Policy and Legal

At an NAM-sponsored breakfast at energy conference CERAWeek in Houston on Tuesday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum assured NAM board members that the administration has a manufacturing strategy in place, particularly regarding permitting, infrastructure development and manufacturers’ access to reliable and affordable energy.

A comprehensive strategy: In his remarks opening the event, NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons discussed the five-pillar, comprehensive manufacturing strategy that the NAM has been urging the Trump administration to implement.

• “Secretary Burgum, I just want you to know we’ve been making the case for a coordinated, comprehensive manufacturing strategy to give us the predictability and the certainty that manufacturers need to plan, to invest and to hire here in the United States, and that strategy has five pillars—goals that I know you share,” Timmons said.
• The goals are making the 2017 tax reforms even more competitive and permanent; securing regulatory certainty; expediting permitting reform to unleash American energy dominance; increasing the talent pool; and implementing a commonsense trade policy—to expand access to markets while keeping manufacturing competitive.
• Timmons warned of the dire consequences the U.S. economy and manufacturers will face if lawmakers fail to extend the 2017 tax reforms. Among them: the loss of some 6 million American jobs, according to a recent NAM–EY study.

An economic backbone: “Manufacturing, as you know, has been the backbone” of the economy, Burgum said. “President Trump ran on bringing manufacturing back to the United States. His policies are driving to do that.”

Unleashing U.S. energy: Timmons praised President Trump for his day-one lifting of the previous administration’s liquefied natural gas export permit moratorium.

• The “recent NAM LNG study found that the U.S. LNG export industry could support more than 900,000 jobs and add $216 billion to GDP by 2044,” he said.
• Said Burgum: “We are looking at everything to try to, for the first time, [have] streamlined government. … [and] it’s happening. It’s happening quickly.”

“Optimistic about the future”: The administration’s commitment to “low taxes and cutting red tape”—on which President Trump’s recently created National Energy Dominance Council is focusing—“are all things that are going to help lower your cost and create opportunities,” Burgum continued.

• “Capital is flowing to the U.S. at record levels. … I’m very optimistic about the future.”

The last word: At another event at CERAWeek, a roundtable sponsored by Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, Timmons summed up manufacturers’ commitments.

• “Yes, we care about developing our natural resources to power our economy, certainly through manufacturing, but it’s also about people, here in the United States and around the world,” said Timmons. “The energy that we export, that is soft power for the United States. That expands our influence. That allows us to export not only our energy, but also our values. So I think that’s very, very important for our future.”