Input Stories

This year’s tax reform legislation was an inarguable win for manufacturing in the U.S.—but it can be strengthened further with several congressional actions, the NAM told the House Small Business Committee this week.

What’s going on: “By reinforcing and making permanent the 2017 tax reforms that led to record job creation, wage growth and capital investment across our sector, H.R. 1 strengthened America’s leadership as a manufacturing superpower—and it saved 6 million American jobs,” NAM Managing Vice President of Policy Charles Crain said Thursday at the committee hearing “Made in the USA: How Main Street Is Revitalizing Domestic Manufacturing.”

• “Now, more must be done to unlock the benefits of this historic, transformative achievement,” he went on. “Congress and the administration [must] pursue what we’ve called a ‘comprehensive manufacturing strategy.’”

What it means: Crain outlined the specific pillars of the NAM’s comprehensive manufacturing strategy:

• Rebalancing unworkable regulations and reforming America’s broken permitting process
• Investing in our nation’s infrastructure and supporting American energy dominance
• Providing trade certainty that empowers manufacturers to make things in America
• Investing in the manufacturing workforce of the future

Why it will work: “We cannot become the best place in the world to build things if it takes us 80% longer to permit projects in the U.S. as compared to other developed economies,” Crain said.

• “We also need both energy dominance and trade certainty to further unlock manufacturing investment. An all-of-the-above energy strategy that harnesses America’s abundant natural resources can power manufacturing into the future—while smart trade policy can ensure that we have the inputs and machinery we need to make things here at home, as well as the export markets to sell them around the world.”
• For these investments to have an impact, Crain continued, the U.S. must be able to fill its open manufacturing jobs, currently at 400,000 nationwide. The right labor and immigration policies from legislators and the administration will put the needed firepower behind manufacturers’ upskilling and training policies.

The last word: “[T]he road to a manufacturing renaissance … runs through a comprehensive manufacturing strategy,” Crain concluded. “ Backed by the right policy choices, small manufacturers will deliver—for our communities, for our country and for our preeminence on the world stage.”