This rural Maine factory made 100 million COVID swabs a month. Its CEO says manufacturing’s best days are ahead

On the 250th anniversary of America, there is cause for a lot of celebration—and a little concern too. But, now more than ever, we should keep the glass half-full. We are incredibly fortunate to be Americans. As a lifelong Mainer, hardly the epicenter of American society, I count myself blessed for the economic opportunities that hardworking people can still find to get ahead. Despite our socioeconomic challenges in a changing world, the U.S. economy is still the standard for the rest of the globe. While other countries face political instability, civic unrest, and double-digit unemployment rates, our economy continues to innovate and grow. There are nearly eight million open jobs in the United States—a testament to entrepreneurship and business dynamism. No business community is more dynamic than manufacturing. From the Industrial Revolution to post-World War II globalization and current debates about tariff rates, manufacturers have consistently found themselves in the spotlight or under scrutiny. And yet, we persevere. Our perseverance as an economic sector is unprecedented, providing the entire economy with the strongest possible backbone. In so many ways, manufacturing is the U.S. economy. Domestic manufacturers contribute nearly $3 trillion in economic output, accounting for about 10 percent of gross domestic product and employing well over 12 million workers. This is a greater impact than the entire economy of Canada or Russia or South Korea. Much has been made of manufacturing’s demise in recent decades, but manufacturers remain alive and well. Our “Made in the USA” story is still being written. I know firsthand: My family’s company, Maine-based Puritan Medical Products, became North America’s largest supplier of COVID-19 testing swabs during the pandemic, hiring and training hundreds of workers to produce up to 100 million swabs a month for Americans in need. Today, we are a trusted domestic manufacturer of swabs and single-use specimen collection devices f