Manufacturing’s Importance Touted In State Of The Union Address

SPECIAL REPORT: Manufacturing’s Importance Touted In State Of The Union Address.

Tuesday night in his State of the Union speech, President Obama emphasized his goal of sustaining the newly resurgent US economy. Regarding trade and other policies that affect the nation’s manufacturing base, Obama said: “Our manufacturers have added almost 800,000 new jobs” since 2010. “Some of our bedrock sectors, like our auto industry, are booming.” Explaining that “95% of the world’s customers live outside our borders,” the president said Americans “can’t close ourselves off” from opportunities in trade and international commerce.

        Timmons: Bipartisan Reforms Could Unleash Manufacturing, Speed US Comeback. In an opinion piece for Real Clear Politics (1/20), NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons calls for bipartisan action for “a federal strategy that can unleash manufacturing and enable our nation’s job creators to accelerate America’s comeback.” He argues that “any reform strategy begins with tax policy,” but that lawmakers must also work toward “fair and transparent” regulations. These would enable manufacturing to thrive, through “an energy policy manufacturers can plan around” – one that taps all sources of “affordable energy” and promotes efforts to reach consensus on trade-promotion authority that would open up more foreign markets, Timmons writes. The NAM chief adds, “We need to renew the ideas, values and characteristics that have made our nation the envy of the world” because “manufacturers in America are, and must remain, the world’s leading innovators.”

        Timmons: SOTU Sent Mixed Messages. In a news release following Obama’s speech, Timmons said the president “offered the country mixed messages.” The NAM president and CEO said that “manufacturers stand ready” to help develop policies that could “spur growth and create prosperity.” He praised Obama’s “swift action” on trade-promotion authority for the executive branch, as well as his focus on solutions for our “workforce issues and skills gap” and “long-term” infrastructure needs. But Timmons said Obama’s tax plan “sends the wrong signal” and fails to “encourage investment, entrepreneurship and success,” in contrast to the NAM’s “pro-growth” proposals.

        Trade, Infrastructure Seen As Policy Goals Most Likely To Advance. Fortune (1/20, Newmyer), in a late Tuesday blog post, says that of all the policy initiatives Obama covered in his speech, the one with “the best chance of a win” is international trade. Why? “It represents a rare point of agreement” involving the White House, the new Republican-controlled Congress, and the business community. Lately the administration has been “quietly pressing” for TPA, which could help finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership and a pact with the European Union. Industry leaders have generally given high marks to Obama’s point people on trade, with NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons telling Fortune: “We’ve had a lot of conversations with [Commerce Secretary] Penny Pritzker and [Trade Representative] Mike Froman ... and I can tell you they’re fully engaged, and I’m very pleased at their leadership on these issues.”

        In a subsequent online piece, the same Fortune (1/20) (1/20) writer considers whether “infrastructure” was “the other winner” in Tuesday’s State of the Union address. Obama “exhorted” Republicans to “rally along with Democrats around an infrastructure spending plan that he said ‘could create more than 30 times as many jobs per year, and make this country stronger for decades to come’ while rebuilding crumbling roads, bridges and ports.” Fortune again cites Timmons, saying the NAM leader “brought it up, unprompted, earlier Tuesday in an interview ... as an area of agreement between business interests and the AFL-CIO.”

        Timmons: TPA Would Bolster US Credibility On Trade. Reuters (1/21), also reporting on the speech, cites Obama as saying the US and not China should write trade rules for Asia, and he urged Congress to give his administration the power to close trade deals through TPA, sometimes called fast-track authority. Timmons said TPA, which would leave Congress with only a yes-or-no vote on trade treaties in exchange for setting negotiating goals, would lead trading partners to take the US more seriously.

        Timmons “Cautiously Optimistic” Congress Will Grant Obama TPA. The Washington Examiner (1/21, Higgins) reports that supporters of TPA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, believe “the time is ripe” to push the initiatives through Congress. Industry leaders have said the TPA is a necessary precursor to gaining congressional approval of the pan-Pacific trade pact, with Timmons stating that the US “cannot have trading partners wondering if deals will be undone by ‘535’ negotiators” in the House and Senate. He added, however, that he’s “cautiously optimistic that Congress will grant this president similar authority that every president since Franklin Roosevelt has had.” Obama has continued to lobby for the TPP by highlighting the various benefits that trade agreements can provide, and businesses are expected to help in that effort. According to Timmons, “We’re certainly going to remind members of Congress that 95 percent of the customers in the world exist outside the borders of the United States and we want to sell our stuff to them.”

For more news from the National Association of Manufacturers, visit www.nam.org.