What Happened to the US Machine Tool Industry? Jan 2024

“For most of the 20th century, the US was unrivaled in its machine tool technology, and as late as the early 1980s it was the largest machine tool producer in the world. But almost overnight, the industry collapsed: annual machine tool shipments declined by more than 50% in 2 years, hundreds of machine tool companies went out of business, and the US slipped from the largest producer in the world to the 4th or 5th (depending on the year), roughly where it remains today.