The Manufacturing Industry's Secret Success Story

This won't be a big surprise for regular CD readers, but today's Investor's Business Daily features a front page story on the recent strength of American manufacturing:

"If you listen to politicians these days, you'd think the country's manufacturing industry was on its last legs. President Obama told Congress in his State of the Union speech that "we have a huge opportunity, at this moment, to bring manufacturing back," and offered a wide range of tax breaks, worker training programs and other federal projects to do so.

At the other end of the spectrum, GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum talks about the need to "revitalize" the industry. "We went from about 21% of jobs in this country when I was a kid being in manufacturing down to 9%. We lost those jobs overseas. We need to bring them back," he said.

Obama has proposed a big tax break for domestic manufacturers. Santorum wants to zero them out altogether.  But the data show that, despite the picture painted by politicians, manufacturing is a success story at the moment."

Read more here, and also see Nick Gillespie's related blog post on "America's Unsung Industrial Might."