US manufacturing decline in the technology sector was on full display at CES 2025 — not in a press release or a government report, but in the composition of the exhibitor floor itself.
The Consumer Electronics Show is the annual showcase of global technology innovation. For decades it was an American-dominated event, a demonstration of Silicon Valley’s capacity to define the direction of the technology economy. In January 2025, that narrative cracked visibly. Over 50% of exhibitors came from Asia. China alone accounted for 30 to 35% of the total exhibitor count. American companies represented less than 28% of the show floor — in an event held in Las Vegas, in the country that invented the consumer electronics industry.
Craig Tindale referenced this data point in his Financial Sense interview not as a cultural observation but as a material one. The companies at CES were not just showing products. They were demonstrating manufacturing capability — the ability to design, prototype, and produce at scale. The Chinese exhibitors were making things. The American exhibitors were largely showing software interfaces to hardware made elsewhere.
This is the visible face of the deindustrialization thesis. We did not just offshore manufacturing. We offshore the knowledge of how to manufacture. The engineers who understand how to design for manufacturing, how to spec a production line, how to troubleshoot yield issues at scale — those skills follow the factories. They don’t stay in the country of the brand owner. They accumulate in the country of the manufacturer.
The CES floor composition is a leading indicator. When the companies that make the physical things stop showing up at the world’s premier technology showcase, it is because they no longer exist in sufficient density to fill the floor. That is not a trend that reverses with a tariff. It reverses with a generation of deliberate industrial policy — if we start now.
The Hedge 