Romer asks "Do Manufacturers Need Special Treatment?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/business/do-manufacturers-need-special-treatment-economic-view.html?_r=2&ref=business

Christina D. Romer is an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and was the chairwoman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Market Failure: Clusters of manufacturing businesses can be more productive than an individual one.... but large clustering effects have been hard to find.

Jobs: A key argument for encouraging manufacturing is to create jobs and reduce unemployment. Unfortunately, those effects are probably small.

Income Distribution: Manufacturing jobs are seen as one of the few sources of well-paying jobs for less-educated workers. But that is much less true today... manufacturing wages are high largely because production is capital-intensive and technologically sophisticated. As a result, educational requirements have risen.