably be producing millions of UAVs, billions of air-droppable assassination spider-robots armed with .22s, and trillions of popcorn-sized mesh-network access points.
The fabs and small CNC machines would run night-and-day, and the guys in Silicon Valley, Rt 128, and Austin would consume even MORE Red Bull.
;-)
I could use a good dose of optimism. This and Victor Davis Hanson's latest are welcome and timely.
ReplyDeleteTJIC - I like the way you think, man!
ReplyDeleteThanks for giving me a bit more optimism. I still have doubts about our ability to surge production as quickly as we did in World War II, mainly because manufacturing an F-16 is a lot more involved than making a B-24, but you make a good point.
ReplyDelete