Why Fracking Won't Bring Back the Factories (Yet)

Since last fall, President Obama has repeatedly declared that manufacturing jobs are coming back to America. In this article, however, we suggest that the return of U.S. manufacturing is still more promise than reality.In particular, while the recent increase in natural gas exploration and production has been optimistically linked to a U.S. manufacturing revival, the boom has not led to significant growth in employment. Paradoxically, for the U.S. to reap the greatest benefit possible from the extraction of its natural gas reserves, both more and fewer regulations are needed. On the one hand, current restrictions on natural gas exports must to be lifted to provide the right incentives for domestic producers, who receive much lower prices at home than they would abroad. On the other hand, more comprehensive environmental regulations would reassure critics that natural gas does indeed providea clean and sustainable promise for the U.S. economy.