Input Stories

NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons hit the airwaves in five high-profile, live hits in-studio on Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, CBS, NewsNation and Newsmax—all within two days in New York City. Amid widespread trepidation about the economic impact of tariffs, Timmons underscored the urgency of making the 2017 tax reforms permanent and rebalancing regulations. He also proposed a set of straightforward solutions to achieve policy wins for manufacturers during President Trump’s 90-day window for trade negotiations.
 
Bloomberg: “[Manufacturers] want to see progress,” Timmons said on Bloomberg’s “Surveillance on Radio.” “The president has given himself 90 days—I don’t know what that’s down to now, about 80 probably left—to negotiate deals from around the world. [We] are very hopeful that we’re going to see some policies that are zero-for-zero tariffs.” 

• “I understand the Italian prime minister is proposing exactly that right now for the EU. But we also have a couple other issues. We’ve got critical minerals, critical inputs … machines … chemicals that we can’t do here right now. We’ve got to figure out a way to bring those into these discussions as well.”
• “[The 2017 tax reforms] were, as President Trump said, rocket fuel for manufacturing, investment, hiring and wage growth in our industry,” Timmons said. “Those things are expiring, and we need to get those renewed. And so we’re waiting for Congress to do that. The regulatory burden is another big cost driver, about $50,000 per employee per year in compliance costs.” 

Yahoo: “There’s no question [that manufacturers] are concerned about tariffs,” Timmons said on Yahoo Finance. “We’re still waiting for Congress to act on renewing the 2017 tax reforms, regulatory rebalancing, and to their credit, the administration is tackling that right now. We want to also see an expansion of domestic energy production that should be coming as well.”

• “[But] the tariffs and the trade policy that’s been announced, pulled back, announced again, that’s causing a lot of uncertainty for manufacturers, and so they’re kind of taking a pause and waiting to see what’s coming next, because we don’t know.” 

CBS: “[T]ax policy, regulatory policy, all of that’s important, but we also need to have certainty and predictability when it comes to our exports and our imports.” Timmons said on CBS Morning News. “And what I’m hearing is manufacturers are a bit concerned about what the ultimate effect of these tariffs is going to be, and when they’re actually going to be permanent or . . . what the path ahead is.”

• “The good news, I think, for manufacturers on the regulatory front is the administration has really taken a very thoughtful approach to rebalancing regulations.”

NewsNation: “I think that we all have to realize we’re in a global economy right now,” Timmons said on NewsNation . “And look, I want to see more manufacturing investment and jobs here, because I represent manufacturers in America.”

• “But we have to understand that 95% of the world’s customers live outside the borders of the United States. So the more we make here, the more we can sell abroad, but not everything, unfortunately, can be made here. [W]e want to make as much as we can here in the United States. There’s no question about that.”

Newsmax: “When President Trump addressed our board meeting as a candidate last year, he talked about the importance of renewing those 2017 tax reforms that he brought in during his first administration that [were] ‘rocket fuel,’” Timmons said on Newsmax.

• “Those were his words, by the way. … We had record investment and job creation in this country in the manufacturing sector after those reforms took place. Now they’re going to expire this year if Congress does not, frankly, get off their backsides and get busy on this legislation.”
• “[T]he president and his administration have really prioritized rebalancing our regulations in this country. [These regulations are] costing manufacturers $350 billion a year. That’s $50,000 per employee per year in compliance costs. We can’t compete with the rest of the world if we are making mistakes on our own and driving up costs.”