Thermoforming Report

Part One: Tariffs, Talent & Tools – What it Really Takes to be ‘Made In America’

Hello everyone! My intention for this month’s Thermoforming Report main article is not to wax philosophical on what it means to be ‘Made in the USA’. That can actually get quite complicated. What I wanted to dig into was the same topic I tend to circle back to several times a year: manufacturing in America. With previous Reports and Blogs over the years [see below], it is obviously a topic near and dear to me given the now more than 30 years in or supporting the manufacturing industry.

➡️Check out our most recent manufacturing-related articles: Our Manufacturing Future, US Manufacturing: A Critical Pillar of Innovation and Long-Term Surety, and Manufacturing Outlook: Resilience-Ability.⬅️

Visual Capitalist generated an article that hit my LinkedIn feed: “U.S. Manufacturing by State: Who Gains Most from ‘Made in America’?”, 06/06/25. The article takes a rather simplistic view: assuming that those states with the biggest numbers will be more positively impacted by the ‘Made in America’ efforts of the current administration. It is a lot more complicated to be sure! 

We did some digging and found a bunch of recent great articles that highlight and discuss manufacturing – where it is, the impacts due to tariffs, the state of automation, the huge challenges in finding talent (now and in the near future), and more. We will not have room to get into a ton of detail and will only whet your whistle in this report. We will wrap it up in our blog at the end of the month.

Tariff Impacts

A great place to start is this Forbes article, “Tariffs Alone Won’t Bring Manufacturing Home—Here’s What We Really Need”, Forbes, 06/10/25. The author provides some great insights and suggestions on the “MMGA” movement: Make Manufacturing Great Again (you heard it here first!).  

• ”… with or without tariffs, we need to build factories, train workers, and encourage and deploy automation here in the U.S. That will take long-term investment, smart industrial policy, and institutions built to do this work.”
• “… between 1984 and 2018, the U.S. also lost 1,600 foundries and more than 4,400 metal casting facilities, most of that capacity moving to China. These aren’t obscure components: cast and forged parts are essential to aircraft, infrastructure, energy systems, and defense. And it wasn’t just metal—we pulled back from critical sectors like semiconductors, electronics, and pharmaceuticals, where pandemic-era shortages exposed just how vulnerable we’d become.”
• “It’s time we focus on U. S. manufacturing growth and technology—and fix global trade imbalances by rethinking the policies and problems that got us here. We aren’t talking about plug-and-play reshoring. We’re talking about a generational overhaul that will require real strategy and sustained investment to push the use of technology, drive the training of a needed workforce, fill abandoned and under-utilized U. S. plants, and build new ones. It’s time to create a next-generation manufacturing economy.”

A Harvard Business Review article highlighted, “Ultimately, the combined impact of tariffs, ability of automation to offset the cost of localization, and external environment determines whether domestic manufacturing can outperform global setups in terms of overall competitiveness”. “Tariffs, Technology, and the New Geography of Manufacturing”, HBR, 06/02/25. It is a solid article and worth the full read.

And NPR combined a lot of recent information and generated this piece: “what is clear is that bringing American manufacturing roaring back will likely require more than just slapping up tariffs or investing lots of money to build new factories. Leaders may need to regear our education system to help more Americans acquire the skills that manufacturers need for a productive and capable workforce”.  “Why Aren’t Americans Filling the Manufacturing Jobs We Already Have?”  NPR, 05/13/25

The People Side

That last article spoke quite a bit about the gaps that exist today and what will most definitely be a huge problem in the near future: people and the lack of interest in manufacturing jobs at all levels. 

If you read enough in and about the manufacturing world, it doesn’t take long to realize that other countries manage their workforce differently than the U.S. and value manufacturing differently. 

As I was prepping for this report, the thought came to mind on how Germany manages and supports their talent needs through very deliberate infrastructure in their schooling.  It’s called the “dual education system”, and no, I don’t know a lot about it. I know enough to look it up and… there are several articles connecting the dots between America’s lack of trained people and how Germany navigates that issue. 

In short, Germany’s approach is a “highly structured system combining practical, on-the-job training in a company with theoretical education in a vocational school (Berufsschule). It’s a primary pathway into employment for young people and is recognized for its effectiveness in equipping them with the skills needed for the workforce”.  “The German Apprenticeship Model: A Paradigm of Sustainable Vocational Education” by Patrick Oh, 01/31/24 and “The US Needs Workers. Germany’s Apprenticeship Model Can Help“ from Industry Week, 07/19/24 both get into specifics on the topic. 

From the NPR article mentioned above: “Carolyn Lee, the president and executive director of the Manufacturing Institute (MI) says, ‘The very best models of workforce development that we see and that we engage in at the Manufacturing Institute are locally and regionally led public-private partnerships, where manufacturers come to the table and — with the support of the community college system and the local business community — they build the talent pipelines that they need.’”

The NPR article also mentions the apprenticeship model and the work that Toyota did about 15 years ago called FAME (Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education) that is now under MI’s leadership. The intention: get more people interested in and trained up for a career in manufacturing!

All of this points to the biggest need facing manufacturing: people. I’m not the only one banging this drum. All of these articles highlight the recent Deloitte study. Moreover, the QCEW from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has a great interactive chart/map that we played around with to better understand the long-term view of manufacturing employment. Though I wanted to geek out and dig into the numbers in more detail and provide some cool graphics, others have already done that work. 

It’s Not Easy!

This nut will not be easy to crack. The sheer magnitude of and diversity of our great country contributes to the significant complexity facing the manufacturing industry.  Getting back to the German Dual Education System for example, the U.S. has more than 4 times the number of total people (~347M to 84M) and Germany is about the same physical size as Montana. 

In short, it is a complex problem that business leaders and owners and our state and federal governments must tackle together! 

At the end of the day, manufacturing in America is not a simple story of tariffs or factory counts – it’s about people, policy, and a long-term strategy. It’s going to take coordinated effort across education, industry, and government to rebuild a thriving, resilient manufacturing base. We’ll continue unpacking this in our blog later this month – there’s a lot more to say, and even more to do. Stay tuned!

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