Reinvesting In U.S.-Based Production

HEADNOTE

A Wisconsin consortium demonstrates a win-win way to address challenges confronting U.S. manufacturers.

IT'S NO SECRET THAT SUPPLIERS AND SMALLER manufacturers have borne the brunt of globalization's less

positive results, while the mighty OEMs have leveraged size, strength and global reach to reap the benefits. Indeed, it's this reality that has exacerbated an already uneasy alliance between OEMs and their suppliers, causing a rift that threatens to undermine U.S. manufacturing pre-eminence. Already calls for damaging protectionist policies are making headway among some public-policy makers, to counter what many see as the only alternative: the expansion of unfettered free-and in many ways, unfair-trade that threatens to decimate small- and medium-size U.S. manufacturers.

However there's a way to "save" U.S. manufacturing's base of small- and medium-size companies, as well as to strengthen U.S. OEMs, without resorting to protectionist measures. The solution comes straight from the capitalist's playbook even as it builds a private-public partnership much like the highly successful Sematech program that helped U.S. semiconductor manufacturers counter the formidable Japanese challenge in the 1980s.