Manufacturing employment in the United States has tended to fall since 1979. Geographically, the Northeast and Mideast regions have incurred the brunt of this decline and, except in the Southwest region, urban countries have tended to fare worse than rural countries. Meanwhile, foreign-owned...

The U.S. trade deficit was twice as large a percentage of U.S. GDP in 1989 as in 1979 although the value of the dollar and the level of U.S. demand relative to foreign demand were roughly comparable in both years. This article investigates the reasons for the deficit's magnitude in the late...