The Manufacturing Report

In January 2002, Ross Auman got the call every plant manager dreads: shut down the factory, permanently. The Somerset, Pa., boot plant he’d worked at since high school was caught up in its parent company’s collapse as footwear and garment work moved overseas. Recently, AAM took a tour that same factory, now Abilene Boot Company. While there, AAM President Scott Paul sat down with Ross, who is now...

What if an American-made handbag could create a job that moves with a military family? Military spouses face unemployment rates roughly five times higher than the national average. Lisa Bradley, co-founder and CEO of R. Riveter, knows that challenge firsthand. So, in 2011, she and her co-founder built a company around it: American-made handbags whose parts are sewn by military spouses working from...

Erie Meyer was shopping for U.S.-made steel-toed boots for her brother when she kept finding Amazon and Walmart listings with "Made in USA" in the title and "imported" buried further down the page. The former Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chief technologist joins Scott Paul to talk about what happened when she started asking the retailers' AI shopping assistants...

Hundreds of pro ballplayers are wearing belts made in a Texas town of 3,000 people. Matt Hadden is the third-generation president to run Pioneer Fit, a company his grandfather started in 1979 selling sports gear out of the back of his trunk in Nebraska. He joins AAM President Scott Paul today and shares how the business grew by taking on the custom work no other manufacturer wanted, and how one qu...

At the height of a Washington, D.C., summer heat wave, members of the United Steelworkers came to town for the union's Rapid Response Legislative and Policy Conference — four days of talking legislation with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. AAM Media Relations Director Cat Adams grabbed a mic and went down to hear from the people who actually build things. Tire builders, welders, assemblers and machine...

He bought a $5 bill’s worth of beanies, sold them, bought more, and, eight years later, he’s manufacturing American-made knitwear in Detroit for brands you’ve heard of. Josh York, founder of Soft Goods, joins AAM President Scott Paul to talk about building a cut-and-sew factory in Corktown from scratch, teaching himself to sew off YouTube, and ruining roughly 100 T-shirts before one came out right...

What does it take to build a musical instrument company in America — with no woodworking background and a fear of power tools? Zack Munsell went from a sales job with “no passion” to founding Friendly Banjos, maker of a color-coded, easy-to-play banjo built for kids and beginners. Today, he joins AAM President Scott Paul, and shares his winding, cross-country journey learning from America’s artisa...

Russ Warner just wanted an extra $400 a month for a car payment and to hang with his kids. Instead, a single TikTok from an Ohio teenager racked up 50 million views, buried his made-to-order skateboard business under 600 orders a day, and turned a Utah garage operation into a real American factory. AAM President Scott Paul talks with Russ Warner, founder of Ghost Boards, the maker of custom transp...

AAM President Scott Paul spent 15 years hunting for a Western shirt actually Made in America. He never found one — because almost nobody was making them. Carter Baldwin was on the same hunt, going back to his college days in ’90s Austin, and eventually decided to make the shirt himself. Brazos Fine Shirts is the result: 100% cotton, mother-of-pearl snap, made in the Los Angeles Garment District —...

Detroit didn't just build cars. During World War II it built the machine that helped win the war. In the final installment of our three-part series on American manufacturing history — marking the 250th anniversary of the United States — AAM President Scott Paul visits the Detroit Historical Museum to walk through the story of the “Arsenal of Democracy” with the Detroit Historical Society's Directo...

America turns 250 this year, and the steel that built the modern nation was forged on the banks of the Monongahela. In Part 2 of our three-part series on 250 years of American manufacturing, Scott Paul tours the Carrie Blast Furnaces in Pittsburgh with Ron Baraff of Rivers of Steel. They trace how the region’s last pre-WWII blast furnaces poured thousands of tons of iron a day for Carnegie’s Homes...

America turns 250 this year, and the story of how it learned to make things starts in one stone building on the Blackstone River. In Part 1 of our three-part series on 250 years of American manufacturing, Scott Paul tours Old Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, with Park Ranger Allison Horrocks. They trace how Samuel Slater carried England’s guarded textile technology to America in his head, h...

America invented the circuit board but now makes less than 4% of the world's supply. Team AAM goes behind the scenes of the documentary "The New Frontier," hearing from Wesley Sprecher of Blue Water Components, Jesse Vaughan of Summit Interconnect, and Sean Kincaid of K&F Electronics on why the collapse of domestic PCB production is a national security crisis — and the fight to rebuild it before A...

American manufacturing needs workers — and veterans need a path back to work. Today, AAM President Scott Paul speaks with Dr. Martin Anselm, Director of the Center for Electronics Manufacturing and Assembly (CEMA) at the Rochester Institute of Technology, about a four-week veteran training program that’s placing underemployed and unemployed veterans into high-demand electronics manufacturing jobs....

What started in a garage with pipe from the hardware store is now a 90-person factory shipping nearly a thousand wind chimes a day. Today, Scott Paul speaks with Luke Croushorn of Wind River, the Manassas, Virginia chime maker that has been handcrafting wind chimes, birdhouses, and garden decor since 1986. Luke shares how founder Mike Throne built the company from Florida craft fairs into a nation...

In Maryland, you learn to crack a crab before you learn to walk - but Shelby Blondell decided the tools you use to do it deserved a serious upgrade. One night in 2017, Shelby picked up the traditional wooden mallet and plastic knife and saw how badly they both failed. That moment launched a years-long journey through prototypes, machine shops, and manufacturing partnerships to create The Sheller:...

What happens when a cartographer and a fashion stylist go to Germany and fall in love with a canvas bag? They come home and build an American business that celebrates hometown pride with every product. Today, AAM President Scott Paul speaks with Rachel Rheingold Berick and Michael Berick, co-founders of Maptote, a Brooklyn-based company that makes map-themed totes, pouches, home goods, and accesso...

What happens when an electrical engineering professor decides to skip the MBA and just… start a business? For Dr. Maya Gupta, it led to Artifact Puzzles — one of the most distinctive puzzle companies in the country. Today, AAM President Scott Paul speaks with Dr. Gupta about how she bought a laser cutter, built a manufacturing operation from scratch in Silicon Valley, and grew Artifact Puzzles int...

Winning a court case against unfair trade should mean justice, but for many American manufacturers, it doesn't. And it's costing them billions. Today, David Rashid of auto-parts maker Plews & Edelmann and Betsy Natz of the Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association reveal how Chinese companies are evading U.S. tariffs through transshipment, product misclassification, and third-country routing — and...

Buying a business is hard. Holding and growing it for decades is even harder. Today, Gat Caperton shares how he acquired a struggling West Virginia furniture maker at age 29 and spent nearly three decades building Gat Creek into a resilient, American-made manufacturer. He discusses applying lean manufacturing, investing heavily in technology, and surviving the “China Shock” by differentiating on q...

The idea for this company didn’t start in a boardroom — it started under a military helmet. Today, Scott Paul speaks with Haidar Hamoud, founder of HaakWear, about reinventing the traditional beanie through American manufacturing. Haidar shares how his U.S. Army experience inspired a patented stitch design that eliminates discomfort, why he chose to manufacture entirely in Cleveland, and how rigor...

Happy 2026! Today we’re featuring two artisan makers who were spotlighted in AAM’s holiday gift guide. Treeworks founder & co-owner Meaghan Goulder shares their evolution from arborist work to full-time spoon making, and the importance of sustainable wood sourcing. Dirty South Pottery co-owner Carvel Norman shares how he and his wife built a functional ceramics brand, the success of their signatur...

2025 will be remembered as the year tariffs took center stage in U.S. trade policy. Today, AAM President Scott Paul and AAM Director of Media Relations, Cat Adams, recap 2025 and walk us through the Trump administration’s trade actions from day one through a pivotal Supreme Court showdown. They examine sweeping new tariffs, market and political backlash, and competing arguments over costs versus s...

In an industry dominated by imports, one company stayed local — and competitive. AAM President Scott Paul speaks with City Threads founders Shayna Samuels and Joe Willis about building a Made-in-USA apparel brand from the ground up. They discuss how City Threads grew from early boutique sales into a national direct-to-consumer business, why they prioritize U.S. cut-and-sew manufacturing, and how c...

It started with one sewing machine, a pile of flat inner tubes — and a big idea about American manufacturing. Lanette Fidrych shares how Cycle Dog grew from sewing dog leashes out of discarded bike tubes to becoming a nationally distributed, U.S.-made pet product manufacturer. She discusses scaling production from her home to a full factory and retail/tavern space, the brand’s commitment to sustai...