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Book explores bleak future of U.S. manufacturing
By Jennifer M. van der Kleut
James Cunningham can't sit silently any longer. He says there's an 800-pound gorilla in the room, and no one is acknowledging it.
He says the room is the United States, and the gorilla is the collapse of American manufacturing--and if someone doesn't face the gorilla soon, America will no longer be manufacturing anything.
Perhaps that "someone" will have to be him. Cunningham is getting his message out through his new book, The Hollowing of America, released earlier this month.
Cunningham, a longtime Saratoga resident, has a 25-year history in the corporate semiconductor industry, working for such powerhouse companies as Texas Instruments, National Semiconductor and Advanced Micro Devices, often at the vice president level. He holds 46 patents and has published 18 technical papers, a 200-page book on CMOS technology and a book in Japan in the 1980s concerning the growing strength of the Japanese semiconductor industry.
After leaving his last job as vice president of AMD in 1987, Cunningham worked as both a consultant and an expert witness for trial lawyers for many years in cases involving intellectual property and patent disputes.
Around a year and a half ago, Cunningham decided to scale back. He sold his six most recent patents, which he obtained privately during his work as a consultant, for a "considerable amount of money," and now keeps only one client.
All of this left room to concentrate on other interests.
Cunningham and his good friend, Dr. Ed Ward of Monte Sereno, cherish their long talks. Recently, their conversations have turned to a dark place--the future of American manufacturing. Ward and Cunningham would talk for hours on what they call "America's flight from domestic manufacturing into a perilous world of economic fantasy."
"If present trends in outsourcing continue uncorrected, essentially by the year 2024 we will manufacture nothing. No cars, no oatmeal, no machines, nothing. Everything will be imported," Cunningham says.
Both say the scariest part is that no one is talking about it. Politicians say the economy is improving, and economists don't even refer to the problem.
"It's not even a blip on the radar of the economists. This can't go on," Ward says. "We're exporting way too many things. We've got to at least get this on the table."
"So I said, 'Ed, I'm scaling back my consulting; I'm going to work on this. I'm going to do some research and try to make a suggestion,' " Cunningham says.
The first question Cunningham says he sought to answer was, "Is this really a problem? Is it really as bad as I think it is?"
Cunningham was pleasantly surprised at the amount of raw data readily available on the websites of the U.S. Department of Commerce and other smaller bureaus. He began gathering the data, plotting it on graphs and projecting it into the future.
"Much to my chagrin, the more I worked on this, the more serious [my concerns] became," he says.
So, Cunningham decided to write the book. He formed his own publishing company, Dark Angel Number Thirteen, and The Hollowing of America came out earlier this month. It is available on the Dark Angel website and through Amazon.com.
"The danger [of writing the book] was sounding like a crackpot, painting this picture of doomsday without looking like I know what I'm talking about," he says, "but many people who've read it say it's well done and think [the situation] is true."
In his book, Cunningham discusses the problem, presents the data in more than 30 different charts and graphs, and offers suggestions about how to correct the problem. Cunningham says the consequences of letting the situation progress could be the additional loss of jobs, the continual rise of the national debt, and the collapse of the dollar.
"That, to me, is inevitable. And when the dollar falls--which it must unless a correction is made--it will make our manufacturing cheaper, which will help exports." This will help the industries, he says, but will unfortunately hurt consumers, because the value of their savings will crash. "It will be a painful process, but it needs to happen."
Cunningham says he has no expectations for his book.
"If I'm lucky, some pundit or politician or a famous person will look at it and write a review, and then it will sell," he says. "So it's just luck."
Cunningham says he has mailed out roughly 100 complimentary copies to politicians and various members of the media, and Ward will hold a book signing for him at of his home on Nov. 19. Cunningham will discuss the book, present his findings, and initiate a discussion with attendees.
Initial reviews that have been trickling in on Amazon.com have been positive.
Ned Lamont, recent Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, wrote, "[Cunningham's] insights and predictions about the future of manufacturing in the American economy are thought-provoking."
At the very least, Cunningham says, he hopes The Hollowing of America will encourage the American people to stop ignoring the gorilla.
To inquire about the Nov. 19 book signing in Monte Sereno, contact Ed Ward at 408.354.3866.
