Policy and Legal

Washington, D.C. Today, Steve Sukup, President and CEO, Sukup Manufacturing Co., testified before the House Ways and Means Committee during a field hearing titled, “The Success of Pro-Growth, Pro-Worker Tax Policy in the American Midwest.”

Below please find his remarks as prepared for delivery:

Good morning Chairman Smith and to all the members joining us this morning.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today at this important hearing. It’s a very special time for our community, and we are grateful to host you today.

My name is Steve Sukup, and I’m President and CEO of Sukup Manufacturing.  We are located just up Interstate 35 in Sheffield, and I am proud to say that Sukup Manufacturing is the largest family-owned and operated manufacturer of grain storage, drying, and handling equipment.

For over sixty years, Sukup has been a critical part of the U.S. food supply chain here in the heartland. Our company is located in Congressman Feenstra’s district, and I’d like to thank him for being here today.

The tax reform bill of 2017 was a shot in the arm for manufacturers across our sector. Sukup has grown over the past several decades, but nothing compares to when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed into law.

For example, thanks to the lowering of the corporate rate to 21%, Sukup grew our workforce by a third, adding roughly 200 well-paying manufacturing jobs to our community.

The key to Sukup’s success has not only been our culture, but our dedication to creating and pushing our industry forward. Sukup has held over 100 U.S. patents. We are pioneering ways to make grain storage and drying more safe, profitable, and efficient for farmers and ranchers across the country.

This is largely made possible by our massive investments in research and development. In the years following tax reform, Sukup increased our R&D investment by several million dollars, with 95% of that money going towards engineering and staff wages, bringing well-paying jobs to Iowa.

One of these critical R&D investments is our Safe T Homes®. When a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, Sukup’s Safety Manager wanted to develop an efficient, quick-assembly home from one of our grain bins to provide relief. I encouraged him to build a prototype, and today, our Safe T Homes®, as you saw on the fair ground today, are changing lives worldwide.

We also developed the world’s largest 2.2-million-bushel bin for ethanol plants. That is big enough to house a Boeing 767, but yes, the landing is difficult.

Unfortunately, after being part of our tax code for seventy years, the expiration of immediate R&D expensing has made it harder for us to invest in the technologies and products of the future. Congress should reinstate the immediate expensing of R&D so manufacturers like Sukup can continue to innovate.

Following the passage of the 2017 tax law, Sukup went from roughly $5 million in capital spending to almost $15 million, thanks to 100% accelerated depreciation. This allowed us to fund new equipment purchases and fulfill our mission of providing Sukup employees with reliable, safe, and efficient equipment.

Unfortunately, full expensing began to expire in 2023. We believe that was a mistake, as it is common sense that our tax code should encourage investments that leads to growth.

Many manufacturing teams, including our company, would benefit from seeing this provision restored, and Congress should do so immediately.

An accountant once told me, if you don’t have debt, that means you’re not coming up with new ideas. Many manufacturers like us borrow funds to finance essential long-term investments.

Tax reform made it less expensive to take out business loans, which manufacturers use to invest and grow their operations. Unfortunately, this pro-growth standard expired in 2022 as well, making debt financing much more expensive.

We are also counting on you to preserve tax reform’s sensible changes to the estate tax, so that I can ensure the third and fourth generations of Sukups can continue in our family business.

Discussing tax policy before Congress is something of tradition in our family. About 20 years ago, my father Eugene Sukup testified before the Senate Finance Committee, along with Warren Buffett.

Since then, thanks to tax reform, we have had an incredible growth streak in our business, and every one of our employees and customers has benefited. I urge you to help us keep that growth streak going. Maintaining the 21% corporate rate, as well as the tax provisions I just described, is so important to manufacturers everywhere.

Because of these policies, we’ve been able to not only maintain our business, but to provide a great living, health benefits, and soon expanded childcare for our employees and the community—even as we aid those in need around the globe.

Again, thank you for being here today, and thank you for looking at ways to keep Sukup Manufacturing a rural Iowa success story.

-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 $2.89 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.

Washington, D.C. – Following the release of prices set for the first 10 prescription drugs that were subject to price controls under the Inflation Reduction Act, National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons released the following statement:

“The pricing mandates released by the Department of Health and Human Services on groundbreaking medicines harm innovation and will slow the development of needed therapies and cures by hampering manufacturers’ ability to pioneer new drugs and treatments. America has led the way in medical and scientific breakthroughs to battle the most devastating and severe illnesses and conditions. There are so many more diseases for which we need to find a cure—like cancer, juvenile diabetes and Alzheimer’s to name just three—and this price control scheme threatens our ability to do so.

“Health care manufacturers in the U.S. invest more than $100 billion annually to create new medicines, putting nearly 17% of their sales right back into R&D. Developing and putting a new drug on the market is a particularly costly and risky endeavor, costing $2.3 billion and taking 15 years, on average. More than 90% of experimental drugs ultimately fail, resulting in billions of dollars of lost investment. But biopharmaceutical manufacturers are committed to finding treatments and cures to devastating diseases like cancer.

“Price controls will limit R&D, plain and simple, as every dollar of revenue curtailed by price controls is a dollar that can’t be devoted toward the astronomically high cost of developing a new medicine.

“This will have an immediate impact on the White House’s manufacturing strategy. Manufacturers are ready to take the lead following President Biden’s announcement Tuesday of $150 million in grants toward his Cancer Moonshot initiative, to prevent more than 4 million cancer-related deaths by 2047, but we’re concerned that goal could be hampered and delayed by the mandates within the IRA.

“There is ultimately a human cost to anything that slows or halts biopharmaceutical manufacturers’ work to develop new treatments or expand production and make those treatments more widely available. Americans’ quality of life will suffer—or they may even lose their lives—because a new treatment was not available in time.

“To truly help Americans, Congress should begin by curtailing the middlemen who are really driving up the prices without giving anything back, such as pharmacy benefit managers. PBMs have severely distorted the cost of pharmaceuticals and lifesaving therapies, driving up the price for patients and employers alike. PBM reform is the way to drive down costs.”

-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 $2.89 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.

Kitchens across America are missing a key ingredient: a new Miscellaneous Tariff Bill.

What’s going on: SCHOTT North America—a subsidiary of the German specialty glass, glass ceramics and high-tech material manufacturer—produces CERAN glass-ceramic cooktops at its facility in Vincennes, Indiana, where it employs more than 140 workers.

• To manufacture the cooktops in Indiana, the company must first import “green glass”—the glass-ceramic material that is refined and finished for use in appliances—which is not available in the U.S.

• However, heavy import tariffs on green glass make it much costlier for SCHOTT to manufacture these cooktops in the U.S., while fully processed cooktop panels that are finished abroad and then imported are not taxed.

That’s why the NAM is calling on Congress to pass a new MTB as soon as possible. Trade policies should help companies in the United States become more competitive, not less.

What’s the MTB? The MTB temporarily eliminates or reduces tariffs on more than 1,500 different products not available in the U.S. Congress typically renews the MTB every few years with bipartisan support, but the last MTB expired in December 2020, increasing costs for manufacturers nationwide.

• For SCHOTT North America, the MTB’s expiration has led to significantly higher costs for the past three-and-a-half years.

Action needed: To help SCHOTT and other manufacturers in the same predicament, the NAM has been urging lawmakers to pass the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill Reform Act, which would renew the MTB through the end of 2025 and offer retroactive duty relief back to the beginning of 2021.

• Since the lapse of the last MTB, manufacturers have paid more than $1.5 billion to get materials they cannot source in the U.S., according to an NAM analysis.

• While SCHOTT North America has maintained its workforce at the Vincennes site, these growing costs have interfered with the company’s plans for expansion.

• “We employ about 140 people at the site to process green glass, but the potential is there to hire more and do more” if an MTB were in place, said Tim Kiger, general manager for SCHOTT North America in Indiana.

No other options: Melting the specialty glass in the U.S. isn’t an option at this time, according to Jim Purcell, SCHOTT North America’s international trade compliance manager.

• “Producing green glass here in the United States would be incredibly expensive and technically difficult to do,” he said. “To build a melting operation in the U.S. would take a long time.”

A voice in Congress: Back in October, Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN), whose district is home to the Vincennes facility, urged colleagues in the House Ways and Means Committee to advance a new MTB in the name of fairness.

• “The MTB ensures that American producers like SCHOTT are not penalized for importing inputs that are not produced in the United States, and levels the playing field against similar finished products being imported from China,” said Rep. Bucshon.

The last word: SCHOTT North America hopes that the MTB legislation, which is sitting in the House, will soon be enacted.

• The financial relief offered by a new MTB “would be almost immediate,” Kiger said.

• Added Purcell, “The MTB is a good mechanism to … conserve savings. In the global market right now, any cost savings helps you stay competitive.”

The NAM recently talked to Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV), the head of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Supply Chain Tax Team, about how raising the corporate tax rate would “devastate” manufacturers, and what she and her colleagues in Congress are doing to keep it where it is.

NAM: Rep. Miller, Congress is facing a “Tax Armageddon” next year, as crucial provisions from 2017’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are set to expire. As the leader of the Ways and Means Supply Chain Tax Team, what is your focus moving into next year’s debate?

Miller: In all the meetings I have with Fortune 500 companies, small businesses and stakeholders, it’s clear that the corporate rate is top of mind for everyone. We are all concerned that if the corporate rate is raised from 21%, consumers will be hit the hardest by the rising prices of everyday goods and services. I know for capital-intensive industries like mining, having a consistent tax rate is essential. I’m also focused on how energy tax credits are implemented and making sure that the government isn’t picking winners and losers by their rulemaking. During the reauthorization, my Supply Chains Tax Team will be evaluating the various energy credits currently in law to see what works and what needs tweaking.

NAM: Prior to 2017, the United States’ corporate tax rate was 35%, the highest in the OECD and third-highest in the world. Tax reform lowered the rate to 21%, aligning the U.S. with the average rate elsewhere in the OECD. What does it mean for Congress to protect this lower rate, and what would happen if it goes up?

Rep. Miller: If the corporate rate goes up, it would be devastating for every American, from the small business owner to the CEO who is trying to expand their business. The corporate rate rising means there will be higher prices while the U.S. struggles to compete on the global scale. The best thing we can do in Congress is cement the corporate rate at 21%—or better yet, lower it even more—through the TCJA reauthorization in 2025.

NAM: In 2018, the year the 21% corporate rate took effect, manufacturers created more than 260,000 jobs (the best year for job creation in 21 years) and increased wages by 3% (the best year for wage growth in 15 years). What else is the Supply Chain Tax Team seeing on the impact of the corporate tax rate as they visit with businesses around the country?

Rep. Miller: We’ve only seen positive impact from the corporate rate being lowered. When the pandemic hit and the markets were falling due to uncertainty and instability, the lower corporate rate gave companies more flexibility to help their employees and keep costs low instead of paying the government sky-high taxes. The lower corporate rate protected jobs, helped produce more economic growth and makes all the difference for American families who are struggling with inflation. Furthermore, the lower rate led to higher federal revenues since companies were able to expand and invest so heavily following the passage of the Trump Tax Cuts.

NAM: Thank you for being a champion for manufacturers across the country. What can our members do to stay involved and be a resource for your tax team’s work?

Rep. Miller: Spread the word to those who might not know why the corporate rate is so important. The majority of Republicans are on the same page about this, but some think that in order to bring down inflation, you need to raise taxes on businesses. That is not true. Prices only go down if costs for companies go down, and the corporate rate is an effective way to do that while simultaneously boosting the American economy.

Unlike many other pro-growth tax reform provisions, the corporate tax rate isn’t set to expire at the end of 2025, but some policymakers and President Biden have proposed increasing it.

The NAM recently talked to Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV), the head of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Supply Chain Tax Team, about how raising the corporate tax rate would “devastate” manufacturers, and what she and her colleagues in Congress are doing to keep it where it is.

“Devastating for every American”: Raising the corporate tax rate from its current, competitive 21% rate would be ruinous, Rep. Miller said. She’s focused on preventing that from happening.

• “If the corporate rate goes up, it would be devastating for every American, from the small business owner to the CEO who is trying to expand their business,” Rep. Miller told us. “The corporate rate rising means there will be higher prices while the U.S. struggles to compete on the global scale. The best thing we can do in Congress is cement the corporate rate at 21%—or better yet, lower it even more—through the [2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act] reauthorization in 2025.”
• Prior to tax reform, the U.S. had the highest corporate tax rate in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development at 35%, and the third-highest rate in the entire world, harming America’s ability to attract manufacturing investment.

The effect of 21%: Rep. Miller emphasized that the U.S. economy has “seen only positive impact from the corporate rate being lowered.”

• “When the pandemic hit and the markets were falling due to uncertainty and instability, the lower corporate rate gave companies more flexibility to help their employees and keep costs low instead of paying the government sky-high taxes,” she went on. “The lower corporate rate protected jobs, helped produce more economic growth and makes all the difference for American families who are struggling with inflation.”
• In 2018, the year the 21% rate took effect, manufacturers created more than 260,000 jobs and were able to raise wages by 3%, the fastest pace in 15 years.

What manufacturers can do: To help preserve the 21% corporate tax rate, manufacturers should be vocal about its importance to the U.S. economy.

• “Spread the word to those who might not know why the corporate rate is so important,” Rep. Miller concluded. “Some think that in order to bring down inflation, you need to raise taxes on businesses. That is not true. Prices only go down if costs for companies go down, and the corporate rate is an effective way to do that while simultaneously boosting the American economy.”

Get involved: The NAM’s “Manufacturing Wins” tax campaign gives manufacturers the opportunity to share their tax reform stories with policymakers. You can join the campaign at www.NAM.org/MfgWins.

Learn more: Our full interview with Rep. Miller is available here.

Despite mixed market signals in recent weeks, the U.S. economy is strong and manufacturing is resilient—but Congress must take certain steps to maintain the industry’s competitiveness, NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons told Fox News host Neil Cavuto Monday.

What’s going on: When lawmakers return from their August recess next month, they should prioritize several tax provisions, Timmons said.

• “When … Congress goes back, we’ve got to deal with interest deductibility, and we’ve got to deal with the research-and-development tax deduction,” he continued. “We’ve got to deal with full expensing. Those are things that have expired.” These measures and others are top priorities in the NAM’s tax campaign, Manufacturing Wins.
• Other manufacturing-critical tax provisions are scheduled to expire or be reduced drastically at the end of next year, including the pass-through and estate-tax deductions. What’s more, “candidates on both sides of the aisle … are talking about raising taxes on businesses,” Timmons said. Individual tax rates and tax rates on manufacturers that operate globally are also set to rise at the end of 2025.

Regulatory onslaught: Manufacturers are also struggling with a “regulatory burden that is driving up the cost of doing business,” Timmons told Fox News.

• “We have restrictions on our ability to develop energy sources here, and we have a ban on exports of natural gas. All of those things lead to potential downsides in the economy.”
• The vast majority of Americans support exporting natural gas, a March NAM poll found, but the Biden administration’s indefinite pause on permits to export liquefied natural gas, imposed in January, continues.

Hopeful outlook: “There is a … very positive sense among manufacturers that if we do the right things on the policy front, we’re going to continue [the] expansion in the sector,” Timmons added. “We’re going to continue the record investments that we’ve seen, the record job growth and the record wage growth in the sector.”

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador proposed a sweeping package of amendments to Mexico’s constitution back in February. Now, with President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum set to take office in less than two months, manufacturers want to know whether and how the changes will happen.

What’s going on: “Over the last 10 years, manufacturers in the U.S. have dramatically expanded facilities and operations in Mexico, totaling over $25 billion, according to the U.S. Commerce Department,” said NAM Director of International Policy Dylan Clement at the recent Wilson Center event “Mexico’s Judicial Reforms: Perspectives from the Private Sector.”

• “When manufacturers invest, they sink large amounts of capital—literally—into the ground, which is costly to relocate once built,” he continued. “We do not pretend to know how the judicial reform will play out … [but] manufacturers are fearful of the risk associated with enacting sweeping changes to the judicial system in Mexico on such a short timeline.”
• Sheinbaum, who will be Mexico’s first female president, and her Morena party won a landslide election in June.

What’s been proposed: The constitutional amendments set forth include eliminating government oversight and regulatory agencies, including Mexico’s freedom-of-information body, INAI, and its anti-trust agency, COFECE, and requiring all Mexican judges—including Supreme Court judges—to be elected by popular vote, according to the Associated Press and Reuters.

• Several of the amendments appear to violate Mexico’s obligations under the U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement.

Why it’s important: Mexico is America’s largest trading partner, and “[a]t the end of the day, manufacturers want to partner with Mexico to help it prosper economically, grow its industrial capacity and enhance its self-sufficiency,” Clement said—but the broad revisions set forth by López Obrador and other worrying developments in Mexico have the potential to damage the critical relationship and undo important recent gains.

• The proposed changes to Mexico’s judicial system could erode the checks and balances within Mexico’s government, politicize judicial outcomes, undermine the rule of law and result in higher levels of corruption throughout Mexico.
• For investors, these challenges would be compounded by the USMCA’s weakened investor state dispute-settlement mechanism, which requires foreign investors to go through Mexico’s domestic court system before seeking a neutral arbitration panel via the USMCA.

In sum, the constitutional amendments carry the risk of greatly complicating the upcoming review of the USMCA, which the U.S., Canada and Mexico will conduct in 2026.

• Ultimately, any erosion of the business climate in Mexico will harm the attractiveness of Mexico as a destination for manufacturers seeking to “near-shore” their supply chains closer to the U.S.

What should be done: “For these reasons, the NAM would caution against rushing the judicial reform through in September, given that it will have an impact on Mexico’s investment climate for decades to come and many questions about it remain unanswered,” Clement concluded. “It is better to get this right than done quickly.”

The 21st Century Cures Act of 2016 and its 2021 follow-on, Cures 2.0, are providing a pathway toward potentially groundbreaking cures and treatments—but there’s room for even more improvement in the federal government’s handling of pharmaceutical innovation, the NAM said this week.

Now, Reps. Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Larry Bucshon (R-IN) are looking to build on the legacy of these two bills.

The background: The 21st Century Cures Act, introduced in 2015 by Rep. DeGette and former Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) and signed into law the following year, aimed to speed up the development and delivery of medical innovation.

• The 2016 measure “ensured that federal agencies like the [Food and Drug Administration], the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the National Institutes of Health had the tools they needed to keep pace with and adapt to the tremendous advances being made by biopharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers,” said NAM Vice President of Domestic Policy Charles Crain.
• Cures 2.0, passed after the global pandemic, created the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, “a home within the federal government for high-risk, high-reward medical research.”

New medical advances: The face of medical innovation “has changed dramatically” in the past eight years, Crain pointed out, as we’ve seen the first-ever federal approval of gene therapy and the development of vaccines using mRNA technology.

What’s needed: The new landscape necessitates more congressional action, Crain went on, including:

• Continuing to embrace the new technologies that emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic like mRNA and other innovations;
• Modernizing federal agencies such as the FDA to keep up with these innovations; and
• “[E]nsuring the government’s processes for reviewing and approving new treatments are as innovative as the treatments themselves.”

Why it’s important: Biopharmaceutical manufacturers are economic powerhouses. In 2021, they:

• Accounted for $355 billion in value-added output to the U.S. economy;
• Contributed a total of nearly 1.5 million direct and indirect jobs; and
• Contributed $147 billion in labor income.

The NAM’s 2025 tax campaign, “Manufacturing Wins,” is focused on preserving tax provisions critical to manufacturing in the U.S. One of those is the corporate tax rate, which the 2017 tax reform lowered from 35% to a globally competitive 21%.

The NAM recently released a tax explainer on the current corporate rate, emphasizing why it’s crucial to U.S. manufacturing’s competitiveness on the world stage.

The background: Prior to 2017, the U.S. corporate tax rate was 35%, the highest among our peers in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the third-highest rate in the entire world—making the U.S. an outlier and harming its ability to attract manufacturing investment.

• Tax reform lowered the corporate rate to 21%, aligning the U.S. with the average rate elsewhere in the OECD.

The benefits: Reducing the tax burden on manufacturers led to increased investment throughout the U.S., job creation, wage growth and overall economic expansion.

• In 2018, the year the lower rate took effect, manufacturers had their best year for job creation in more than two decades, creating more than 260,000 positions and increasing wages by 3%—the fastest pace in 15 years.
• NAM surveys conducted prior to tax reform found that nearly 80% of manufacturers were struggling with unfavorable business conditions like high taxes—a figure that dropped to just 12% following the reduction in the corporate rate.

What’s at stake: Although the corporate tax rate is not set to expire at the end of 2025, as other pro-growth provisions are, President Biden’s fiscal year 2025 budget called for an increase to 28%.

• This proposal would return the U.S. to one of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world, resulting in fewer jobs, lower wages, less innovation and reduced investment in our communities.

What should be done: “Manufacturers are calling on Congress to preserve tax reform in its entirety—including the 21% corporate tax rate,” the NAM said.

• “Congress should maintain a globally competitive corporate rate—enabling manufacturers to continue leading on the world stage while driving innovation and job creation here at home.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has scheduled a procedural vote on a bipartisan tax package, though the bill’s fate remains uncertain.

What’s going on: The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act would restore expired tax policies that reduce the cost of manufacturers’ investments in R&D, equipment and machinery. Ahead of Thursday’s vote, the NAM called these policies “vital to manufacturing workers and America’s economic future.”

• Immediate R&D expensing: Prior to 2022, manufacturers in the U.S. could fully deduct their R&D expenses in the year those expenses were incurred. But in 2022, first-year R&D expensing expired, making R&D investments significantly more costly, particularly for small and medium-sized manufacturers.
• Enhanced interest deductibility: Also in 2022, a new standard took effect limiting the amount of interest manufacturers can deduct on business loans, making it more expensive for them to invest in growth and expansion.
• Accelerated depreciation: In 2023, 100% accelerated depreciation—which allows manufacturers to immediately expense the full value of their capital equipment purchases—began phasing down, meaning these vital investments are now more costly for manufacturers.

What to expect: Thursday’s procedural vote requires 60 votes in the Senate, a difficult hurdle.

What’s next: Immediate R&D expensing, enhanced interest deductibility and 100% accelerated depreciation are top priorities in the NAM’s 2025 tax agenda. As Congress prepares to address scheduled expirations of other policies from the 2017 tax reform next year, the NAM will continue to call for restoration of these important pro-growth incentives.

The last word: “Competitive tax policy is critical to manufacturers’ ability to compete on the world stage and create jobs here at home,” said NAM Vice President of Domestic Policy Charles Crain. “Congress should restore expired pro-growth tax policies and act to prevent even more devastating tax increases scheduled for 2025.”