President Pushes Manufacturing in State of the Union

In Tuesday's State of the Union address (link opens transcript), President Obama listed the U.S. government's highest economic priority as "making America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing."

Referencing the sector's decade-long decline, the president noted that manufacturers have added around 500,000 jobs in the past three years. Obama cited Caterpillar's and Ford's decisions to move jobs back from Japan and Mexico, respectively. He also nodded to U.S. technology companies Intel and Apple for their recent decisions to manufacture some of their chips and computers domestically.

Looking ahead, the president lauded 3-D printing as an emerging business opportunity for America. Referencing a government initiative from August 2012, Obama noted that a "once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the-art lab where new workers are mastering the 3-D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything."

Obama concluded his remarks by announcing the launch of three additional high-tech manufacturing hubs, with a request to Congress for 11 additional centers to "guarantee that the next revolution in manufacturing is made in America."

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