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Washington, D.C. – Following Senate passage of the tax bill, National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons issued the following statement:

“The Senate just pushed the ball deep into the red zone. Now it’s the House’s turn to finish the drive and deliver a big win for manufacturers in America. The Senate advanced a tax package that will strengthen small businesses, family-owned operations and manufacturing workers across the country. It drives manufacturers closer to the goal line—growing businesses, creating jobs and powering stronger communities.

“After months of driving, months of endurance and effort, months of playing audacious offense and tenacious defense, months of partnership between manufacturers of every industry and our leaders in Congress and the administration, the House now can finish the job. We call on our partners in the House to send this bill to the president’s desk—the strongest tax bill for manufacturers we have seen in a generation. Because when Congress champions the 13 million people who make things in America, manufacturing wins—and when manufacturing wins, America wins.”

Background

A full-team push: Today, more than 300 manufacturing leaders from across the country signed onto a letter urging Congress to act immediately to pass historic tax legislation that will enable manufacturers in America to thrive. Leading up to the vote, manufacturers from across the country joined the NAM in a full-court press on Capitol Hill, including a key meeting with Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender. They delivered one message: get this across the goal line for American jobs. Watch the recap.

Calling the plays: Timmons appeared on Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power” urging passage to give manufacturers the certainty they need to keep building and investing.

-NAM-

The National Association of Manufacturers is the largest manufacturing association in the United States, representing small and large manufacturers in every industrial sector and in all 50 states. Manufacturing employs nearly 13 million men and women, contributes $2.93 trillion to the U.S. economy annually and accounts for 53% of private-sector research and development. The NAM is the powerful voice of the manufacturing community and the leading advocate for a policy agenda that helps manufacturers compete in the global economy and create jobs across the United States. For more information about the NAM or to follow us on Twitter and Facebook, please visit www.nam.org

Congress should pass H.R. 1—the tax bill—immediately, manufacturers told congressional leaders Monday.

What’s going on: The tax package delivers on the promise made by the administration and Congress “to ensure the United States leads the world in manufacturing,” the NAM and more than 300 manufacturing leaders told Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).

• The legislation extends and makes permanent the pro-growth provisions from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which proved to be “rocket fuel” for the manufacturing industry.
• Many of the measures from the TCJA have expired, and others are scheduled to sunset at the end of this year—unless Congress acts.

What it does: H.R. 1 extends key measures from the TCJA “and builds on their success,” the NAM and its allies said. Here’s what the bill does:

• Provides tax certainty for small manufacturers: The bill “permanently extends the 20% pass-through deduction and preserves the TCJA’s individual tax rates, both of which are crucial for the 96% of small manufacturing businesses organized as pass-throughs.” It also protects small family-owned manufacturers from the estate tax.
• Supports investment and innovation: The measure restores immediate research-and-development expensing, full expensing for capital equipment purchases and an EBITDA-based interest deductibility standard.
• Bolsters American competitiveness: The bill makes the FDII, GILTI and BEAT international tax regimes permanent and preserves the 21% corporate rate.
• Incentivizes growth: H.R. 1 creates a new deduction that allows companies to immediately expense the cost of new factories and the cost of improvements to current facilities, among other moves.

The precedent: Manufacturers know the pro-growth tax policies in the legislation will work because they’ve worked before, the NAM and manufacturing leaders told the House and Senate.

• “Following passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, manufacturing in the United States secured the best year in job creation in more than two decades, the best wage growth in 15 years and impressive growth in capital spending, increasing by 4.5% in 2018 and by 5.7% in 2019.”

The cost of inaction: Failure to pass the legislation would result in a nationwide loss of 5.9 million jobs, $540 billion in wages and $1 trillion in GDP, according to a recent NAM study.

Amplifying the NAM message: The message was amplified quickly on social media by key decision makers, including the White House, Speaker Johnson and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN).

The Senate handed manufacturers a victory this week when it passed President Trump’s critical tax legislation. Now it’s time for the House to seal the deal.

What’s going on: “The Senate advanced a tax package that will strengthen small businesses, family-owned operations and manufacturing workers across the country,” NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons said today. “It drives manufacturers closer to the goal line—growing businesses, creating jobs and powering stronger communities.”

• The legislation extends, makes permanent and restores expired measures from the manufacturing-boosting 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
• President Trump has urged Congress to get the bill to his desk by Friday, July 4.

Powerful partnerships: The Senate’s passage of the bill follows months of hard work by manufacturers. Last week, the NAM and nearly 40 manufacturing leaders from across the U.S. flew to Washington for three days of high-level meetings with the White House and Congress, urging passage of the legislation.

• Manufacturers “took to Capitol Hill to make their voices heard on a critical issue: getting the tax bill to the president’s desk,” the NAM wrote in a social post shared by numerous congressional leaders and the White House’s official X account. “Hear from manufacturers on why Congress needs to act now.”

What’s next: “The House now can finish the job,” Timmons continued. “We call on our partners in the House to send this bill to the president’s desk—the strongest tax bill for manufacturers we have seen in a generation. Because when Congress champions the 13 million people who make things in America, manufacturing wins.”

Washington, D.C. – In advance of the Senate vote on passage of the tax bill, NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons issued the following statement:

“This is a manufacturers’ bill—through and through. It reflects the priorities that manufacturers across the country have long championed: policies that drive growth, boost competitiveness, strengthen communities and support good-paying jobs.

“This bill is strong because the partnership behind it is strong. Our nation’s leaders have listened to America’s manufacturers—positioning our industry to lead and succeed like never before. And that means more prosperity for the United States. With enthusiasm for this achievement and gratitude for our advocates in Congress, we call on our partners in the Senate to finish the job.”

-NAM-

The National Association of Manufacturers is the largest manufacturing association in the United States, representing small and large manufacturers in every industrial sector and in all 50 states. Manufacturing employs nearly 13 million men and women, contributes $2.93 trillion to the U.S. economy annually and accounts for 53% of private-sector research and development. The NAM is the powerful voice of the manufacturing community and the leading advocate for a policy agenda that helps manufacturers compete in the global economy and create jobs across the United States. For more information about the NAM or to follow us on Twitter and Facebook, please visit www.nam.org.

For three jam-packed days this week, the NAM and 39 manufacturers from across the U.S. took to Capitol Hill to make their voices heard on a critical issue: getting the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to President Donald Trump’s desk by a July 4 deadline.

What’s going on: Manufacturing leaders from Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Indiana, South Carolina and Minnesota—representing 29 manufacturing businesses—gathered in Washington Monday to emphasize to members of the House, Senate and administration the economic stakes of inaction on the OBBBA.

• At approximately 50 meetings with decision makers on the Hill—including one with Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender—the NAM-led manufacturer contingent pointed repeatedly to  NAM data projecting the loss of 1.1 million manufacturing jobs and $284 billion in output if the OBBBA isn’t passed.
• The NAM-led visit and meetings were covered by POLITICO Pro’s Morning Tax newsletter, among other outlets.

Roundtable: The Treasury Department hosted the group Thursday morning for a roundtable discussion on the scheduled expiration of several important, pro-growth tax provisions.

• Treasury staffers sought firsthand accounts of how the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—extensions of which are in the OBBBA—helped manufacturers. They also asked for stories illustrating how the sunsetting of the TCJA measures, which began in 2022, has harmed manufacturing businesses.
• NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons thanked the administration for its continued commitment to manufacturing nationwide, adding that the real-world stories from the group and perspectives the members shared during the roundtable would help inform ongoing discussions with both Congress and the White House.

The details: During the roundtable, manufacturers detailed how the TCJA fueled capital investments, hiring, and innovation—momentum that could stall without congressional action.

• Manufacturers pointed to the critical role of provisions, including immediate research-and-development expensing, full expensing for capital equipment purchases and interest deductibility—in driving product development and facility expansion.
• Business owners hammered home the need to make these measures permanent and as beneficial as possible for manufacturers to support long-term planning and continued innovation.

Lifesaving measures: Leadership from a company in the medical technology sector noted that uncertainty in R&D expensing could delay lifesaving advancements.

• Another manufacturer, whose company makes safety equipment, described how the loss of the full expensing provisions would affect safety investments on shop floors.
• Other manufacturers highlighted post-2017 growth in facility buildouts and acquisitions that now hang in the balance thanks to uncertainty surrounding the TCJA provisions’ continuation.

Reinforcing a three-part tax policy agenda: The Treasury event reinforced the NAM’s three-part tax policy agenda, which consists of the following:

• Protecting small business incentives, such as the pass-through deduction and estate tax relief
• Restoring pro-investment provisions, such as R&D expensing and interest deductibility
• Maintaining the competitive 21% corporate tax rate and the TCJA’s international tax regime

Treasury’s take: Deputy Treasury Secretary Faulkender  spoke at length about the roundtable with Bloomberg TV.

• “We had a great conversation with Jay and a number of his members today to understand exactly how factories around this country would be impacted if we do not get this bill over the finish line, and to talk about not just the benefits we saw after the 2017 act, but some of the new provisions that are in this bill, and how it would impact the investments that they make,” Faulkender said. “We know full well failure is not an option.”

Streamlining, simplifying and reducing compliance requirements would relieve a large burden that now rests on manufacturers’ shoulders, the NAM told Securities and Exchange Commission and Congress this week.

What’s going on: “Many small and medium-sized manufacturers incur substantial costs each year to comply with the law, and particularly Section 404(b)” of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, NAM Managing Vice President Charles Crain told the House Subcommittee on Capital Markets ahead of a Wednesday hearing.

• “Striking the balance between capital formation and investor protection is a key test for any requirement that falls on smaller public companies.”
• Companies spend more than $1 million a year to comply with SOX 404(b), which requires an external audit of a company’s internal financial controls.

What Congress should do: To ease the load on smaller reporting companies—a category under which many manufacturers in the U.S. fall—Congress should consider legislation that would exempt them from SOX 404(b), the NAM said.

• Congress should also exempt all accelerated filers (companies with a public float below $700 million), as well as newly public companies, from SOX 404(b), Crain said.
• Finally, the NAM supports reforms outlined in the subcommittee’s draft legislation to update the SEC’s definition of SRCs, including raising both the maximum public float and revenue thresholds.

Introduced into the record: Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) introduced the NAM’s statement into the record and expressed support for exempting smaller companies from SOX’s costly attestation audit requirements.

NAM at the SEC: The NAM also urged the SEC to institute reporting requirement reforms related to executive compensation—a complicated and costly area of disclosure that often provides minimal investor benefit.

• “The NAM has long supported flexibility in the design of executive compensation benefit packages to ensure manufacturers can recruit and retain leaders that will grow the business, create more jobs and contribute to our overall economic growth,” Crain told the SEC ahead of a Thursday roundtable on executive compensation disclosure requirements. “Unfortunately, the SEC’s compensation rules have become too complex and have undermined that flexibility.”

What the SEC should do: The NAM laid out several steps the agency should take to ease compensation reporting requirements “to moderate the compliance burdens on public companies while reducing the number of pages and tables in a proxy statement that investors must review each year.” These include urging the SEC to take the following steps:

• Scale compensation disclosure burdens based on company size.
• Replace the disclosures required by the 2022 Pay Versus Performance rule with principles-based narrative disclosure.
• Support the repeal of the CEO pay ratio rule, “which mandates the costly determination of a company’s median employee and the collection of company-wide employee compensation data to generate disclosures that are not relevant or used by most investors.”

In a move the NAM called  “a massive triumph for manufacturing in America,” the Treasury Department on Thursday announced a deal with G-7 allies to exempt American companies from certain taxes imposed by other nations—resulting in Congress and the administration agreeing to remove from the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” a U.S. tax on companies from those countries.

What’s going on: “Today’s deal is a win for manufacturing and a win for America,” said NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons. “Manufacturers have long raised concerns about the overreaching and extraterritorial nature of OECD Pillar 2.”

• Pillar 2 of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development introduces a global minimum 15% corporate tax rate, which it allows other countries to collect if companies’ home nations do not.
• Under the terms of the deal announced Thursday, Pillar 2 taxes will not apply to U.S. companies, paving the way for the elimination of the Section 899 retaliatory tax from Congress’s reconciliation bill.
• The 899 provision would have allowed the U.S. to impose retaliatory taxes on companies from countries with punitive tax policies, including the ones in the OECD regime.

What it will do: The move means manufacturers of all sizes will be relieved of the threat of damaging tax burdens, the NAM said, as domestic businesses will no longer face the threat of Pillar 2 and foreign-headquartered companies will not be impacted by Section 899.

What’s next: “It’s now time for the Senate to vote and for the House to send this bill to President Trump’s desk by July 4,” Timmons said.

Washington, D.C. – National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons issued the following statement thanking President Donald Trump and Secretary Scott Bessent for achieving a monumental deal with G-7 allies that the OECD Pillar 2 taxes will not apply to U.S. companies, laying the groundwork to remove the harmful Section 899 proposal from the pro-manufacturing One Big Beautiful Bill Act:

“In a massive triumph for manufacturing in America, Treasury Secretary Bessent announced a deal to protect both domestic and foreign-headquartered manufacturers investing in the United States from oppressive, job-killing taxes. The NAM—which yesterday brought together manufacturers of all sizes to meet with Deputy Secretary Michael Faulkender to discuss the importance of countering OECD Pillar 2 and preventing the harm of Section 899—congratulates President Trump for this outstanding deal.

“Today’s deal is a win for manufacturing and a win for America. Manufacturers thank Secretary Bessent, Deputy Secretary Faulkender and the Trump administration for reaching this historic deal to shield manufacturers in America from damaging foreign taxes that unfairly stifle job creation in the U.S.

“Manufacturers have long raised concerns about the overreaching and extraterritorial nature of OECD Pillar 2. We greatly appreciate Chairman Jason Smith and Chairman Mike Crapo for their commitment to defending manufacturers in the U.S. from discriminatory foreign taxes. Companies of all sizes across our industry will benefit from the Trump administration removing the threat of these damaging tax burdens.

“Today’s announcement also paves the way for the House and the Senate to lift the threat that Section 899 poses to foreign-headquartered manufacturers’ ability to invest and create jobs in America. Manufacturers have been working with Congress to ensure that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is maximally beneficial for manufacturing investment in America, and today’s announcement is a crucial step in that direction.

“It’s now time for the Senate to vote and for the House to send this bill to President Trump’s desk by July 4.”

-NAM-

The National Association of Manufacturers is the largest manufacturing association in the United States, representing small and large manufacturers in every industrial sector and in all 50 states. Manufacturing employs nearly 13 million men and women, contributes $2.93 trillion to the U.S. economy annually and accounts for 53% of private-sector research and development. The NAM is the powerful voice of the manufacturing community and the leading advocate for a policy agenda that helps manufacturers compete in the global economy and create jobs across the United States. For more information about the NAM or to follow us on Twitter and Facebook, please visit www.nam.org.

The two largest, most influential proxy advisory firms in the U.S. wield outsize, harmful influence on businesses—and they need to be regulated now, the NAM said this week.

What’s going on: Together, Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis control 97% of the proxy advice market. Those firms exist to advise institutional investors on how to vote on shareholder proposals and other proxy ballot measures that come before publicly traded companies.

• The ISS/Glass “duopoly … [is insulated] from accountability—to the point where these two market players have significant conflicts of  interest and are widely recognized as offering error-filled, opaque, one-size-fits-all advice and yet they still enjoy market dominance,” NAM Managing Vice President Charles Crain told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform and Antitrust at a hearing on Wednesday.
• The firms use their dominant market position and influence over proxy vote outcomes to drive investors and companies to buy consulting, governance ratings and other related services.
• The firms remain largely unregulated despite calls for reform “and everyday people pay the price,” Crain continued.

What they do: While the voting platforms of ISS and Glass Lewis offer a legitimately helpful service—connecting investors to the back end of the proxy voting system—the firms use the platforms to steer clients toward their own voting research and recommendations.

• “They’ll even pre-fill the platform with their preferred votes and then robo-vote an investor’s shares on their behalf,” said Crain.
• Furthermore, some of the proxy firms’ guidelines (such as on equity incentive plans) are so complex and opaque that companies are effectively forced into hiring the firms’ corporate consulting arms to navigate them.
• The proxy firms have other policies—for example, they recommend for annual shareholder votes on executive compensation at companies even though Congress has said annual voting is unnecessary—that “appear designed to increase their own market power,” according to the NAM.

What should be done: Congress should pass the legislation introduced by Subcommittee Chairman Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), the Stopping Proxy Advisor Racketeering Act, Crain said.

• The measure would bar “proxy advisory firms from issuing voting recommendations when any conflict could reasonably be expected to affect the objectivity or reliability of proxy advice, including being a member of a group that supports proposals similar to the shareholder-sponsored proposal,” according to Fitzgerald’s office.
• “[M]anufacturers support Chairman Fitzgerald’s bill,” Crain concluded because, “[m]anufacturers understand the stakes of getting this right.”

The Interior Department will begin implementing a new policy to speed up the search for and development of offshore critical minerals, it announced Wednesday.

What’s going on: “To support a more efficient and predictable offshore minerals program, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management … and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement … are updating policies across all stages of development—from early exploration to post-lease operations and production.”

• The changes are intended to cut down on delays, improve coordination and give industry more certainty—“all while upholding key environmental safeguards.”
• For early-stage exploration, BOEM plans to “apply existing streamlined environmental reviews whenever appropriate” and to extend prospecting permits’ length to five years from three.

Leasing plan details: To speed the leasing process, BOEM will identify areas for development without first issuing formal requests or forming task forces.

• This change alone could shave from two months to a year off the development times of projects, according to the agency.
• BOEM will also begin readying environmental assessments during the lease sale phase, saving the more detailed impact statements for later planning stages, if needed.
• Once a lease is issued, the BSEE and BOEM “will continue to streamline the process by considering offshore critical mineral projects for expedited permitting under the department’s emergency procedures and other applicable laws.”

Why it’s key: China dominates global critical minerals production and refining, and in the past year has greatly restricted exports of certain critical minerals vital to semiconductors, electronics and fiber optics, among other applications.

The final say: “Manufacturers have long sounded the alarm on the need for permitting reform, and this latest plan from Interior combines that priority with the pressing need to boost critical mineral supply chains,” said NAM Director of Energy and Resources Policy. 

• “Manufacturers support the administration exploring every available, feasible avenue to increase our supply of those resources and reduce our reliance on China.”