The U.S. still matters. We all know how much of the PCB manufacturing business has gone offshore. We know that China now builds over 50% of the world’s printed circuits. And, yes, woeful as it sounds, we in the U.S. are now only producing 3.7% of the printed circuits built globally each year. Only 3.7%! Wow! How can this be? We once did it all--we once dominated the world when it came to boards. Man, we invented the PCB! This technology used to belong to us. Well, guess what? Get rid of that “used to” stuff, it still does belong to us.

It has become apparent that even though we only control a small sector of the global PCB marketplace we still control the technology. All other countries look to the U.S. when it comes to the direction that the industry is going. Others look to us when it comes to the kind of equipment we are buying and endorsing.

It is still significantly important that people making and developing everything PCB, from equipment to processes to services, sell them to the U.S. market first. If they want to sell their products to the world, they must sell to the U.S. market first.

The U.S. is still the place where things are first conceptualized and developed.

Our customers, hence, their customers, ask our PCB fabricators to build their products first, a long time before they are mass produced in China or other parts of the world.

Our customers count on us to help them develop new products. They rely on us to partner with them to develop the new PCB technologies that make their products work. They know they can depend on us to work with them, to be flexible and cooperative, and to participate in their product development to the point where they consider us practically a division of their own companies.

Most importantly, customers know they can rely on our discretion. In the U.S., a contract is still respected and a non-disclosure is still a sacred document not be taken lightly. If an American company signs a piece of paper saying they will not tell anybody what they are working on with you, they simply will not tell anyone. They can be trusted.

Unlike the others guys who…well, you know...we all know why new products are not developed in China.

It’s true that times have been hard the last few years and that some have lost confidence in America--they have come to believe that we are on our way out, that our proverbial ship has sailed, and that our party is over. Believe that if you want; say that if that makes your political candidate look better than my political candidate, but nothing could be further from the truth.