"I think most people think we are far down the list of manufacturing countries in the world. But in this case, most people in fact are wrong," says Dr. Walden, a professor of agricultural and resource economics. "The U.S. is still the leading country in the world in terms of the value of manufactured output.

"In 2005, U.S. factories accounted for 25 percent of the world's manufactured products, Japan was number two at 14 percent, and China was number 3 at 11 percent," he adds.

"Now, this doesn't mean that we still lead in manufacturing workers. In fact, we don't. We've been losing manufacturing workers. One reason: because output per worker is higher," Walden concludes. "But we still are number one in terms of manufacturing."