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NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons appeared on multiple TV news shows this week, bringing manufacturers’ priorities to a wide audience.

CNBC: Timmons visited the Nasdaq MarketSite for an interview with Frank Holland on CNBC’s “Worldwide Exchange,” where the two discussed manufacturers’ outlook.

• [M]anufacturers overall are pretty optimistic. Our board of directors just met last week in Washington, and I heard really positive comments from manufacturers based on largely the work that has been done on the tax provisions of H.R. 1, some regulatory modernization [and] energy dominance here in the United States. But there are some concerns, especially when it involves the workforce and trade policy.”
• “Our members have about a 65% positive outlook on manufacturing,” he continued later on. “The average is around 74% for the last 20 years or so. The high was 94% during the first quarter of the first Trump administration. It dropped down to 55% earlier this year. That 65% now, that 10% higher number that you saw, is really largely due to the tax bill that passed in July and was signed into law in July.”
• “And that really was a signal to manufacturers that America continues to be serious about being open for business and attracting investment and job creation to our shores.”

NewsNation: Timmons also spoke to Connell McShane on NewsNation’s “NewsNation Now,” where he discussed the administration’s manufacturing priorities and the NAM’s manufacturing “speed pass” proposal.

• “I want to make sure that [the administration is] doing the right thing [and] not harming our ability to actually invest. … If we’re actually raising the cost of our ability to create more volume or manufacturing capacity here in the United States, that’s not going to work.”
• “So we’re proposing a speed pass, if you will, with the Department of Treasury to make sure that if there’s something that will help us grow manufacturing capacity in the United States to achieve the president’s goal, it can come into the country without a duty—as long as it is tied to growing manufacturing investment and jobs here in this country.”

Bloomberg: Timmons also joined Tom Keene and Paul Sweeney on Bloomberg “Surveillance Radio” where he discussed tariff policies.

• “Regulatory modernization has been good for manufacturing … [and the administration’s] focus on energy dominance has been very positive, but the greatest challenges are … workforce, but also the uncertainty of the current tariff policies in this country and [their] added costs.”
• “The president clearly wants to grow manufacturing capacity in this country. Well, so do we, right? … In order to do that, we’ve had our economists crunch some numbers. If we had every machine running in this country today, we would only be able to make 84% of the critical inputs necessary to build that new factory”—meaning that the U.S. must import the remaining 16%.  

Yahoo Finance: Rounding out the two-day media swing, Timmons joined Julie Hyman on Yahoo Finance, where he discussed the manufacturing workforce and AI.

• “[Manufacturing is] an incredible career that pays more than any other sector of the economy. It’s constantly changing. It’s constantly challenging. I think the perception of manufacturing, though, in a lot of parents’ minds, is kind of [outdated], so we’re working to change that.”
• “Then secondly, there just aren’t enough people in the country to fill all the jobs we have. In addition to the 400,000 that we have open, there’s millions of others open in other sectors of the economy. So one of the issues, not the only issue, but one of the issues we have is we need a reliable … legal immigration system that actually works.”
• Lastly, “About 50% of manufacturers today already have AI integrated into their operations. That number is going to increase to about 60% by 2027. Then . . .  the number goes up to 80% by 2030. … [We’re] going to need more people to be able to operate the systems and be able to utilize the design features and other features of AI in a different way than we have used technology in the past. And that’s just a matter of training and education, which I think we can accomplish.”

But there’s more: Between his TV appearance, Timmons sat down with CNN’s Matt Egan and 10 Wall Street Journal business and economic reporters to discuss the state of manufacturing, cementing pro-growth tax reform, the manufacturing workforce, AI, tariffs and more.