Input Stories

In a one-on-one interview with NewsNation’s Blake Burman, NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons detailed a proposal to support President Trump and the administration’s drive to increase manufacturing investment in the United States.

The big picture: Amid ongoing trade uncertainty—which manufacturers ranked as the top concern for the second consecutive quarter in the recently released NAM Q2 2025 Outlook Survey—Timmons warned that “uncertainty can be a killer of economic progress,” noting a “pretty precipitous drop in manufacturing optimism, from 70 points in the first quarter to 55 points in the second quarter.”

A carrot and a stick: “The good news is we have a president [who] is laser focused on growing manufacturing in the United States, and he’s doing that in a couple of ways,” Timmons said.

• “He’s providing some carrots. If you look at the tax bill—I mean, we are working really hard to get that through—that’s especially important for small manufacturers. It’s especially important to preserve 6 million jobs that will be lost if that bill doesn’t get passed,” Timmons added.
• “He’s doing it in the regulatory space, making sure that regulations are rebalanced for us to be able to compete more successfully around the world. They’re focusing on workforce development through the Department of Labor, which is great for manufacturing to fill those [382,000] open jobs.”
• “And then there’s a stick, and the stick [is] the tariffs … that’s the one thing I always hear from manufacturers—where are we going with this? We have a little over a month to get 89 trade agreements done,” said Timmons. A carrot that will help, Timmons noted, is the U.S. Manufacturing Investment Accelerator Program.

What’s in it: Timmons told Burman the program has two major components:

• “The first is a ‘speed pass’ [for manufacturers investing in the U.S.] to provide a license for duty-free treatment of critical inputs. So, think critical minerals—we can’t get those here. We don’t mine those here. We’ve got to get them here. We don’t want them to be more expensive. . . . If we don’t make it here, let’s get it in here, duty free.”
• “The second component is an investment accelerator rebate. If something has to be tariffed, then if it is used to grow manufacturing investment in the United States, let’s have a rebate.”

Keeping up a dialogue: Manufacturers of all sizes would engage in a quarterly forum with administration officials, “to make sure that this is all going the way that they want it to go,” added Timmons. Key federal agencies include U.S. Treasury, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Department of Commerce and the Small Business Administration.

Why it’s needed: In a recent interview on FOX Business’ “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street,” Timmons noted, “for every dollar of manufactured inputs that are imported, we get $1.40 of output. And so, if we tariff everything the same, we may be in a little bit of trouble when it comes to making those investments.”

• In an NAM release, Timmons stated, “[e]ven if the manufacturing industry were operating at full capacity—every machine turned on, every job filled—then the industry could produce only 84% of the inputs necessary to meet demand. That means that at least 16% of manufacturing inputs must be imported to grow domestic manufacturing.”
• This program offers a way to bring in essential inputs that aren’t produced in the U.S. without added cost burdens—and it rewards manufacturers that expand production, invest in new equipment and create jobs here at home. 

New data analysis: The NAM also unveiled a first-of-its-kind data analysis  visualized in a trade map, allowing users to see, by state, the increase in effective tariff rate on manufacturing inputs.

NAM in the news: The NAM’s new proposal was featured in this morning’s POLITICO Morning Trade newsletter (subscription) and exclusive online story (subscription).

The last word: “We want to help the president attract investment here to the United States—the same goals that he has,” Timmons said. “We want to invest and grow jobs here. The NAM believes this program will support those goals.”