China Automates While America Hesitates

Dr. Nahm was a White House economist in the Biden administration.

Tesla’s factory in Shanghai produces far more cars per worker than its plant in California. The gap reflects something unsettling about China’s broader edge in manufacturing: It has figured out how to organize production around large-scale deployment of automation, robotics and artificial intelligence. The United States has not.

Reindustrialization is one of the few economic goals that now commands bipartisan support. Successive administrations — first Joe Biden’s, now President Trump’s — have made rebuilding American manufacturing a priority. In Washington, the gap between American factories and global competitors is often explained as the product of unfair subsidies,........

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