GM is the No. 1 assembler in the United States and the world.

In 1952, Charles Erwin Wilson, president of General Motors Corp., told a congressional committee: "What is good for the country is good for General Motors, and what's good for General Motors is good for the country."

More than 50 years later, Wilson's boast still rings true, at least according to ASSEMBLY magazine's latest research project: the Assembly Top 50. To determine the impact of product assembly on the U.S. economy, ASSEMBLY magazine ranked the top 50 publicly owned manufacturing companies by gross revenue. To qualify for our list, a company had to derive a significant portion of its gross revenue from products that it assembled or that it designed and had assembled by another company. More importantly, some of this assembly, whether in-house or outsourced, had to occur in the United States.