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October 24, 2009 (LPAC)—U.S. manufacturing technology consumption was 67.7% lower in the first eight months of 2009, than the same period the year before, measured in dollar values (i.e., price), according to the monthly United States Manufacturing Technology Consumption Report (USMTC), issued on Oct. 12 by the Association for Manufacturing Technology and the American Machine Tool Distributors' Association.

That is, sales of machine tools and related technologies in the U.S. totalled barely over $1 billion from January through August of this year ($1,041.57 million, to be precise), heading towards roughly an eighth of what it was in 1980, when U.S. firms invested close to $8 billion in machine tools. In 1980, furthermore, some 70-75% of U.S. machine tools were still produced in the country; now, they are almost entirely imported from abroad.

EIR, in its April 2002 Special Report, "The End of A Delusion," graphed the production of U.S. machine tools from 1974 to 2001, in 1982 constant dollars and in units. By 2001, production had fallen to 2 billion 1982 dollars, and around 160,000 units. Today, it is half of that already depression-level figure.

As LPAC reported on Oct. 9, representatives of the machine tool industry testified before Congress that day, that 75% of the metalworking/machine-tool manufacturing companies say they cannot secure sufficient credit for day-to-day operations, recapitalization, expansion, or retooling; the precision machine industry has shrunk its operations and employment by 40% in the past year; the auto supply industry, by 50%.