An auditable policy instrument asking: how much of America's critical industrial base can the country actually make, source, staff, and sustain?
Think of the MII as a Big Mac Index for domestic production, with a serious audit trail underneath. A high score means U.S. factories, mines, workforce, and supply chains can cover strategic needs with less fragile dependence. A low score exposes where resilience is more slogan than capacity.
If global trade stopped tomorrow, how much of America's own critical stuff could it still make?
Raw materials. America's ability to source critical minerals domestically — from rare earth elements for electronics to lithium for batteries. Graphite and manganese, to pick two, are heavily imported.
Manufacturing readiness. The human side: workforce availability, technical capabilities, operational readiness, domestic value creation. We track vocational training, automation adoption, capacity utilization, and the share of a product's labor performed inside U.S. borders.
Strategic goods. Finished-product capacity in critical sectors — aerospace, transportation, energy, electronics, medical equipment, industrial essentials. The U.S. is famously vulnerable in semiconductor fabrication and battery production; it is stronger in aerospace and heavy machinery.
Supply chain. Even with domestic final assembly, networks matter: subcomponent self-sufficiency, supplier diversity, logistics independence, inventory stockpiling. Low scores here expose the hidden dependencies that make "Made in America" deceptively shallow.
The public score uses four weighted pillars: raw materials and minerals, strategic goods production, supply-chain independence, and manufacturing readiness. Each indicator is moving toward a canonical metric contract: numerator, denominator, source, date, confidence, geography, cadence, and update owner.
The goal is a release-disciplined measurement framework that lets a staffer, analyst, or policymaker see which bottlenecks are raw-material, strategic-goods, workforce, logistics, or data-confidence problems.
MII is in Phase 2 beta. Phase 1 credibility work is implemented: the four-pillar structure, visible confidence and vintage, public limitations, historical snapshots, and driver-attribution demo. Current work is focused on methodology lock: canonical indicator tables, release notes, changelog discipline, analyst appendix export, exposure splits, scenario layers, and external reviewer recruitment.
Researchers, policymakers, congressional staff, industrial-base specialists, supply-chain analysts, and methodology reviewers interested in early access or criticism are welcome to get in touch.