[ad_1] The post 3 Next-Gen Tech Manufacturing Stocks appeared first on Millennial Money. It’s official: we’re out of the coronavirus recession. Surprisingly, it lasted only two months, the shortest in American history. COVID-19 was a stress test to the economy and many industries were surprisingly resilient. On the other hand, the pandemic exposed many of our areas of weakness. While the virus ravaged American hospitals, healthcare professionals couldn’t source the critical personal protective equipment needed to ensure healthcare workers themselves would not contract COVID-19. Decisions made decades ago led to a less resilient pandemic response. Another area of weakness that’s been exposed by COVID-19 is our decimated manufacturing base and supply chains. In recent months, shortages of chips have led to many industries—from cars to appliances to even toothbrush manufacturers—grinding to a standstill! Let’s check in on the stakes of this chip shortage, and why it could be a tailwind for some often overlooked stocks you could be missing in your portfolio. or, skip straight to our next-gen tech manufacturing stock picks The Rise of Manufacturing in Asia American manufacturers began to fall behind other countries in the late 1970s. Japan was the economic story of the 80s, as their automobile and electronics stole market share from the United States. Japan’s secret: just-in-time (JIT) inventory management. Instead of buying material in bulk, JIT sought to deliver materials only when needed. This breakthrough improved efficiency and helped the country provide cheaper products. The system was quickly incorporated at American companies as well. Yet JIT still didn’t solve the key issue for American manufacturers: labor costs in developing Asian countries were significantly lower than in the States. The solution was aggressive outsourcing. Companies like Nike were early pioneers and used overseas labor as a competitive advantage to increase profit and win market share In 1972, President Nixon visited China to further the diplomatic relationship; the United States established full diplomatic relations in 1979 and the country became a manufacturing hotspot for America. Manufacturing jobs in the United States peaked in 1979 at nearly 20 million employees, nearly 8 million more than exist today, while China became the world’s manufacturing superpower. Reshoring Tech Manufacturing as a National Imperative America’s supply chain became optimized for profit, but this came at the expense of resiliency. As the N95 mask shortage during the pandemic proved, America became reliant on the manufacturing output of countries that often don’t share the same economic principles. Demand for PPE is (hopefully) over, but another conflict is rapidly approaching: the silicon race. And it’s even more important for America’s long-term economic dominance. China is no longer satisfied with providing low-value assembly and workshop labor. In 2015, President Xi Jinping announced an ambitious plan dubbed Made in China 2025, with the stated goal of making China the No. 1 technology powerhouse. The key industries for Made in China 2025 include the Internet of Things, robotics, AI/machine learning, and electric vehicles. Against that backdrop, building out America’s semiconductor manufacturing capacity is a matter of national strategic importance and recent events might have shortened America’s timeline to respond. A Land Dispute Making Big Tech CEOs Nervous The biggest front of the race for global technology dominance runs through an island in the Pacific Ocean. Taiwan, or the Republic of China, is only the size of Maryland but it’s making a few of the world’s biggest CEOs queasy. The island’s economic crown jewel, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (NYSE: TSM), is one of the world’s largest companies due to its dominance as a leading semiconductor foundry (manufacturer) and it’s not alone. In fact, the country manufactures more than half of the world’s chips. Beijing views Taiwan as a territory owned by China while the island views itself as a sovereign country. Increasingly, tensions are coming to a head and Beijing seems to be on a collision course with Taiwan’s leadership. The United States and Japan have been coordinating military exercises in preparation for possible conflict. The lack of U.S. semiconductor manufacturing capability along with China’s claims on the world’s semiconductor foundry has Washington nervous. The United States Senate recently passed the United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, with the crown jewel being $52 billion committed to semiconductor manufacturing. America might be down when it comes to high-technology manufacturing but it’s certainly not out. Here are three companies that will be instrumental in reclaiming America’s position as a top-notch tech manufacturing economy. 1. Intel Corporation isn’t dead Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) Price: $53 (as of close Jul 22, 2021) Market Cap: 225,966,480,000 document.addEventListener(“DOMContentLoaded”, function(event) { Highcharts.stockChart(“stockChart-7b0c418f9389563924d8453199cbc6cb”,{rangeSelector:{selected:1},title:{text:”Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)Closing Stock Price”},subtitle: {text: “30-Day Historical Data”},navigator: { enabled: false },scrollbar: { enabled: false },credits: { enabled: false },xAxis: { type: “datetime”, labels: { formatter: function() { return Highcharts.dateFormat(“%m %d, %Y”, this.value); }}},colors: [“#118b4e”],rangeSelector : { enabled: false },series:[{name:”NASDAQ:INTC”,data:[[1624420800000,55.26],[1624507200000,56.07],[1624593600000,55.91],[1624852800000,57.48],[1624939200000,56.75],[1625025600000,56.14],[1625112000000,56.01],[1625198400000,56.76],[1625544000000,56.09],[1625630400000,55.96],[1625716800000,55.39],[1625803200000,55.99],[1626062400000,56.73],[1626148800000,56.87],[1626235200000,56.52],[1626321600000,55.81],[1626408000000,54.97],[1626667200000,54.64],[1626753600000,55.24],[1626840000000,56.23],[1626926400000,55.96],[1627012800000,53],],tooltip:{valueDecimals:2,xDateFormat: “%A, %B %e, %Y”}}]}); }); Let’s get this out of the way: Intel’s stock has seen better days. The semiconductor company was briefly the fourth largest company in the United States as its chips powered most personal computers running Microsoft. Unlike its Wintel monopoly partner Microsoft, Intel has never regained the highs set in the early 2000s before the tech crash. These days investors are flocking to fabless chipmakers like NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and AMD (companies that specialize in chip design but hand off the manufacturing to foundries like Taiwan Semiconductor and GlobalFoundries). Intel, on the other hand, is one of a few chipmakers known as integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) that design, manufacture, and sell their chips. The upside for IDMs is they control the entire vertically integrated process. The downside for IDMs is their complex operations can come at the expense of being nimble, particularly in the dynamic critical design process. This is what happened to Intel, losing ground to AMD and NVIDIA. However, the company’s new CEO has an interesting plan to turn what has been considered a weakness into a strength: in addition to announcing a massive $20 billion investment in two Arizona chip plants, Intel announced its