What's Patriotic Now?

Detroit -- I'm going to oversimplify, but not by much. There's nothing wrong with America that three million new industrial jobs using innovative technologies wouldn't solve. Those three million industrial jobs would quickly generate the other three million jobs -- in construction, agriculture, and services -- that add up to the current jobs deficit in this country.

That's the power of manufacturing jobs. They would instantly start carving down the mountain of debt that constitutes the price America is paying for two wars, the Bush tax cuts, and the economic collapse produced by trying to substitute banking fees for making things as the foundation of our economy. Our deficit is not the result of ongoing, out-of-control federal spending, either for basic government goods and services or for entitlements. It is black swans like the wars and self-inflicted wounds like the tax cuts that put us in hock.

Because a huge number of those jobs would be in new clean-energy technologies (that's where the opportunities for innovation are brightest), creating three million new industrial jobs would unavoidably slash our reliance on imported oil, right our nation's trade deficit, and put us on a pathway to avoiding future wars in the Middle East. Not to mention doing our part to heal the disrupted global climate.

What do we need to repower manufacturing? Our problem is not American wages -- the manufacturing jobs we need are not low-wage, low-technology industries like shoes and apparel, but highly skilled and therefore highly paid jobs in innovative sectors like mass transit vehicles, electric cars, new battery and energy storage technologies, solar power, wind turbines, high performance building materials, carbon fiber for lightweight vehicles.

What manufacturing needs is markets (China took over our lead in solar panels because China created the market for them), finance (another area where the Chinese have done a much better job of ensuring that new factories can get affordable loans), and policy support and consistency. U.S. tax policy for innovating industries typically works on a one- or two-year Congressional stop-start cycle: manufacturing is overly taxed because it used to be so dominant in the economy. We have tons of incentives for companies that move these jobs overseas, and we no longer enforce trade rules consistently to support our own industries.

Can we do it? Yes. A few proof points:

Michigan is poised to take over 20% of the world's advanced battery market to produce 1.7 million hybrid and electric vehicles in the Us by 2015. Already thousands of new jobs have been created by companies like 1-2-3. None of this, incidentally, would have happened with out both the Obama rescue of GM and Chrysler and the investments the Department of Energy made in the battery sector. And 1.7 million is a number that can easily be exceeded if the Obama administration puts in place ambitious, effective emissions and fuel efficiency standards for new passenger vehicles this fall.

DOE just provided the necessary loan guarantee backup for three large-scale solar facilities in the California desert -- facilities which will power 275,000 homes and generate more than 1000 jobs.

Siemens USA just landed a $500 million contract to provide Amtrak with new, U.S.-built energy-efficient locomotives.

KLM and Lufthansa both announced that they are going to be flying airplanes using advanced biofuels, providing an area where the U.S. has a major potential edge as a large country with tremendous biofuels potential and a new, high value market.

The list could go on. What's lacking?

Clear national vision from the administration. Despite the president's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, there's no real national drive to create those three million jobs.

Second, nationalism from the Republicans. They almost seem to want the U.S. to become a second rate country -- because they can't tolerate the reality that to compete in today's world we need a strong, effective federal government. That the Republicans are trying to use the debt ceiling as a hostage, leveraging the possibility of global economic collapse for partisan advantage, is, quite simply, shameful.

But we don't have to let them get away with it. Patriotism can still trump partisanship, and manufacturing is, well, almost pixie dust.

 

 

 

Follow Carl Pope on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CarlPope

Comments

[Gale Leslie Roberts]

03:16 PM on 07/07/2011

While I agree with the main thrust of this article, I disagree with the premise that we should not produce our own shoes and clothing. We need the whole spectrum of industrial manufacturing. The free trade policy has resulted in a race to the bottom in wages and a near total destruction of our industrial manufacturing capacity. Note that much of our high technology manufacturing is already moving overseas. We need to replace "free trade" with a common sense policy that would allow any country to set tarrifs and import restrictions such that 90% of the manufactured goods are made in your own country. This will be good for America and every other country in the long run.

[Terriusa Freeze]

02:47 AM on 07/14/2011

I agree with you 100% Gale, also note about the article saying that China is making Solar panels because they created a market for it, what lies. BP closed a solar panel plant in Ohio, not because there is not a market for it here, the article said by manufacturing solar panels in China will save BP Oil Company millions of dollars a years. Thus companies is seeking not qualified labor yet cheaper labor in order to boost profits, a greator multi-million dollar bonuses for CEOs and Wall-Street investors, yet they forsaken Main Street to capture that quick profit, that is now eroding due to wage increases in China and the fuel cost for all that diesel fuel that it takes to ship products almost 8000 nautical miles from China to the USA plus over 2,000 more to New York, this does not account the mileage for round trip of the shippping contains thus equals 20,000 miles of wasted energy and the burning of fossils fuels when it could be made domestically. The U.S. Government talking about reducing carbon emittions yet when products are made on the other side of the world increases emittions and to so called global warming, yet no enviromentalist nor the federal government would not touch that isssue that needs to be addressed

[Gale Leslie Roberts]

07:29 PM on 07/15/2011

Thanks Terriusa. You absolutely right. All of the energy used in transporting goods across the globe that could be manufactured in this country is wasteful in the extreme. We have a very long way to go in achieving a sustainable society.

[lambdin1]

09:47 PM on 07/06/2011

We can do it. But a consumer I need help too. Most new technologies are too expensive! While helping business; help the consumer too!

[AJH]

07:55 PM on 07/06/2011

I agree it needs to be a national priority. However I don't see it happening unless you in the environmen­tal community also develop and support streamline­d environmen­tal processes. Sure we have to manufactur­e trains in the US, they don't ship well, but solar panels and batteries and new rights of way and new very broad impacts to lands ar required to make this vision a reality. And that's alot of environmen­tal assessment­s and NIMBY lawsuits and delays.


So Carl how do we enable alot of heavy manufactur­ing and necessary resource developmen­t to do all of this while maintainin­g end of pipe and stack environmen­tal requiremen­ts. How do we protect the environmen­t while enabling rapid implementa­tion of such high impact activities and industries­?

3 million manufactur­ing jobs is a great goal and we can undoubtabl­y do it and do it quickly and responsibl­y. But the environmen­tal community has to be more than a cheerleade­r of doing it. They have to envision ways to more efficientl­y get it done. Otherwise times is money and a corporatio­n that can build a battery plant in china having all the resources easily accessible and be up in running as fast as they can build, will choose that option over a extended US process while they have millions in capital tied up.

Likewise it would be very wise to target significan­t portions of that green economy in places currently economical­ly dependent on dirty energy. it's wise social policy and it's critical to long term political success.

[topgunna]

03:17 PM on 07/06/2011

Manufacturing output in the United States is at an all-time high. This is a direct result of increased worker productivity - each hour of worker labor produces more output than ever before. In my opinion, manufacturing output is the key metric - not the human toil required to achieve that output.

Similarly, I would welcome a research breakthrough that cures cancer - even if it caused the end of every single cancer-research job in the world.

I don't understand the nostalgia for 1950s era manufacturing employment. Wouldn't most workers want a nicer, cleaner, more cerebral form of employment?

[ennis438]

08:35 AM on 07/06/2011

I agree with the author's plan for thousands of new jobs. However, we must recover the jobs we lost to other countries. These job losses were part of the GOP conspiracy against the middle class and their desire to make the rich richer. Any Republican who blabbers about job losses and who voted for liar Bush tax cuts and for continued welfare for the billionaires while throwing the middle class and poor under the bus is nothing but a two-faced liar.

[sheila]

08:39 PM on 07/05/2011

China didn't "create the market" for solar panels, GERMANY DID, with their Feed in Tariff, something that Sierra Club should have been fighting hard for the past 5 years instead of promoting the permanent destruction of millions of acres of healthy ecosystems for Big Solar and Big Wind.

China did what China does - undercut high quality manufacturers who adhere to environmental and labor standards of more civilized countries. sure it's cheaper to dump toxics in schoolyards instead of recycle them and to pay starvation wages, but that is nothing we should be promoting.

As soon as we get German style Feed in Tariffs here for rooftop solar (and community solar gardens within the built environment), we will be able to support a US manufacturing economy in the panels, not to mention improving property values and creating tens of thousands of well-paid installation jobs, plus increasing liquidity of actual people, while breaking the backs of your buddies in Big Energy.

It starts with Feed in Tariffs. Everything flows from that. When will you start working for them?