Labor & Employment Law

Big Pix Solution Needed to Rebuild Manufacturing

By James Parks

As important as a Buy America policy is, it is not enough to rebuild the nation’s manufacturing base. We must have a comprehensive industrial policy that supports manufacturing, promotes research and development, emphasizes worker training and rebuilds our infrastructure. Otherwise, the United States will no longer be the world’s top economy, participants at the America’s Future Now conference were warned today.

During a forum on “Making It in America: A Progressive Global Strategy,” Kate Gordon of the Center for American Progress said our competitors, like China and Germany, have strategies in place that are geared to increasing their economic development while the United States does not. Clyde Prestowitz, author of “Betrayal of the American Prosperity,” said when it comes to trade, we are playing an entirely different game than our competitors. While we admonish them to consume more and export less, they are figuring out ways to increase exports and consume less.

Pollster Mark Mellman said there is strong public backing for manufacturing. He reported on a poll that showed 86 percent of respondents want to increase support for manufacturing. A whopping 95 percent believe Congress and the president should spend more time creating jobs than bailing out Wall Street and 85 percent believe they should focus on creating manufacturing jobs.

A comprehensive industrial policy would include emphasis on a host of long-range actions to rebuild our manufacturing base, which has been decimated over the past few decades. Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, pointed out that one-third of American manufacturing plants have shut down in the past 10 years and that today only 1,000 U.S. factories employ more than 1,000 workers. And we are losing high-tech workers at a faster rate than traditional manufacturing jobs, he said.

Panelists called for policies that make it easier for manufacturers to get credit and capital to build plants and to conduct research for new products. But once that is done, the nation also needs support for manufacturers by matching the incentives and subsidies that other countries are using to lure U.S. companies away, Prestowitz said.

In the clean energy field, said Gordon, we must create a market for green products by setting up tough emissions standards and building codes that will stimulate manufacturers to produce more efficient forms of energy. At the same time, we also must rebuild our infrastructure and provide money to develop new forms of energy.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on June 08, 2010 (boomark / email).