2000-2010 a “de-industrialization decade” for U.S. manufacturing

) analysis of new trade and output data showed that 70 different U.S. manufacturing industries ran trade deficits in 2009 at a time when the recession depressed domestic demand, with alarming rates of decline going back to 2000. Plastics and related industries were not spared, according to the USBIC, with the material among the 15 of 114 industries that saw "unusually fast-growing import penetration rates," losing 15% or more of their home U.S. market to imports.

Plastics and resins were also among the sectors where output fell in current-dollar terms from 2007 to 2008. Plastics/rubber production machinery and petrochemicals were two of only eight industries out of 114 that saw import penetration rates nearly double between 1997 and 2008. Plastics/rubber industrial machinery was also one of six industries where imports controlled 70% or more of the U.S. market in 2008.

For its part, the USBIC says the study indicates that high import penetration "continues to deny the stimulus-supported U.S. economy of major private-sector growth and employment opportunities." Studying 114 capital- and technology-intensive manufacturing sectors, the USBIC's analysis posits that should the country exert better control over imports, domestic manufacturing output and overall growth would have been boosted by as much as $404.59 billion dollars in 2008—the last year for which relevant official data are available. On that basis, U.S. output in advanced manufacturing would have been increased by 20.46% in 2008, with total gross domestic product increased by 2.80%. —[email protected]