Policy and Legal

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.”