WASHINGTON -- President Obama punctuated his annual State of the Union address last night with another call for greater emphasis on domestic manufacturing. The president used his platform to call for the creation of six new high-tech manufacturing hubs in the US this year.

"We have the chance, right now, to beat other countries in the race for the next wave of high-tech manufacturing jobs," Obama said in stating his proposal.

Last night's announcement was not exactly new, however. President Obama first raised the concept in his State of the Union address a year ago, when he called for three such hubs. He followed up on it last May by announcing focus areas for a program called the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation.

NNMI is aimed at leveraging the assets of particular regions across the country, while bringing together companies, universities, community colleges, national laboratories and government to partner and co-invest in the development of manufacturing technologies. The NMMI plan called for 15 linked, regional manufacturing clusters across the US.

Furthermore, President Obama of late has been talking up the manufacturing hubs during trips around the US. Two weeks ago in Raleigh, for example, he feted a local consortium of 18 businesses and six universities under the auspices of North Carolina State University.

Under the President's plan, each hub would receive tens of millions of dollars in federal funding and would connect manufacturers with emerging research in a specific technology area. Participants in the Raleigh hub, for instance, include ABB, APEI, Avogy, Cree, Delphi, Delta Products, DfR Solutions, Gridbridge, and Hesse Mechantronics, and focus on next-generation semiconductors. A similar hub in Youngstown, OH, focuses on 3D printing.