Motorola becomes first to manufacture smartphone in U.S.

American manufacturing is starting to see resurgence in the high-tech industry.

ABC News reported yesterday that Motorola will assemble its newest flagship smartphone—the Moto X—in the United States.

The phone will be made at Flextronics’ 500,000-square foot facility in Fort Worth, Texas.

“There are several business advantages to having our Illinois and California-based designers and engineers much closer to our factory,” Motorola said in a statement. “For instance, we’ll be able to iterate on design much faster, create a leaner supply chain, respond much more quickly to purchasing trends and demands, and deliver devices to people here much more quickly.”

Apple will be manufacturing one of its iMac computers in the U.S. and Lenovo also began making some of its computers and tablets in North Carolina earlier this year.

Since 1980, the number of minerals in computer chips has jumped from 12 to 60. In 2011, the U.S. relied on foreign sources for more than 50 percent of domestic consumption of 43 mineral commodities, including some of those found in computers and smartphones.

According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers study, 78 percent of high-tech CEOs run businesses that face minerals and metals scarcity.

With more manufacturers moving to the U.S. specifically for a leaner supply chain, now is the time to streamline the minerals mining permitting process to access the $6.2 trillion worth of minerals beneath U.S. soil, encourage even more domestic manufacturing and jump start our economy.