MY TURN: Lived history and the hollowing of American manufacturing
I was a school-age kid in the 1960s, when environmental destruction was impossible to ignore. I remember the Cuyahoga River catching fire in Ohio in 1969 and Lake Erie being declared a "dead lake" due to pollution. Acid rain swept across the Midwest, damaging crops and forests. These weren’t abstract problems — they were visible, immediate and dangerous.
In response, President Richard Nixon — a Republican — signed the National Environmental Policy Act and the updated Clean Air Act in 1970. Two years later, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, overriding Nixon’s veto with broad bipartisan support. These laws led to meaningful improvements in air and water quality and remain some of the most effective environmental legislation in our history.
At the same time, however, another shift was taking root in the American economy.
When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he elevated the influence of economists Milton Friedman and Martin Feldstein. Friedman argued that a company’s only responsibility was to maximize profits for shareholders, "shareholder primacy" — a philosophy that rapidly became dogma in corporate boardrooms. By focusing solely on stock price, this new model ignored the traditional obligations of business: to provide value to customers, fair compensation to employees, and support for the communities that sustain them. Instead, they assumed that if the stock price was rising, all other interests were being served.
I entered the professional workforce as a software engineer in the mid-1980s. My first job was in finance, but I quickly realized it wasn’t for me. Soon after, I was recruited by a local manufacturer that produced advanced optics for both commercial and military use. The company had been around for 40 years and had steady revenues in the $100-120 million range. It was vertically integrated and largely self-sufficient, employing scientists, engineers, skilled tradespeople (machinists, electricians and plumbers) and business professionals.
We had our own machine shop. We crafted our own machines and ground our own optics. We cast our own plastic components. We made things — real, complex, physical products. Nearly everything we needed. I built instrumentation systems for process control and quality assurance, supporting continuous around-the-clock operations 365 days a year.
Toward the end of Reagan’s second term, Wall Street came calling. Financiers launched a hostile takeover attempt, aiming to seize the company’s cash reserves — carefully maintained to weather economic downturns. It was part of a broader trend — leveraged buyouts and financial engineering designed to “unlock value” in established, steady firms.
To defend itself, the company was forced to abandon its long-term, integrated model. It began outsourcing anything not considered “core business.” The machine shop was closed. The skilled trades, along with scientists and engineers, were laid off. I was eventually laid off in the third round of cuts. Initially, parts were sourced locally, often from small businesses started by the laid-off specialists. Later, sourcing shifted to Germany, Japan and, eventually, China — wherever was cheapest.
All to cut costs. Quarter after quarter.
These two seemingly unrelated developments — environmental reform at home and profit-first business management — converged as drivers in hollowing out U.S. manufacturing. Countries like China were willing to absorb the pollution we no longer accepted and offered labor at a fraction of U.S. wages. There was a catch, they required technology transfer as a condition of doing business.
Over time, we exported not just production capabilities, but expertise, experience and know-how. American engineers trained their foreign counterparts. In the decades since, the original toolmakers and machinists retired, as did the process and manufacturing engineers. Many are no longer with us. And now, much of that hands-on knowledge has vanished from the U.S.
Today, the uncomfortable truth is this: Much of what we used to make in this country simply cannot be brought back. The skills, the processes, the craft — have been lost. Tariffs won't fix this.
There’s still time to rethink what kind of economy we want to build. But doing so means accepting the reality of what we’ve lost — and committing, this time, to reinvest in education, people and production — not just profits.
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Joseph Heath is a Post Falls resident.