This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.
Last week Harold Meyerson wrote a great column in the Washington Post, Just One Word: Factories, promoting American manufacturing. Meyerson wrote,
"Since 1987, manufacturing as a share of our gross domestic product has declined 30 percent. Once the world's leading net exporter, we have become the world's leading net importer. In 2007, we exported $1.2 trillion worth of goods and services but imported $1.8 trillion. If there were a debtor's prison for nations, we'd all be in the clink.[. . .] What makes the decline of American manufacturing particularly galling is that we're not falling behind because we're inefficient: American factories are among the most productive on the planet, as McCormack notes. But alone among the world's industrial powers, we have left the task of enticing manufacturers not to the federal government but to state and local governments, which try to attract factories and research facilities with tax abatements and public investments that are dwarfed by the efforts of national governments in other lands. ...
It's not just that the United States uniquely lacks an industrial policy. It's that the United States uniquely has an anti-industrial policy."
This sounds good to me. If we are going to restore American economic power we need to promote American manufacturing.
So who comes out to blast Meyerson for his column promoting American manufacturing? Was it the European Manufacturers Association? Was it the China Manufacturers Association? Was it the Korean Manufactures Association? No, it was America's own National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Yes, the American NAM, not the European, Chinese, Japanese or Korean NAM, but the American NAM. They say American manufacturing is in fine shape and doesn't need any help from the government to keep it strong.
WTF?
Why is the NAM blasting Meyerson for writing a column promoting American manufacturing? A clue might be the source of the anti-American-manufacturing information they use. They quote Daniel J. Ikenson of the Cato Institute. Cato is an anti-government "libertarian" think tank that supports "free trade" and is against any kind of regulation of business, including any restrictions on imports. This could be because Cato receives a great deal of financial support from non-manufacturing interests including commodities and securities traders, tobacco companies, communications companies, software companies and oil companies. They also receive support from non-American manufacturing interests, including the Korea International Trade Association.
What I want to know is: Why is America's National Association of Manufacturers echoing the Cato Institute's views against American manufacturing? Has this organization lost its way? Does the NAM membership know about this?
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"I'm shocked, shcoked that NAM doesn't acutally support US mfg"
NAM is nothiong more than a shill group for multinational corporations, with a clear outsourcing agenda
"Mills restructured to cut costs, spinning off high-cost operations and pulling out of low-margin markets like rebar. Their divestment of distribution and processing operations contributed to the growth of the independent service center industry as it is today."
This trend is seen in most other segments of the US economy as well. For example, the US has shed most their low margin textile/apparel business and all those jobs have been lost. Jobs in the furniture industry are also being shed. Low margin electrical products businesses have been shed, as have tires and low margin car parts. US companies this decade have been successful at expanded high margin businesses, which is why companies like Cat, MMM, UTX, Terex, Emerson, US Steel, Deere, Valmont Industries, Allegheny Tech, RTI, Nucor, Ingersoll-Rand, Oshkosh, Illinois Toolworks, Danaher, etc saw record profits from 2005 to mid-2008.
There are ways to make money without selling your soul, but those days are gone. The sad thing is that most of the people defending this hypocrisy are not benefitting from it.
In dugan's world outsourcing jobs and gutting industries is OK.
the problem of course its never OK
trade defit shopw why this is - we are funnel not only jobs but wealth out of our country
you need high volume, low volume high margin and low margin industries to sustain a manufacturing economy - you are hard pressed to do so without.
Geramny seems to be aquite ble to do this - and with a higher wage, higher tax and higher regulatory environment than the US
They are nothing more than a front for funnelling money to Republican candidates. To have Engler as its President is a political joke at best, seeing that he did absolutely nothing for Michigan's manufacturers as governor.
They continue to ship money to politicians that are responsible for policies that continue to ship manufacturing jobs and factories overseas. I don't know why any manufacturer would give them a dime.
National Association of Offshoring would be a better name.