US industrial activity on a roll | articles | ING THINK

TEXT START: US manufacturing is performing strongly with output gains led by advanced technology production, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and energy.

The Dissection

This is not a manufacturing revival. It is capital concentration dressed as industrial health. ING reports stronger output in AI-linked technology, power infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, aerospace and defense while explicitly admitting that commoditized, labor-intensive production continues to shrink.

The article’s real subject is bifurcation: automated strategic sectors expand while ordinary labor-based production loses its economics. Data-center construction and rising electricity demand are evidence of an AI-capital buildout, not evidence that mass employment has been restored.

The Core Fallacy

The article confuses production with productive participation. Higher output, longer hours and 72,000 manufacturing jobs added year to date do not prove that the wage-to-consumption circuit has been repaired. Its own evidence shows that the winning sectors are highly automated and high-value-added.

Under the Discontinuity Thesis, this is precisely how cognitive and industrial automation advances: output grows while human labor becomes less necessary. AI-driven productivity can strengthen the industrial machine while weakening workers’ bargaining power and economic claim on its output.

Tariffs and a “Made in America” premium are lag defenses. They can redirect demand temporarily; they cannot make expensive human labor structurally competitive against automated production.

Hidden Assumptions

• Industrial output growth will translate into broad wage growth and secure employment.
• High-value-added sectors will employ enough people to replace losses elsewhere.
• AI-driven productivity gains will be distributed rather than captured by owners of capital.
• Data-center, power and defense investment will create durable mass employment rather than concentrated infrastructure demand.
• Foreign competition is the main threat, rather than automation eliminating the need for labor altogether.
• Tariffs, national-security spending and domestic premiums can preserve labor-intensive sectors indefinitely.
• A rebound after three years of manufacturing job losses represents structural reversal rather than a temporary upswing.

Social Function

Classification: partial truth, transition management, elite self-exoneration and ideological anesthetic.

The article is not pure copium. It accurately identifies the split between advanced automated sectors and collapsing commoditized production. Its anesthetic function is the framing: capital-intensive expansion is called “manufacturing momentum,” while the people displaced by the split disappear into aggregate output figures. The winners are presented as proof that the system is healthy; the losers are treated as an uncompetitive residue.

The Verdict

US industrial activity is expanding in the narrowest and most revealing sense: AI, energy, defense, pharmaceuticals and advanced equipment are receiving capital. This is not a return of postwar capitalism. It is the construction phase of a more automated production regime.

The article’s strongest evidence—data-center-driven power demand—is also its indictment. AI capital can generate enormous industrial activity while bypassing mass labor. Under the Discontinuity Thesis, the text supplies early evidence for P1 and emerging P3: a stronger machine economy and a weaker human claim on that economy. It offers no mechanism capable of reversing the trend. The factory is returning as infrastructure, not as a mass social contract.