Global Manufacturing and Industrial Regions

Industrial geography in North America has been reshaped by a decades-long shift from the traditional manufacturing core to newer growth regions. The Rust Belt, stretching across the Great Lakes states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and western Pennsylvania and New York, was built on steel production in Pittsburgh and Gary, and automobile manufacturing centered on Detroit, home to the "Big Three" automakers General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler (now part of Stellantis); the region experienced severe deindustrialization from the 1970s onward as competition from Japanese and, later, Chinese manufacturers, automation, and capital flight to lower-wage regions closed plants and hollowed out cities such as Detroit and Flint. In parallel, the Sun Belt, spanning the American South and Southwest from North Carolina and Georgia through Texas and Arizona, attracted new manufacturing investment thanks to lower labor costs, right-to-work labor laws, and, more recently, targeted incentives for semiconductor and electric vehicle plants, exemplified by Tesla's Gigafactory in Texas and the major TSMC semiconductor fabrication plant under construction in Phoenix, Arizona. Mexico's northern border maquiladora belt, anchored in cities such as Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Monterrey, has likewise grown as a manufacturing hub integrated into North American supply chains under NAFTA and its successor USMCA, particularly for automotive components and electronics assembly.