And, there are thousands of welders employed in many other industries - let us not forget that you can't sit around and stop production while you wait six months for the Chinese to make a replacement for a one-of-a-kind machine. On the street where I have my company (a niche-market hardware company), there are, I would take a guess at, at least 75 people employed primarily to do welding. The street is approximately 1 mile long. We also weld quite often - I wouldn't hire an employee whose answer to every question is "we can't do that process until I find someone to sell me the item I need to perform it." Why buy a $75 tool when I can make a functional one for $0.35 in materials and ten minutes of time?

My best-paid employees are those who can weld, drill, operate machines, and do all of the other things necessary to keep us in the business of making products - and also think creatively and logically.

Contrary to popular belief, China is not the manufacturing panacea - for most of us making small-market products (think a few hundred units a month), China is exorbitantly expensive. Most of my competitors either do their work in-house or out-source to other U.S. companies.