Yesterday, @matthewstoller published a great piece in @WIRED on the likely political impact of the current #coronavirus crisis on the 2020 election. For years Matt has been chronicling our national shift from making things to selling "Made in China" wired.com/story/covid-19…
We made a deliberate decision to move manufacturing overseas & shift to a service economy (see Summers' infamous World Bank memo), & so far the main downsides have been visible in our hollowed-out small towns & rising "deaths of despair." But we're about pay a much bigger price. 
Most of us have never lived in an America where there are shortages of basic goods, as happened during the Great Depression. But if & when we do, it will change our politics in fundamental ways.
Here are some pictures of US-based state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities I've visited in the past 2yrs. These are great jobs in IL and UT, & they are protected by the US government from being exported overseas. In the next tweet I'll tell you what they're making.
Those are places that make guns & silencers, & they're protected from foreign competition & export of jobs by ITAR. In fact, foreign gun companies that want to sell to the US market often open US factories b/c it's easier than importing (e.g. H&K). We get to have those jobs, here
Americans can and do still make things on American soil. But the gun industry is one of the only places where we actually have the political will to ensure that the jobs and manufacturing stay right here. Imagine if we gangstered up and did that same thing in other sectors.
If we had the political will, and maybe #COVID19 will wake us up enough to do it, we can very quickly go right back manufacturing way more than just this in the US:
The guns in that picture above are Berry Amendment compliant. Even the steel is mined in the US. Every bolt and spring and lever is US made. We can still do it here, we just have to decide that it's important.
