| ISSUE 032 · MATERIALS, CAPACITY, CONVERSION | |
| Production targets arrive in shells per month and engines per quarter. The metal-cutting machines that shape every one of those parts are counted less often. The United States was the world’s largest machine tool importer in 2025, at just over $5.8 billion, and carried the survey’s largest trade deficit in the sector at $4.57 billion, per the 58th Annual World Machine Tool Survey. | |
| Every shell casing, turbine disc and structural frame begins on a machining center, a lathe or a grinder. China, Germany and Japan together produced 58 percent of the world’s machine tools in 2025, per the German Machine Tool Builders’ Association. An Information Technology and Innovation Foundation report in December 2025 recorded that the United States was the world’s largest producer in 1981; the 58th Survey placed it fourth. | |
| Orders for American manufacturing technology reached $4.76 billion through August 2026, up 36.9 percent from the same period in 2025, per AMT. On September 2, 2025, the Commerce Department initiated a Section 232 national security investigation into imports of robotics and industrial machinery, covering CNC machining centers, turning machines and grinding equipment. | |
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| PLATE · American machine tool production, 1942 |
| In April 1941, machine tool scarcity was what one wartime assessment called the most serious shortage confounding defense production, per The Big L: American Logistics in World War II. Annual shipments had run at roughly $100 million between 1929 and 1938, per Ristuccia and Tooze in the Economic History Review. Bill Knudsen told President Roosevelt it would take eighteen months to retool the country’s factories and shipyards, per Freedom’s Forge; by April 30, Roosevelt had written to Knudsen and Sidney Hillman urging a seven-day week and twenty-four-hour schedule for tool builders. |
| By April 1942, shipments had reached $100 million per month, per Ristuccia and Tooze. More machine tools were manufactured between 1940 and 1943 than had been produced in the four decades from 1900 to 1940, per American Machinist. |
| The Defense Plant Corporation financed the construction of 35 new machine tool plants and placed nearly $2 billion in machine tool pool orders. The installed base of machine tools in American metalworking rose from 896,000 at the start of 1940 to 1,518,000 by the end of 1944, per Ristuccia and Tooze. |
| PLATE · Haas Automation Henderson factory, Henderson, Nevada | |||
| Haas Automation, the largest machine tool builder in the Western Hemisphere, manufactures every machine at its 1.1 million square foot facility in Oxnard, California, per the company. The company broke ground on a second factory in Henderson, Nevada, in October 2024. By September 2026 it was holding job fairs ahead of the plant’s opening, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on September 4. Peter Zierhut, vice president of outside operations, put the total investment at around $500 million. | |||
| The Henderson plant covers roughly 2.5 million square feet, per a City of Henderson announcement in September 2024. Haas is moving production capacity to Henderson while maintaining operations at Oxnard. The facility sits at 2055 Via Inspirada, Henderson, Nevada, with operations expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026, per the company. | |||
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| Every supply figure carries a date and a source in the text. Not a footnote. In the sentence. | |||
| FREE. NO STOCK PICKS. NO PREDICTIONS. | |||
| Nothing here is investment advice. No company is named as an investment. |
