ISSUE 025  ·  MATERIALS, CAPACITY, CONVERSION
The defense buildup is tallied in shells per month, hulls per year and contract ceilings. Every one of those numbers assumes a machine tool is available to cut the metal, and the same CNC machining centers that cut automotive engine blocks and medical implants cut artillery shell forgings and turbine blades. In 1981 the United States was the world’s largest producer of machine tools, at $5.1 billion in 1981 dollars, according to a September 1983 assessment by the U.S. International Trade Commission.
More than two-thirds of American machine tool firms closed in the decline that followed, a 1994 RAND study found. The 58th World Machine Tool Survey, published by Gardner Business Media and GROW Industrial Intelligence on September 8, 2026, ranked the United States fourth among producers in 2025. China led at $30.7 billion. The United States was the world’s largest importer of machine tools in 2025, at just over $5.8 billion, and ran the survey’s largest trade deficit, at $4.4 billion. US production as a share of GDP ranked 25th among the 29 largest producing nations in 2022, 70 percent below the global average, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) reported on December 15, 2025.
On September 2, 2025 the Commerce Department opened a Section 232 investigation into imports of robotics and industrial machinery, including CNC machining centers. Its report to the President was due by May 30, 2026. As of October 2026 no proclamation has followed. Imported machinery is not duty-free in the meantime: Proclamation 11021 of April 2, 2026 set a temporarily reduced Section 232 duty of 15 percent on fixed industrial machinery as a steel and aluminum derivative, and Proclamation 11032 of June 1, 2026 extended that rate to agricultural equipment.
25th of 29
US ranking in machine tool production as a share of GDP among the 29 largest producing nations in 2022
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, December 15, 2025
Blue screen-print illustration of a mid-century engine lathe in side view, showing its headstock, chuck, carriage, lead screw, tailstock and drive motor.
PLATE  ·  American machine tool production, 1940 to 1943
Mason Britton, a former publisher of American Machinist, was responsible for working out a system of machine tool priorities under the National Defense Advisory Commission in 1940. He found that government officials were convinced the country needed new plants but were “generally unaware that, without machine tools, the buildings would be worthless,” according to the magazine’s own history.
Monthly machine tool shipments rose from $24.1 million in January 1940 to $132.0 million in December 1942, in current dollars, according to National Bureau of Economic Research series m01169b, compiled from National Machine Tool Builders’ Association releases. More machine tools were built between 1940 and 1943 than between 1900 and 1940, according to American Machinist’s history.
The industry built about 800,000 machine tools during the war. Conversion then ran the other way: when the war ended, 300,000 surplus machines were dumped on the market, American Machinist recorded.
Exterior of the Haas Automation factory under construction south of Henderson Executive Airport in Henderson, Nevada.
PLATE  ·  Haas Automation Henderson factory, Henderson, Nevada
Haas Automation, founded by Gene Haas in 1983 in Sun Valley, California, builds its machines at a 1.1-million-square-foot factory in Oxnard, according to the company. Peter Zierhut, vice president of outside operations, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in September 2026 that a roughly 2.5-million-square-foot factory in Henderson, Nevada is on schedule to open in the first quarter of 2027, and put the total investment at around $500 million. Haas is moving much of its production capacity to Henderson without closing its California operations, he said.
Vertical construction began in October 2024. The project had been delayed by the pandemic and by the company’s effort to secure better pricing on construction materials, the Review-Journal reported. The plant sits south of Henderson Executive Airport.
$5.8 billion
US machine tool imports in 2025, the largest of any country
800,000
Machine tools built by the US industry during World War II
2.5 million sq ft
Approximate size of Haas Automation’s Henderson factory, scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2027
 
Every supply figure carries a date and a source in the text. Not a footnote. In the sentence.
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Nothing here is investment advice. No company is named as an investment.

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