The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Can 3D Printing Save U.S. Manufacturing? || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

We're entering an era where restructuring global manufacturing will be non-negotiable. As supply chains collapse and tariffs complicate this process, can technology like 3D printing take some of the pressure off?Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://bit.ly/49SbbFq

Hey all, Peter Zine here, walking down Indian Creek on my way out, dreaming of Mexican food, but, you know, that's not going to get satiated because there's no good Mexican food anywhere near Denver. Anyway, uh, today we're taking a question from the Patreon crowd, and specifically, it's a building off of some of the concerns that I've had with manufacturing. Um, the short version is that the more complex the manufacturing system is the more countries are involved. So when you put tariffs on the import of manufactured goods, either the finished product or the parts, what you're basically saying is I don't want to participate in the supply chain because it's cheaper for everyone to move their production base out of your country and then just import the finished product at the end of the day. Otherwise, they have to pay the tariffs two, three, four, ten times. It's one of the reasons why the Trump tariffs are actually reducing investment in physical plant in the United States and reducing the amount of manufacturing products that were actually.

producing. Anyway, the follow-on question from that is, is there a technology out there that might help us get around that? And there might, there might be something called 3D printing. Basically, you take a powdered substrate, whether it's a plastic or a metal, and then you center it with a laser and grow a product. It's often called additive manufacturing as well instead of subtractive manufacturing. So subtractive manufacturing was wearing like punch holes and things and you start with a block of material

and you whittle it down until you have what you need. Additive manufacturing or 3D manufacturing, 3D printing is the opposite, as you build it up layer by layer. Now, there are plenty of things that this looks very promising for. But the key thing to remember is

if it has moving parts, especially moving parts that are different materials, It's not that this technology cannot be used. It's just that there are some pretty sharp limits. Materials, printers that can handle more than one type of material are pretty new, really, just in the last five, ten years. And the speed at which you can do things like this is very slow. So it's very popular in things like prototyping, where every prototype is unique. and then it doesn't matter if it takes you hours to days to print the product.

It's also very popular in things where abnormal shapes rule. So especially if you need a lot of strength but not a lot of weight. So you're going to leave holes or bubbles within the material. So for aerospace, there are actually examples of 3D printers already on production floors and to a lesser degree in automotive as well. But this big thing to keep in mind here is speed. in the time that it takes you to stamp 100 products, you're probably only going to make one 3D printed product.

And so while 3D printing is getting incrementally better day by day, and that's great. And while it will undoubtedly, as the cost of manufactured products go up, as the globalization kicks in, it will obviously find more and more niches where it's the applicable technology. But it will always be coming from behind when it comes to, mass application because of that speed issue. So I like the technology. I like the way it's going. We should hurry up and get there.