President predicts it will take decades to revive declining U.S. manufacturing base

It will take decades to rebuild the steadily declining manufacturing base in the United States, President Obama said this weekend.

While the president noted that the manufacturing sector in the economy has shown signs of improvement, but suggested it would take 20 years or more to rejuvenate U.S. manufacturing, and the Rust Belt economies that depend on it.

"If you think about what's happening in Ohio and the manufacturing base that employed so many people, the decline in that sector of the economy took decades," Obama told the editors of the Toledo Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in an interview.

"It didn't start last year, it's been going on for two decades, and reversing that and rebuilding it is going to take two decades, as well," Obama said, previewing the G-20 meetings this coming week in Pittsburgh.

The president argued that the summit, which is expected to focus intently the reform of global financial regulations, would lay the groundwork for the next two decades' work in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other states hit hard by a decline in American manufacturing.

The president made the push for new U.S. financial regulations in his weekly radio address, saying that new rules for large banks and other financial services businesses would insulate the country from another crisis like the one experienced last fall.

"We've got to make sure that we're cultivating small businesses and entrepreneurs who are going to be driving employment growth," the President said, "so that 20 years from now we can look back and we can say, 'This was the pivot point, this is where we started to turn the corner."