Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick joined Breitbart News on Wednesday for a policy discussion where he addressed topics including reshoring, supply chain vulnerabilities, and the future of automated manufacturing in the United States.
Lutnick highlighted the potential of automation in reshoring efforts, stating, “The opportunity is that manufacturing is being automated, and automated manufacturing is perfect for America. We don’t have a billion people, right? We’re going to think we need to be a higher tech kind of thought so that we can work the way this is working.”
When asked about the breadth of the reshoring agenda, Lutnick asserted that while the U.S. doesn’t need to bring back every kind of manufacturing, modern technology creates new opportunities. “There are some things that should be made overseas—sandals, cheap T-shirts. We’re cool with that,” he said. At the same time, he emphasized that “You can do an enormous amount of manufacturing domestically” using advanced robotics.
Lutnick drew a distinction between different kinds of robotics, noting that the automated systems he envisions for domestic manufacturing are not humanoid machines. “Close your eyes and just think of a modern auto plant, you know, with the arm that goes out and drills like that.”
He warned against over-reliance on adversarial powers: “We’re not going to let Chinese humanoid robots into this country, just like we’re not going to let Chinese electric vehicles into this country,” he remarked. He raised the concern that Chinese-made vehicles or infrastructure components could be remotely disabled in a time of conflict.
This vulnerability extends, Lutnick contended, to sectors such as pharmaceuticals. “Before I took this job, if you opened my medicine cabinet, I don’t think I had a branded pharmaceutical. All those generic versions, they’re all made in China. If we were adversarial, what makes you think you’re getting them number one? And if you got them, what makes you think during your adversarial moment you’re willing to take this pill? We need to make that here, and that means you have to go down all the ingredients to make sure each and every ingredient is made here.”
Detailing his role, Lutnick said, “My job is I go down to every line item and say, ‘Okay, where are we with this? Where are we with this?’” referencing everything from critical minerals to component supply chains.
He used vehicle magnets as an example of how access to small but essential components can become a critical chokepoint. “They put magnets in cars and the average cost of a magnet in a car is 20 bucks. They sell it by the pound. It’s a 55 bucks a pound. This isn’t like high tech,” he explained. “But it’s like me giving you a really cool bookcase for Christmas, and I don’t give you the Allen wrench. It costs $1 to put it together, right? So they said, ‘Well, I’m not sending you the magnets’, and they make them all. It’s like not sending you the key to the car. You can’t run the car.”
Lutnick expressed confidence that efforts across the administration are aligned on solving these “choke points.” “I thought that was a great advantage, because it woke us up and said, ‘We got to fix that,’” he stated. “I’m doing everything we can for these four years, and the whole administration is working together to do everything it can over these four years to get all those choke points off of our neck.”
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