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May 5, 2025 11:40-12:00 - CSPAN
19:50
Washington Journal Rachel Slade
Participants
Appearances
j
john mcardle
cspan 02:14
t
tom homan
03:56
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Thank you, Brandon.
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john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
A conversation now about the history and future of American manufacturing.
Our guest is Rachel Slade.
She's the author of the 2024 book, Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S. and how it got that way.
Rachel Slade, why do you describe it as almost impossible?
unidentified
Thank you for asking that question.
Thanks for opening that way.
We actually have 13 million Americans right now working in factories, working in manufacturing, and they're contributing about $3 trillion to the economy.
That is not a small number at all.
So I just wanted to remind everybody that there are people going to work every single day making things in America.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
It's not a small number, but it used to be a lot larger number.
Explain how we got here and what it used to be.
unidentified
Oh, well, that's a big ask.
How we got here.
How we got here is obviously offshore.
It was a decision that we all made together.
We did it through our corporations.
We did it through policy.
We lowered the guardrails and allowed American corporations to start using labor from abroad.
And that meant we didn't just offshore the actual labor of our economy, but we also offshored all the ingenuity that we had developed right here through making.
And I really love driving that point home because manufacturing isn't just about making things.
It's about innovating.
You can't innovate unless you make.
So I always like to drive that point home from the very beginning.
We're going to lead this here and take you live now to the White House where an administration official is speaking to reporters.
You're watching live coverage.
tom homan ▲ ● ▼
Well, there's a reason the president designated them terrorist organizations, right?
The drug cartels have killed more Americans than recognized terrorist organizations before then, right?
I mean, they killed more Americans than ISIS or any other terrorist groups.
I mean, they've killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
So they're a terrorist organization.
We need to treat them like terrorist organizations.
unidentified
What Alcatraz reopened?
What's that talking about?
tom homan ▲ ● ▼
Well, we need detention beds.
And, you know, we do contracts with a lot of states, a lot of local municipalities.
So that's, I think, that's certainly an option, especially for the significant public safety threats, national security threats.
I mean, should be on the table.
unidentified
Is the administration looking at countries beyond El Salvador for mass deportation?
CBS News has some reporting that there's talks underway within Africa and elsewhere.
tom homan ▲ ● ▼
There's talks underway with other countries that are willing to take illegal aliens that countries, their own countries won't take them.
So we'll find a third safe country to take them.
So yeah, there's talks on the way.
unidentified
Do you have any cost estimates on reopening of Arcatrons?
tom homan ▲ ● ▼
I just answered that.
I mean, it's on the table.
It should be on the table because we need detention beds.
And that'd be, I think that's an appropriate place for the significant public safety threats, national security threats.
Why not?
unidentified
Do you have an idea how expensive it is?
tom homan ▲ ● ▼
I have no idea.
unidentified
How many countries are you talking about potentially?
tom homan ▲ ● ▼
No comment.
unidentified
What sort of impact do you see in having the self-deportation offering $1,000 now for a few, like a little bit just to self-deport through the app?
tom homan ▲ ● ▼
Well, I think we'll have, we'll have some movement, right?
Because I think people are finally getting the message.
If you leave it on your own, you can take advantage of legal programs, come back.
But we have to go through the process of form deporting you.
There are mandatory bars against you for up to 20 years, sometimes forever.
So, you know, if you want to take advantage, come back as a worker, a tourist visa, a visitor's visa, a student visa, or have a U.S. citizen child, if you have one, petition for you in the future.
Leave yourself open to the opportunity of legal entry.
Do things the right way.
There's millions of people standing in line right now doing things the right way.
Taking the test, doing their background investigations, paying their fees.
They're sitting in the back seat while millions of people are allowed into this country under Biden administration that simply don't qualify for asylum.
Most of them will lose that asylum claim.
So while they're clocking up the whole system, in addition to those who want to come in legally, while the fraudulent, millions of fraudulent asylum claims under Biden administration, there are people in this world who really are escaping fear and persecution from the homeland.
But they're sitting in the back seat too because millions of people cheated the system, come across the board and release the United States.
That caused a significant backlog in immigration code.
And that wasn't by accident, it's by design.
Let's just overwhelm the system.
So it takes five, seven, nine years to go through the whole process.
If they take advantage of the appeals process, they know exactly what they're doing.
That's why they weren't in ICE detention.
In ICE detention, they get a hearing within 35 days.
But if we release millions of the country, overwhelm the system so they don't get a hearing in five, seven, nine years.
Then maybe there's a Democrat administration in power.
Now we can have an amnesty.
They know exactly what they're doing.
They're playing the long game.
But we're going to beat them at.
We're going to ramp up interior enforcement operations and removals.
We're going to enforce the law.
We're not going to ignore the law like the Prime administration did.
unidentified
The president says he doesn't know what his responsibilities are under Article 5 of the Constitution.
Who would it be that would educate him about that?
Would it be you?
tom homan ▲ ● ▼
I think the president is one of the, if not the most knowledgeable president that we've ever had.
Look, people can beat on President Trump all you want.
President Trump's a game changer.
I've worked for six presidents, starting with Ronald Reagan.
I'm a border guy.
Even President Clinton Obama took steps to secure the border because they understood you can't have national security if you don't have border security.
No one did more than President Trump during his first administration.
We handed the Biden administration the most secure border in my lifetime, and he purposely unsecured it.
First president in the history of the nation to do that.
Look at what President Trump achieved in eight weeks.
He did in eight weeks what Joe Biden couldn't and wouldn't do in four years.
We have the most secure border in the history of this nation right now because of President Trump.
Greatest president of my lifetime.
You can quote me on that.
unidentified
Pleasure, Mr. Olmo.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You've been watching live coverage.
We return now to our scheduled program.
We joined it in progress.
And if other countries are doing currency manipulation or are providing cheap labor, which produces cheap goods, then we need to level that playing field.
And I do believe in tariffs, but the tariffs should be on finished goods, finished goods.
That's really important to distinguish from raw goods, which of course all manufacturers need.
And we are part of the global supply chain, so we need to understand that intrinsically, that there are different kinds of imports coming in.
But what American companies really need to compete is a level pricing playing field, which does require tariffs on finished goods.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
We had a caller in our last segment, Steve and Tucson, and he was talking about manufacturing, job losses that have happened in this country.
and onshoring jobs coming back to America.
And he says, if we do this, if we try to onshore, what happens when these jobs come back?
People who are currently being paid, and he said, $2 an hour to manufacture an item in another country, what happens when they come here and they have to be paid $20 an hour?
Who's going to pay the cost of that?
What would you say to Steve and Tucson?
unidentified
Well, so the people who would be making the things here would be earning $20 an hour.
It's not people coming over who were making less before.
So the question is, what happens when you have labor making more money to produce domestic goods?
And the answer is domestic goods will be more expensive.
Absolutely no question about it.
However, when we think about the incredible cost that we are paying for cheap imported goods, suddenly things start to make sense.
So if you have people here in America making good wages, producing things, then we are creating a whole new ecosystem, a whole new tax base of makers, of innovators, of people who are contributing finally to a growing economy.
And instead of what I see now, the service economy, which is an extraction model, the service economy is designed to take dollars out of our pockets instead of the manufacturing economy, which is about producing, which will then grow the entire economy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Can you explain what planned obsolescence is?
And if we make these items in America, are we certain that they are going to be better quality items?
unidentified
That's a great question.
The whole idea that Americans produce better goods was certainly true at one time and can certainly be true in certain sectors.
I'm not sure that that is the strongest argument for bringing American manufacturing back.
However, if you treat workers well with respect, you pay them a living wage, you give them time off, you give them time flexibility, you give them opportunities to grow within the industry through training programs and other things, and you also give them the right to organize so that they can protect their own labor.
Then you have an economy where people are being taken care of, where people feel good about what they're making and they have pride in the products that they're producing.
And then they will give back to the economy by innovating, by supporting the very companies that are supporting them through good work.
That's the idea.
And that's what I've seen in the factory in Portland, Maine, and all around the country.
I've spoken to small producers all around the country.
And that's what they see.
When you take care of workers, they take care of the product.
They want the companies to succeed because they're invested in it just as the companies are invested in them.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Let me let you chat with a few callers, including folks on that special line we're setting aside for those who work in manufacturing.
That number 202-748-8003.
And John is on that line out of Wisconsin.
John, you are on with Rachel Slade.
unidentified
Hi, thanks for taking my call this morning.
I worked in manufacturing my entire career, and it was a non-union plant.
And I'm only 61 years old, and I've been retired for it'll be six years.
I was lucky enough to enjoy a pension to a non-union plant.
And so I don't really know if it's as big of a deal as far as organizing, like you were saying, that you need to organize and have union labor.
Like I said, there are companies out there that will treat people that are employees right, necessarily without having to pay the union dues or that type of thing.
I think the union is more to protect people that didn't do their job efficiently.
But my main question to you is: people nowadays talk a lot about the people in China and other countries where they pay such little wages compared to what we do here.
And that's because they treat them terribly, in my opinion.
You know, they don't have anything to do with any backing or safety things.
And I was just wondering what your thoughts on that were.
And also, it's funny that people I retired from six years ago are now making the same amount of money starting as I was after working there for 26 years.
So the costs have greatly increased since inflation happened in 2020.
I just wanted to give your thoughts on that subject, Laura.
Thanks a lot for taking my call.
Yeah, John, thank you so much, first of all, for being in manufacturing.
You mentioned pensions.
You're lucky you got one.
I would love to see pensions come back.
And by the way, I would love to see pension plans, especially union pension plans, have mandates to allot some of their investment in companies that actually support workers.
But that's a whole different discussion.
We can talk about that if you want.
But the question about how are workers being treated in other countries where they're getting paid so little, you nailed, you hit that nail right on the head.
I mean, that's the cost of offshoring, right?
That's the cost.
And we all, you know, pay an ethical and moral cost to being addicted to very, very cheap goods.
There is a cost to those goods, and the cost is in exploitation of people and places.
Do you know that Bangladesh, which is where almost all of our apparel comes from, in Bangladesh, I believe they have two or three major rivers that are classified as dead.
Dead.
That means that nothing can live in those rivers because of the apparel and textile industries there.
They have no safeguards.
That is happening in Bangladesh.
It actually at one time used to happen in America.
We enacted laws, we, the people, asked the government to enact laws to protect our air and protect our water.
That made things more expensive for Americans, but we at one time were willing to pay for that because this is our country.
This is where we live.
This is where our children go swimming.
This is where we have to draw the water from our faucet.
So we were willing to pay that price.
And we need to be able, we need to, we need to have that kind of courage again to pay the price for well-made goods that don't have these inherent terrible costs, the exploitation of labor and of the environment.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Let me head to Iowa.
This is Mark on that same line for folks who work in manufacturing.
Go ahead, Mark.
unidentified
Yeah, I worked for a packing house.
It's owned by Smithfield here in Iowa.
And Smithfield is a Chinese company now.
They bought Smithfield 20 years ago, and it used to be ConAgra Foods, and they sold to Smithfield.
And Smithfield is one of the biggest pork producers in the United States.
And it keeps our prices low because my grandfather retired from an armor plant, which was previously Carniagara.
And they made more money on a loaf of bread or gallon of milk compared to what I was making when I retired.
Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Rachel Slade, any thoughts on Mark's story?
unidentified
Yeah, you know, China has actually invested.
So we did offshore so much of our economy to China.
What's interesting is China is not the bogeyman here.
And I don't think it's a positive thing to blame everything, all of our problems on China.
Like we brought this upon ourselves, did we not?
What's interesting is that when we exported our economy to China, China did come back and invest in the U.S.
And so China, I believe, is the largest foreign holder of U.S. bonds.
And of course, bonds support U.S. bonds support rebuilding in America, infrastructure, all kinds of things.
And as you mentioned, of course, the Chinese have also used their incredible wealth to buy American companies.
There was a great movie.
I don't know if you can have access to it, but it was called, I believe it's called Factory, which was about an auto glass factory in the United States was actually purchased by a Chinese company.
And it was really interesting to see the cultural differences.
But yeah, I mean, we are part of the global economy.
I don't know what else to add to that, but I do appreciate what you're saying.
And I think it's important to understand that American industry, you know, can be held by foreign owners.
A lot of it is.
I don't think that's our biggest problem.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
On China, let me come back to tariffs for a second.
You said you do believe in tariffs on finished goods or finished products.
How much of the tariff regime that we've seen from the Trump administration in the past couple of months, how much of it is focused on finished goods versus the raw material?
unidentified
My understanding is that these are blanket tariffs and they seem punitive, right?
So they're based on the idea that the other countries did this to us, that they should be penalized for having trade imbalances with us.
And from my perspective and from what I have learned through manufacturers, that's not a positive way to approach this very serious problem that Americans have right now.
Again, if we understand that we did this to ourselves by empowering corporations to basically dictate policy and lower the guardrails so that they could offshore and make much higher profit at our expense, that means that we need to start right here at home to fix these problems through policy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Let me head to Mike in Rice Lake, Wisconsin Independent.
Mike, thanks for waiting.
You are on with Rachel Slade.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Okay.
Thanks for taking my call, John.
So I have a couple, I have one comment and then one question.
I own a small landscaping business in Rice Lake, Wisconsin.
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