In 2006-2007, General Electric decided to divest its plastics operations as insufficiently profitable. Since GE has been an industry pioneer for close to a century, one has to ask, “Just what is the future of our industry?” Will plastics continue to grow faster than the overall economy, or is this growth now all in the past? This presentation will examine the question from a global and a national perspective, and also go into why GE has taken plastics out of its own view of the future. How this turmoil will affect the members of the industry and what measures are needed to survive and prosper in the 21st century will be examined.