Policy and Legal

In a one-on-one interview with NewsNation’s Blake Burman just hours before President Trump spoke at a town hall with the same network, NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons continued to underscore the need for a comprehensive manufacturing strategy to make long-term investments.

• “First and foremost, we have got to get those tax reforms from 2017—that rocket fuel that President Trump announced at our board meeting in 2017—renewed, and Congress needs to move that forward,” Timmons said.
• “Regulatory rebalancing is something that’s very important. It’s about $50,000 per employee per year in compliance costs; that’s pretty expensive. We also need energy dominance. [Trump is] well on his way to making that happen.”
• He added that we need “good, solid trade policy” so manufacturers don’t see added costs. “We’re waiting to see how all this comes out. And we’re hopeful.”
• “If you have a comprehensive manufacturing strategy that you’re implementing … that includes all of those things I just mentioned to bring down the cost of business doing business here in the United States, you absolutely will see more investment,” he continued. Trump “announced that $5 trillion has already been committed. You’ll see more jobs, and you’ll also see higher wages and benefits.”

The long view: “Massive facilities … take a little while,” Timmons told Burman. “That is a realization that I need Americans to understand.”

• Such sites typically take years, he said, with the exact number depending “on how localities and states are moving along the permitting process.”
• “I was George Allen’s chief of staff when he was governor of Virginia,” Timmons went on, “and he made a commitment that he was going to move large scale projects in a very expeditious way. And we had a huge chip manufacturer that made an announcement, and [the company] said the doors will open in one year. [T]hey did, and that’s because all of government was really focused on doing that. You’ve got that commitment from this administration, there’s no doubt about that, but it’s typically three to five years for a large-scale manufacturing operation to come to fruition, and you’re talking about a 30-year commitment.”
• “So that’s another reason we need permanence when it comes to tax policy and trade policy.”

FOX Business: Timmons recently spoke with a group of FOX Business reporters to discuss the comprehensive strategy needed from Congress, focusing specifically on tax, trade and the manufacturing workforce.

• In a story from that interview published today, he said: “The 2017 tax reforms that President Trump actually announced at our board meeting in 2017,  [which he said] would be rocket fuel for the economy … indeed were. Those tax reforms led to record investment and job creation and wage growth for three years running after they were in enacted.”