Two recent items on the economy struck home in the past few days. One, the United States no longer is the world’s major goods producer. Our nation has now been eclipsed by China, which ended the United States’ 110-year run as the largest goods producer.

Check this out. ABC World News this week is spotlighting products that are ”Made in America.” 

Recognizing the connection between a strong industrial base and a vibrant economy, the feature on American-made products asks, “how we can bring jobs back to the U.S.?”

Today, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue issued a rare joint statement supporting “Obama’s call to create jobs and grow the U.S. economy through investment in our nation’s infrastructure.” Trumka and Donohue said:

Whether it is building roads, bridges, high-speed broadband, energy systems and schools, these projects not only create jobs and demand for businesses, they are an investment in building the modern infrastructure our country needs to compete in a global economy.

This is a cross-post from the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

President Obama travels to Manitowoc, Wis., this afternoon. In Wisconsin, he’ll no doubt encounter a lot of struggling paper mills (along with workers who’ve been laid off from those mills). This is a result of unfair competition from China’s heavily subsidized paper industry.

Several disturbing items out now as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner gets set to meet next week with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Last fall, the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) conducted a 12-city “Keep it Made in America” town hall tour that brought candidates and voters together to talk about the tough issues revolving around reviving American manufacturing, lowering unemployment and getting the U.S. economy back on track.

When the Apollo Alliance released its Clean Transportation Manufacturing Action Plan (TMAP) in October (click here for detailed coverage) one of its key job-creating recommendations was ensuring that American manufacturers and U.S. workers supply the rail cars, tracks and other mass transit equipment to modernize the nation’s mass transportation system.

In the global economic race, the United States is coming in second—and one of the major reasons is that we have stopped making things in this country. A recent poll shows the public thinks it’s going to be that way for awhile. Only one in five Americans say the U.S. economy is the world’s strongest. Nearly half (47 percent) say China’s economy is stronger and only one in three expects the United States to regain the top spot in the next 20 years. Nearly three-fifths of those surveyed say that increasing competition from lower-paid workers around the world will keep living standards for average Americans from growing as fast as they did in the past.