Trade

From personal heroes to tax reform and tariffs, NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons covered it all in his recent appearance on iHeart Radio’s “CEOs You Should Know.”

From the beginning: In his June 9 interview with show host Mike Howard, Timmons told listeners about his journey from a childhood in the mill town of Chillicothe, Ohio, to his current role, running the largest manufacturing trade association in the U.S.

• As both the only child and the only grandchild in his family, Timmons was inspired professionally and personally by his parents and grandparents.
• Timmons’ grandfather “stood in line for six months during the Great Depression trying to get a job in manufacturing because he knew that that would be a way forward for his family,” he said.
• His mother climbed the ranks at the Chillicothe Gazette, eventually becoming president and CEO of the newspaper, and his father owned an appliance store, Timmons Appliance and TV.

Part of the Reagan Revolution: As an undergraduate student at Ohio State University, Timmons decided that college wasn’t for him—and he wanted “to do everything I could to help Ronald Reagan succeed.”

• So, he headed for Washington, D.C., where he ended up on Capitol Hill. His desire to enter politics “was really about [wanting to help shape] policy that enabled people to live their best lives.”
• Timmons ended up becoming the youngest chief of staff in the U.S.—to Virginia Gov. George Allen.

The road to manufacturing: Later, Timmons took over the policy and government relations team at the NAM, where he spent six years shaping the association’s agenda before being named CEO in 2011.

• “[M]anufacturing is not a partisan issue, and [neither is] the success of America,” Timmons continued. The industry “is really infused into the fabric of all we are as Americans. … [M]anufacturing helped us to build the infrastructure system that made us the strongest, most connected economy in the world in the 1950s and ’60s.”

Rocket fuel: From 2018 to 2022, manufacturing “had record investment, we had record hiring, and we had record wage growth over the course of the next three years—because of that rocket fuel, as President Trump called it,” the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

On tariffs: The manufacturing industry in the U.S. is hoping the administration and its trading partners will make trade deals during the current three-month pause on tariffs.

• “[M]anufacturers … are very hopeful that the administration really is going to be able to settle in their 90-day window all of these potential trade agreements throughout the world,” he said, adding that it would mean that “manufacturers actually can have the certainty they need to again invest higher and increase wages and benefits.”