CSPAN - Discussion on Manufacturing Under Trump Administration

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July 10, 2025 15:28-17:24 - CSPAN

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Discussion on Manufacturing Under Trump Administration

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j alex halderman

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unidentified		It looks at Apple's relationship with China and the impact of locating so many factories there.
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		Executives and analysts discuss President Trump's policies and how his tariffs have impacted the manufacturing industry.
		The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. hosted the nearly two-hour forum.
		Good morning.
		I'm Daryl West, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and I'd like to welcome you to our 14th annual John Hazen White Manufacturing Forum.
		And I want to thank Johnny, who is right next to me here, and the White family and Takeo Comfort Solutions for their generous support of this forum over the years.
		Johnny is a Brookings trustee, and we appreciate all that he and his family have done to support our work.
		Today, we are going to focus on the state of manufacturing.
		President Trump has promised to strengthen U.S. manufacturing and bring back jobs to the United States.
		To do this, he has undertaken a number of different initiatives.
		He has imposed tariffs on many different countries, cut taxes, reduced regulations, and moved away from some clean energy standards.
		At the six-month point in his presidency, how should people assess his manufacturing policies?
		What is working well and not so well?
		What are the lessons from his actions on tariffs, trade, taxes, and energy?
		I think there are many different metrics we can use to gauge manufacturing success.
		Perhaps one of the most important is boosting jobs.
		And I looked up the numbers.
		In 1979, there were 19.5 million Americans engaged in manufacturing.
		That has now dropped to around 12.8 million, and it's been a steady decline over the last 40 years.
		We went from about 30% of our workforce being in manufacturing in 1950 down to about 8% now.
		Another metric could be just rising manufacturing output.
		And I think there's a chance that actually may happen, assuming the economy holds up because manufacturing is a bit cyclical with the overall economy.
		Improving manufacturing efficiency and productivity.
		That is something that I think could happen as well.
		Reaching trade agreements.
		We haven't seen a lot on that front yet, despite the 90 deals in 90 days rhetoric that we heard a few months ago.
		There have been a few agreements with the UK and Vietnam.
		There are a few others that may be announced shortly, but there haven't been a lot of those yet.
		And then the last criteria could be increasing foreign investment.
		And President Trump has made several announcements to this effect.
		And I think there actually could be interesting trade-offs across these different metrics.
		I think it could be possible for there to be improvements in manufacturing productivity and output, but not jobs.
		Because what we're already seeing in the sector is there's many more robots, AI, and automation coming into manufacturing.
		Factories are integrating these and other emerging technologies in what they're doing.
		But it doesn't necessarily mean that jobs are going to come back.
		And I think this is actually Trump's biggest challenge because the jobs metric is the one people care the most about.
		You know, he can't campaign on, hey, I increase the number of robots in factories.
		Robots don't vote.
		People vote.
		And so we could end up in a situation where even if there is improved output, efficiency, and productivity, if there's not an improvement in the number and percentage of jobs, then that could be problematic for the president.
		But I think it'll be interesting just to watch all these things in the coming months.
		It's obviously early.
		We won't have a detailed date on some of these things for a bit of time, but it's something that we're paying close attention to, and I would encourage others to do so as well.
		In order to address these topics, we have two sets of panels.
		So on our first panel, we have two distinguished experts.
		John Hazen White is the executive chairman of the TAYCO family of companies, and he has run the business for more than 30 years and been an innovator at many different levels.
		Charles Crane is the managing vice president of policy for the National Association of Manufacturers, and he works on ways to improve manufacturing and particularly focuses on the policy aspect.
		We did have a third speaker lined up, Sammy Desai of Indiana University, but she was unable to make our session today.
		We do have a Twitter feed set up at BrookingsGov with the hashtag U.S. Manufacturing.
		So if you wish to post questions or comments during the forum, you're welcome to do that as well.
		So Charles, I'd like to start with you.
		So we've obviously seen lots of initiatives during the Trump administration.
		How do you evaluate his actions and what do you think is working well versus not working so well?
		Well, thanks so much, Daryl.
		Really glad to be here this morning.
		There's never a bad time to talk about manufacturing and the policies that impact the 13 million people who make things in America.
		When we think about the President's manufacturing strategy, his manufacturing policies, you really have to start with tax policy.
		And that's not just because the One Big Beautiful bill passed last week with historic tax reform provisions in it.
		It's always a good time to talk about tax policy as well.
		We know from 2017, the Tax, Cuts, and Jobs Act, the impact that pro-growth tax policy can have on manufacturing.
		In 2018 and 2019, coming out of the TCJA, we saw record capital investments in the manufacturing industry.
	We saw record job increases.
	We saw record wage increases.
	So we know that the positive impacts that pro-manufacturing, pro-growth tax policy can have.
	As we got further and further out from TCJA, however, we got closer and closer to the 2025 tax cliff that was scheduled for the end of this year.
	And so the president and the Congress have been focused, as you all know, over the past six months of preventing significant tax increases on manufacturers, which would otherwise have taken effect at the end of this year.
	The One Big Beautiful bill passes last week, which prevents those tax increases.
	And it really should support manufacturers' efforts to drive manufacturing growth here in the U.S. There are specific incentives for capital equipment purchases, for RD, for job-creating projects, for factories.
	These are pro-manufacturing activities.
	These are pro-manufacturing tax incentives.
	And so when we think about how to evaluate the administration's manufacturing policy strategy, we really have to start with a big win, which was last week's tax bill.
	And we at the NAM are obviously very supportive of that legislation and excited to see how it plays out across the industry, because it really should have the potential to have pro-growth impacts for manufacturers, and that's a real credit to the President.
	So, Johnny, you're on the front lines of manufacturing, running your own manufacturing firm.
	What is your sense of the Trump manufacturing initiatives we've seen so far?
	There's a number of them, but I'm going to, you know, I've been listening carefully, Charles, to you.
	I do think that this tax policy is vitally important and very fortunate to have passed because it's now law and it's going to keep the I've done some study on competitive tax rates around the world, and we are hovering in the lower quadrant of that.
	And I think to add on to what Charles said, my rationale for feeling so strongly about this is simply that for a company like mine to succeed and prosper, we have to invest.
	And I think with the between the potential higher rate, which we would have gone back to 36 percent or something, am I right?
	It was just 35 prior to TCGA.
	Yep.
	Okay.
	You know, to keep that down at 21, it's huge because that money will directly be reinvested into our capability to supply the market with our products.
	And so I think, and the uncertainty that was hovering with waiting for this bill to pass was postponing investment.
	And so I think now you might see an upsurge in manufacturing investments.
	I think that that's a huge and then of course we have other initiatives.
	There's many of them, the tariffs, and I assume we're going to talk about tariffs.
	We are going to talk about tariffs right now.
	I'm going to pose a question to each of you.
	Obviously, the tax cuts are part of the Trump initiatives, but the tariff aspect also has been quite substantial and I think very impactful in the manufacturing sector.
	So Charles, I'll start with you.
	Just what do you see as the impact of tariffs on manufacturing, how it's affecting costs, how it's affecting operations?
	It's a great question, obviously, very much top of mind for everyone today, and that's certainly true across manufacturing.
	When you think about tariff policy, manufacturers support the President's goal of driving domestic manufacturing growth.
	That's in fact why we're here today, right, to talk about how policymakers can incentivize and grow and support domestic manufacturing.
	The fact remains, of course, that manufacturing exists within a global supply chain.
	We've looked at sort of some of the numbers with respect to how those supply chains work across manufacturing.
	And what we found is that if the U.S. economy was operating at full capacity, which we know that it's not, right?
	There's 400,000 jobs open in manufacturing.
	But even if it were, we could only produce 84% of the inputs that manufacturers need to make things in America here in America.
	So there is at absolute minimum a 16% of inputs that we need to import from somewhere else.
	These are raw materials, these are chemicals, these are energy resources.
	This is specialized equipment and machinery that may not be made here.
	Of course, we don't actually operate at full capacity, like I said.
	So in the real world, it's more like 67% that we can produce currently here in the U.S.
	So we really need to solve for that 30-ish percent of outstanding inputs that we need to make things here.
	Again, that's the goal that we share.
	And so when you think about tariff policy, does it increase the cost of using those inputs here to make things here in America?
	And that's sort of the direction that we've really encouraged the administration to look.
	Manufacturers need inputs to make things, and we need export markets to sell things, right?
	And so we think that a common sense trade policy can allow for the president to achieve his trade policy goals without preventing manufacturers from investing here in America, which is a goal we all share.
	So, John, your thoughts on tariffs and how it's affecting businesses.
	Well, I think that if I were to take a broadbrush approach to this topic, right now it's a little difficult to assess what's happening with tariffs.
	I mean, it's so confusing.
	First of all, there's tariffs, there's embargoes, there's trade zones, there's trade areas, there's all kinds of things associated with it.
	It's not just tariffs, but the tariff issue as it stands now is very confusing.
	It's unsettled, and as you've all seen, it changes daily, practically, with different countries.
	I mean, the Chinese tariff levels have shot up and down all over the place.
	And unfortunately, if we look back at a bit of our own history, you know, there are certain core raw materials that go into manufacturing.
	Cast iron is one, steel is another.
	That essentially, not 100 percent, but to quite some extent, this country has regulated ourselves out of being able to produce.
	And what is produced here is frightfully expensive.
	So companies like mine have had to go to China and to India.
	And it's not a bad thing because these are great sources of supply with great quality and everything else.
	But we've had to go just to be able to be competitive in our own market.
	And all of us have done it.
	And so imposing these tariffs on us for products that we literally can't buy here is a little bit awkward.
	It's a little bit contradictory to what I think the intention is, which is to elevate our manufacturing.
	Tariffs are implemented for the purpose of driving business domestically so that it's less attractive to import from products, raw materials from China and other countries.
	And this is particularly in the agricultural markets, another area, where it makes our domestic products more affordable for people.
	The question is, what are the tariffs?
	And I think we have to wait to see, because as you said, the 90 deals in 90 days aren't quite happening, right?
	And so it's going to take a while for this to settle and to see where it lands.
	But it's shaky.
	It's concerning.
	And if I could just pull on that thread from the uncertainty perspective, it sounds like you all have certainly experienced it at your business.
	That's true across the industry.
	We do a quarterly survey at the NAM, just manufacturers' outlook survey.
	Are you positive or negative on the outlook of your company for the next quarter?
	In the last quarter, that number hit 55% of participants in the survey were positive about the outlook of their business.
	That's the lowest reading since the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020.
	And then, of course, the next question is, why?
	Why are you positive?
	Why are you negative?
	The top answer of why you're negative was trade uncertainty.
	The second top answer was rising input costs, which is just another way of saying trade uncertainty, right?
	89% of respondents in the survey found that tariffs had increased their cost of doing business over the last quarter.
	So we really are facing that uncertainty that you described across the industry, which makes it more difficult to make long-term investment decisions that we know drive manufacturing growth.
	The tax uncertainty had been also making it more difficult to make long-term investment decisions.
	That's now taken off the table as of eight days ago or whatever it was.
	But we're still facing additional barriers to those long-term decisions that we need to create jobs here in America.
	You know, can I tag on to this?
	I don't mean to take all the oxygen in the room here, but I think it's important to note, and I'm not sure everybody understands this part.
	I certainly didn't until we started living it.
	But, you know, and I want to talk about Buy America at some point too, but the tariffs that we incur.
	Now, I make anything that controls the flow of water in HVAC.
	Let's just say pumps and valves and electronic controls.
	Now, some of these are very big.
	Some of these pumps are half the size of this room.
	And so those raw materials, a lot of them are coming from China, from Mexico, from all over the place.
	And let's just take China, for example.
	Those tariffs have jumped up and down all over the place for the last period of time.
	And we have to, one of the very first things I checked into when this whole thing got started, we have to account for those tariffs as part of the cost of the product.
	I can't have a line item in my budget that says tariffs.
	I have to say for that pump, that's the tariff.
	And therefore, if they change, I can guarantee you that there's pumps shipping out of my factory today that are being followed by pumps that are components are on the water on their way here with different tariffs.
	And so I can't just raise prices unilaterally, and we are to cover for ourselves.
	But I can't just raise them unilaterally.
	I have to, because customers are demanding documentation on what we're doing.
	So my pricing is all over the place.
	It's becoming a bit of an administrative nightmare for companies like ours, as well as a cost.
	So Johnny, you mentioned the Buy America provisions.
	And of course, President Trump has emphasized this.
	He wants manufacturing to come back to the United States.
	Biden, by the way, did exactly the same thing.
	One of the areas where Trump and Biden actually were in agreement that they wanted domestic content made here as opposed to elsewhere.
	How are those requirements affecting businesses?
	Johnny, start with you.
	Yeah, so Buy America has always been a very difficult thing for any companies that aren't 100% domestically sourced.
	So in our case, for us to adhere to the Buy America rules and regulations, over 50%, 51% or more of our cost has to be domestically sourced.
	So that's difficult but far from impossible because there's one component that goes on every pump and that's a motor.
	And if we source that in America, it's always over 50% of the cost of our product, or generally it is.
	And so we've been able to, but now to comply, but now with the tariffs coming in on other key items that go into our products, it's pushing that cost up.
	And to where it's risky.
	And I just want to throw this in, because this has nothing to do with tariffs, but it's a craziest thing.
	The Buy America law will insist on 51 or more percent of the product being domestically sourced.
	But do you know, they will not allow us to factor our labor cost into our cost.
	So I'm employing 700 people in Rhode Island and Massachusetts making things that I can't include in that Buy America cost, right?
	So it's a little bit convoluted.
	And I hope at some point, I've met with all of these legislators in Washington.
	I just hope somewhere along the line we can make some improvements here.
	So, Charles, one of the other initiatives has been regulatory changes, and particularly there have been regulatory changes in terms of the clean energy standards.
	Biden made that a high priority within his administration.
	Trump has rolled that back.
	What type of impact are you seeing in the regulatory area for the manufacturing sector?
	Regulatory reform, obviously, is a key priority of the President.
	This is something he talked about on the campaign trail and something that coming into the administration, manufacturers are very excited to see how can the administration rebalance the federal regulatory environment for our industry.
	Coming into this year, manufacturers face a disproportionate share of the federal regulatory costs that fall across all industries.
	Our industry spends about $350 billion every year complying just with Federal regulations.
	Across the economy, it's $3 trillion of Federal regulatory costs that fall on industries in general.
	And so $350 billion is our disproportionate share of that larger $3 trillion number.
	And so coming into this administration, manufacturers have been really clear that we want to see a rebalanced and modernized regulatory system.
	Manufacturers support regulations.
	We need reliable rules of the road.
	We've been talking about uncertainty and the need to plan for long-term investments.
	You need to know what the rules are going to be in order to make those investments, as well as having tax certainty and trade certainty.
	But the trend in recent years has been towards overburdensome and unworkable regulations that don't meet with the specifics of how businesses are actually run and how they actually operate.
	So manufacturers, in our experience, have been very encouraged to see the administration taking a second look at some of the rules that were finalized in recent years and looking for ways to modernize them and make them more workable for manufacturers.
	You see that playing out at the EPA, at the SEC, across the federal regulatory apparatus of finding ways to maintain reliable rules of the road, but to make those rules less costly for folks like John and to make them more workable across the industry so that we can make the investments that we need in job creation, growth, capital investment, et cetera, here in the United States.
	Charles, could you just expand a little bit on that?
	I'm curious.
	What are some of the maybe misphrases, but irrelevant.
	I think I said unworkable.
	There may well also be some that are irrelevant.
	You know, what we've experienced is that, and you know this as a smaller business, a lot of times these rules will apply across the board to companies of all sizes.
	There might be a very limited small business exception, we'll say, or a small business set of tailoring.
	But if you're applying the same standard for a large multinational corporation and a small business, and oh, by the way, maybe that standard isn't rooted in whether or not it's actually workable for the company.
	It's not based on the current science or understanding of how whatever that type of technology actually works, you start to see disproportionate impacts.
	For small businesses in our industry, they face $50,000 per employee per year in regulatory costs, which is far north of what larger businesses face from the exact same regulations.
	And so that's what we are really encouraging the administration to re-look at is how can you modernize these rules so that you still have reliable rules of the road, but that manufacturers aren't really suffering under this burden and can instead divert costs, to your point, to more productive activities.
	So I just have a couple more questions for our panelists, then we're going to open the floor to questions from our audience.
	How realistic is it to bring jobs back to the United States?
	Like, you know, we might be able to boost economic output in the manufacturing area.
	We might be able to improve efficiency.
	We might be able to improve productivity through robots, AI, and automation.
	But are jobs going to come back?
	Is it realistic for President Trump to think he can bring manufacturing jobs back and for Americans who want jobs to come back?
	I'm happy to start.
	Across the manufacturing industry currently, there's about 400,000 open jobs right now.
	So we're actually very much focused on filling the open jobs that we have.
	And that includes efforts like reskilling, training programs, ensuring that we can connect talented workers to the job openings where some of the manufacturers are operating at.
	full capacity as we discussed earlier.
	And I think that's a critical priority for this administration.
	You also mentioned kind of the technological advances that manufacturers are utilizing to improve their efficiency, even as we have these 400,000 open jobs and even as we're working to reskill and train folks to fill those jobs.
	AI has been a feature of modern manufacturing for years, actually.
	It only has just been realized in recent months and years of sort of the transformative nature outside of manufacturing.
	But modern shop floors are smart, they're clean, they're high-tech.
	Manufacturers are using these technologies such as AI to have more efficient supply chains, to have more efficient production processes, to have safer production processes for workers, to make workers' jobs more efficient.
	So they're less mundane, less repetitive, more rewarding, more innovative, and more productive.
	I think all of that works together to stimulate a lot of the activity that you just mentioned.
	You know, I hate to keep banging the same key on the same piano over and over, but I'm going to repeat myself from 14 years.
	In TAYCO's evolution and development, our focus has always been on our people.
	It's been on our people before even our products.
	Because I've always believed if people are happy and safe and their families can grow and prosper, then everybody else is going to get what they need from us.
	And one of the things we've done is in my time, and now Cheryl Merchant, who's our CEO and her team, are doing an incredible job of bringing the company to a whole different level.
	But in my time as CEO, it went from about, I don't know, about $30 million to $300 or something.
	It was a good run.
	But we did it with the same people, the same number of people.
	And we did that by investing in some automation.
	But I use the word productivity because we invested in quality improvement programs.
	We invested in job training and skill improvement.
	And I still believe strongly that AI may change this.
	We don't call it artificial intelligence.
	We call it intelligent automation.
	But if that overtakes people, at some point we have another problem, another conversation to have.
	But I still believe that if you look at a company like mine or a Ford Motor Company or anybody else is manufacturing anything, the single asset in that company, any of those companies, that will not become obsolete are the people.
	And so to invest in them, I think, is a very real opportunity.
	And I think the obligation is, sure, I can shrink my workforce if I want to.
	I don't want to, and I'm not going to, but I could just by investing in all kinds of robotic stuff.
	Well, we have a lot of that, but we haven't downsized in any regard.
	And I think our obligation is to continue to invest so that we can grow the company so that we can employ more people.
	I believe it is possible.
	And I believe that President Trump can achieve his goals there.
	So my last question for you, then we'll take some questions from the audience.
	Maybe the most important.
	What would you like to see the administration do?
	Like aside from assessing what Trump has done and what Congress has done, what would you like to see them do?
	If you were advising the President and or Congress, what would you tell them?
	In a very short way, I would say this.
	You know, I hope we all hope for success for the country, right?
	I hope we're all hoping for success for whoever the President is.
	And the only suggestion I might make, and it would pertain to tariffs, is to slow down a bit on implementation because the motor, the auto companies, myself, anybody, we cannot turn a light switch on and be producing domestically next week.
	It's too expensive, it's too costly, and it's impossible.
	So now we're all going to suffer through some period of time that we can adjust to what he's looking for.
	And so my single other, because he just accomplished the tax code.
	So my single biggest thought would be to just to settle and coordinate what tariffs he's implementing and how they're implemented.
	There's just not a dot being connected there, in my opinion.
	Charles?
	I think that's a great point.
	If you had asked this question two weeks ago, I would have said get the tax bill done.
	But they did that.
	And so I guess my suggestion on tax, and this is very much felt throughout the industry, is to implement it in such a way that maintains the program effects that were baked into the design of that bill.
	That's not a great answer, though.
	Certainly on tariffs, manufacturers continue to need low-cost access to the inputs they need to make things in America.
	So as the President continues to pursue his tariff agenda, remaining mindful of that really core fact about manufacturing is that we need inputs from elsewhere to make things here in America, which is a goal we share.
	The other topic that we really haven't talked about today, and we don't want to get too far into detail, is permitting reform, right?
	So we've talked about impediments to investment and growth that drive uncertainty, such as some of the tariff policies, such as the previous uncertainty around tax.
	But even if you clear those off, if you can't get the permit to put the shovel in the ground, you haven't actually fully accomplished your policy goals, right?
	And so we need comprehensive permitting reform that removes some regulatory barriers, that expedites some of these processes, that removes liability for companies so that they can actually make the investments that all the other policies are designed to incentivize and support.
	And so I think that's something the President can focus on, and it's something that Congress on a bipartisan basis can focus on in the coming months and going into next year.
	Okay, we're going to take some questions from the audience.
	I actually have one question that has come in from our online audience.
	And Charles, you mentioned the 400,000 vacancies.
	This question kind of fits with that.
	How are you seeing manufacturers addressing the ongoing and what this person regards as a chronic shortage of workers?
	That's the exact right jumping off point.
	We are directly experiencing this throughout manufacturing, these 400,000 open jobs.
	Manufacturers are committed to keeping the workers they have.
	So folks are really focused on providing competitive benefits, having flexible work schedules, having on-site child care.
	It's different for each company depending on the workforce situation in their area.
	But companies are really committed to maintaining their workforce and then, second, hiring the workforce of the future, partnering with local community colleges to implement training programs, partnering with the military to bring folks coming out of active duty into manufacturing shop floors.
	This is really a top priority for our industry to have the modern workforce of tomorrow.
	We need to fill those open jobs, one, and we need to fill them with folks with the right skill sets that can thrive in modern manufacturing.
	This is not your grandfather's manufacturing industry, which is great for us, and I'm sure you can speak to this.
	It's not dark, dirty, and dangerous anymore.
	It's cutting edge, it's rewarding.
	These are family-supporting careers.
	And so manufacturers are really working to empower the workforce of today to participate in the manufacturing workforce of tomorrow.
	Johnny, your thoughts on worker shortages and how to deal with them.
	I think training.
	I think simply skill set development.
	And I think, Charles, it's a really good point.
	I mean, it's not the manufacturing of when I started, right?
	That was dark and, you know, intimidating, basically.
	And it's not anymore.
	And let's not forget, folks, as we look at where manufacturing may be headed, the last I checked, it's possibly the greatest wealth creator we have.
	Manufacturing is a wonderful place for people to be, to raise families and to do good things, right, for themselves and their families and those around them.
	And that's, you know, this life is not just about money.
	It's about a social experiment, I think I would say.
	And so I think for us to find ways to fill these jobs, and I think that does come down to training.
	And by the way, invisibility, because one of the things that happened through, I don't know, sometime in the 90s and 2000s was that manufacturing developed sort of a negative aura because people wanted their kids to do better than them or whatever.
	And now it's not that way anymore.
	Now it's highly sophisticated.
	It's interesting.
	It's fun.
	It's challenging.
	And there's lots of opportunities for people, but through training.
	Okay.
	Questions from our audience.
	If you have a question, raise your hand.
	In the very back, there's a microphone that's coming over to you.
	And if you could give us your name and if you're with an organization.
	Yes.
	Good morning.
	My name is Michael Muth.
	I teach international business at the McComb School of Business at the University of Texas.
	And I'm just wondering, it seems...
	You've come a long way for a forum.
	Well, I have a condominium here in Washington that I'm trying to sell.
	I worked in the Foreign Service before I was teaching in Texas.
	But to my point, though, it seems to me there is somewhat of a contradiction in how the administration is promoting their tariff policy.
	In other words, by jacking up tariffs and essentially making foreign competitors a lot more expensive, contributing to inflation and so on, is contradictory to negotiating tariffs back down with our competitors again.
	In other words, we're saying we want domestic manufacturing by jacking up the tariffs and making U.S. companies more competitive.
	But at the same time, when we negotiate tariffs back down again with our competitors, that makes them more cost-competitive.
	Am I interpreting this incorrectly?
	So I do think the negotiation piece of this is really critical.
	The president, we're sort of just coming out of this 90-day period, although it's now extended, I think, a little bit to August the 1st.
	What we at the NIM have said is that we support the President's efforts to have equitable tariff treatment with our top trading partners.
	And specifically, we believe we should have zero for zero tariffs on manufacturing trade for all the reasons that I discussed earlier, is we need access to inputs to make things here in America.
	You know, I think when the president is approaching these negotiations, there's a lot of leverage points that he has, including to your question of how he approaches the tariff rates leading into the negotiations.
	So hopefully we'll see that playing out as was said in the outset, Darrell.
	We haven't seen as many deals as we would have wanted to see in that 90-day period, but we remain supportive of the idea of negotiating deals that reduce tariff impacts on manufacturers and allow us to have access to inputs here and export markets around the world.
	I would just add to this that when all of this started, our CEO and myself decided early on.
	I saw people doing crazy, not crazy things, but doing impulsive things like raising prices before tariffs began to be implemented, and even within our own industry.
	And we decided not to do a thing until we knew what we were doing a thing for, right?
	In other words, I wanted to see each and every step of what was going to happen and how we would deal with it on a rolling basis, not a one-off.
	And I think that the president, he lives a life of negotiating.
	I mean, that's what he's done, evidently, all his life, and by all appearances, pretty successfully.
	So I think there's some of that being played out here.
	And I think negotiations are vital.
	And I agree with you, Charles, about the zero base.
	It's a global world whether we like it or not.
	And so for all of us to be able to play together is critically important.
	It's a good question.
	We have another question right there.
	Hi.
	Good morning.
	My name is Nee Simmons.
	I'm a visiting fellow at New America.
	So question is a simple question.
	I grew up in the Midwest, Detroit, Chicago, and high school, Erie, Pennsylvania.
	I went to college, Penn State.
	And I grew up around Midwestern, Steel Belt Town, Tuandai.
	And I remember having vocational training.
	My high school, I took the Tuandai shop, Wood Shop, Mellow Shop.
	Some of my colleagues or contemporaries went over to vocational training in the county where you learn about all kinds of skills in training.
	We don't really have that as you used to back from the 70s, 80s.
	Now we're putting a lot of efforts around STEM, right?
	So my question is, how do we get back to that era in this AI STEM age, but also make it interesting and sexy?
	John, I think you sort of, you kind of hinted to this question, but if you look at the Navy and the submarines, I mean, you're in that part of the country where I think it's where we make some of the, we make, well, we're now making the new submarines that carry ballistic nuclear missiles.
	I forgot what class that is, but how do we take what the Navy is doing in terms of building submarines, but use it for other efforts in other sectors in the manufacturing base, right?
	And this is for both of you, but I think it really pertains to you, John.
	Thanks.
	I would say that, yeah, it's a great question.
	You're actually referring to what I think would have at one point in time been called an apprentice kind of program, right?
	Germany has something similar to that.
	They're very, very sophisticated.
	And I mean, they start with people banging nails into blocks of wood, right?
	I mean, even if they're going to go on to build pumps like mine, I've seen all that.
	We don't have an apprentice program so formalized in this country.
	Maybe we did and it's gone away.
	And I know that there's some resurrection of that in certain places, but I think that and it just comes down to making it sexy is not hard because it is.
	I mean, maybe I'm a little weird, but I mean, it's sexy, you know, and I mean, these that that is weird, just for the record.
	So am I.
	But I don't think it's too hard because this stuff is really interesting.
	And I think it's a matter of educating.
	I'll tell you about the submarine thing.
	I have a factory in Fall River, Massachusetts that makes huge welded pressure vessels, ASME code pressure vessels.
	Some of these things are enormous with the data center business that's happening and whatnot.
	And our biggest challenge in getting jobs is that every time they come up with another submarine contract, it goes to electric boat, quants it, and they steal all our employees because the government is paying a lot more than, you know.
	And so that's another challenge, right, to compete with our own government on the job side.
	Okay, there's a question right there.
	Hi, my name is Sarah McHarg.
	I'm a master's student in public policy at UChicago, and I'm here with the Asia Group for the summer.
	I wanted to go back, I think, Mr. Crane, you had mentioned something, or you mentioned this phrase that we hear a lot, common sense trade policy, that we need some sort of common sense trade policy that will both boost manufacturing but not sort of be counterproductive.
	And I just wanted to ask if you could explain a little bit more, both of you, what that would look like.
	Because if the ideal vision that you guys have described is a zero-zero tariff situation where countries are playing to their comparative advantages, then do like, should we just not be focusing on reshoring some of these production methods?
	Should we be focusing on what we're strong on?
	Are tariffs even the right tool to be fixing the problems that you're seeing in the manufacturing industry?
	Or do you think that there are other policy directions that the administration should be focusing on, like education?
	Like, are our efforts being misdirected here?
	Or do you think that tariffs do have a place in effective manufacturing policy?
	It's a great question.
	We view tariff and trade policy and the phrase, you're right that I use common sense trade policy as part of a comprehensive manufacturing strategy.
	So those things can all work together to stimulate and drive domestic manufacturing investment.
	So we talked about tax policy, for instance.
	If your tax code, you know, to John's point from earlier, if we have a 35% corporate rate as opposed to the current 21%, it's going to be really difficult to onshore domestic manufacturing, right?
	Fortunately, we don't.
	The tax bill passed.
	We have a competitive tax code.
	That's great.
	But it all needs to work in concert with one another.
	When we think about the tariff element of that specifically, when we say common sense trade policy, what we mean is a trade policy that reflects the realities of manufacturing, that isn't an idealized version of the industry, but rather is cognizant of our industry's place in the global supply chain.
	I go back to the statistic that I mentioned earlier.
	Even if the U.S. economy were operating at full capacity, we would still need to import at a minimum 16% of the inputs that we need to make things in America, right?
	So when we talk about common sense trade policy, it's reflective of the current state of the industry and working in coordination with all the other policies of the federal government, from workforce solutions to permitting reform to AI and technology to tax policy to energy dominance, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
	All of that can work together, should work together, and the administration is efforting to make it work together to drive domestic manufacturing investment.
	I would just add to that.
	There are certain things, as I mentioned before, that we really can't make here because we've regulated ourselves out and for the right reasons.
	I mean, cast iron is kind of, if not careful, an environmentally destructive activity.
	I mean, it's smoky and all that stuff.
	But I do think that if we're going to create jobs, try to continue to create jobs in manufacturing, we're going to have to, there is a tariff element to that, I think, because there's a lot of things that are outsourced now.
	Just go into Walmart and no criticism of them because they're a wonderful company.
	But all that stuff comes from China, I think, most of it.
	And I think if we could switch some of that over to being made here, which I'm sure we can, you know, we'll add jobs.
	So I think there's an element of the tariffs that could be productive in terms of job creation.
	What we talked about earlier is to bring our costs more in line with what we're importing.
	Right here on the aisle.
	There's a microphone coming over to you there.
	thank you just following on what do you identify your name and organization I'm sorry, Furuzan Golshani.
	I'm an academic class academic job as Dean of Engineering at the California State University, Long Beach.
	And I have a very strong interest in manufacturing and particularly revival, its revival in aerospace industry.
	One comment that was made, and it relates to other things as well.
	Processes like smelt and pour and melt and cast and so on are environmentally hazardous.
	And it was because of this that manufacturing got a really bad rap.
	And universities closed down on this as well.
	And with that, a whole group of expertise, whole class of expertise went away.
	Universities are not producing professors who can teach this.
	And because of that, your industry is in need of manufacturing engineers.
	And I'm going to separate manufacturing engineering from manufacturing just in the same way that chemical engineering is different from chemistry and software engineering is different from software.
	We really need to promote that because that is the key to many of the problems that manufacturing faces in the United States.
	Look at petroleum industry.
	Petroleum engineers were paid three times as much as electrical engineers for years and they still make a lot more money.
	And because of that, there are three, four refineries within three, four miles of my community, which happens to be one of the elite communities, supposedly.
	But they have solved their problems and they coexist with the community very easily.
	We have not done that for manufacturing.
	And I think the sooner we pay attention to bringing back, restating the image of manufacturing, the same way that we use rocket science as the standard bearer for something exciting and interesting, that's explosives.
	Rocket science is explosives.
	And yet we look down on manufacturing as a process that is environmentally bad and we shouldn't be touching it.
	Any comments on that?
	I agree.
	Amen to that.
	I think that's very well said, but I'll go back to what I said a little bit before.
	I think we're very close to presenting manufacturing as a very sexy thing.
	Okay, just to simplify it.
	And it's exciting.
	I think we're past the our parents wanting us to do better than them kind of era.
	I think we're into a whole new era with new people.
	You know, I've had this discussion a number of times with these different generations that we're confronted with now that are different from my generation.
	You know, my generation, if you came in as an engineer, you came in on day one with your lunch bag and your khakis and blue oxford and go to your desk and 40 years later you say thanks for the career, right?
	It doesn't work that way anymore.
	But there's such value to the generations we have now, to intelligence and ability to adapt to different scenarios.
	The key is to find a way to keep these people.
	But I think you're right.
	I think as we move forward here, making it attractive to people looks like something they want to do, not they have to do to make a paycheck.
	There's a difference there is critical.
	That's how we present it.
	And TACO's pretty good at that.
	In little old Rhode Island, we're pretty good at projecting a positive, it's a very popular place to work, and it's because we have good people, you know, and they talk about it.
	And Rhode Island's small, so it's easy to do that, right?
	But I mean, I really agree with what you said.
	It's a very good point.
	Sorry, Charles.
	Yeah, I would agree with that as well.
	The NAM's education and workforce partner, the Manufacturing Institute, this is their sole mission: instituting training programs to help fill the open jobs in manufacturing and improving the kind of manufacturing brand, for lack of a better term, is working with community colleges, with high schools, with middle schools, even to grade schools, to help them understand the excitement behind a manufacturing career.
	And that could be sort of the STEM version of that, as you just described, engineering.
	We need, obviously, engineers in manufacturing.
	We need PhDs in manufacturing.
	We're deeply innovative.
	We also need shop floor workers who can work in the current modern version of the industry that we talked about earlier.
	Shop floor workers are not sort of doing the same repetitive motion for their entire 40-year career.
	They also are forced to be innovative and not forced.
	They get to be innovative.
	They get to work with exciting technologies.
	They get to work in a modern, safe, clean, innovative work environment.
	And if we can tell that story about manufacturing, that benefits the industry, benefits the economy, and it benefits, I think most importantly, those individual workers and their families who have these family-sustaining careers that can be had here at home.
	There's a question on the aisle.
	My name is Jeffrey.
	Actually, can you speak into this?
	My name is Jeffrey.
	So if you've had a training and association with the manufacturing industry for a while, why are there 400,000 jobs open?
	If the goal is to have family-friendly policies to assist workers, what was your position on the tax policy when it took away free lunches and did other things associated with Medicaid, which will make it difficult for people to get health care?
	In 1970, the government started to federalize regulation because it wasn't being done on a state level.
	And granted, there are people who don't know enough about industry to regulate it, but what are the substitutions of workers, of heads of agencies who have no experience with the agencies they have and the removal of federal workers?
	How is that going to support regulation of industry that's knowledgeable?
	And with the tariffs, how has the tariff program as it's been laid out to date been supportive and understanding of manufacturers' needs?
	Your colleague is saying that it's very difficult to know how to plan if you don't know tariffs.
	And historically, I represented federal contractors.
	So I've had a fair experience with manufacturing federal government.
	And Why is the National Association manufacturers against unions if you're supportive of apprentice programs?
	It's a great series of questions, and I think it really illustrates the importance of a comprehensive manufacturing strategy.
	There are any number of policies, some of which you mentioned, and others of which we've talked about today, that impact the industry's ability to grow and thrive here in America.
	Tax policy is the easiest place to start.
	It's where we started an hour ago when we sat down on the stage.
	We just passed a historic tax bill that incentivizes research and development.
	It makes it more cost-effective to purchase capital equipment.
	It allows companies to take out loans to further have access to capital so they can get job-creating projects off the ground.
	There's a new deduction for factory investments.
	These are pro-growth, pro-manufacturing policies, and they set the groundwork for a thriving industry here in America.
	And they're part of a comprehensive manufacturing policy agenda that ultimately can, with all these policies working together, drive domestic manufacturing growth and job creation across the industry.
	Can I just no, that's good.
	That's well said.
	And it's a good series of questions.
	I would sit here and say, I am not anti-union.
	Okay, we don't have a union, but I'm not anti-union.
	And I think that's a perfectly viable route for when it's needed.
	I think that one of the things I would add to Charles is that people have to want to come into manufacturing.
	We can't incentivize them to come in necessarily if they don't want to work.
	So back to this gentleman's comments earlier, it's our job to portray ourselves as someplace people want to go.
	Some of those 400,000 people will come.
	I believe that.
	There's a question near the back.
	I'm going to stand up because I'm relatively short.
	But my name is Anavi.
	I am a rising junior at Colby College in Maine, and I am interning at the U.S. International Trade Commission.
	I'm with their Office of Tariff Affairs and Trade Agreements.
	I was wondering if you could share thoughts about the president's plan to weaken the value of the dollar as a means to bump up manufacturing and make American goods more affordable in comparison to imports coming in, which I think is fascinating is happening alongside the tariffs because theoretically speaking, that should not weaken the value of the dollar.
	But if you look at what happened after Trump announced the liberation day tariffs, the value actually went down.
	So my question to Ali is: at the end of the day, while we are somehow achieving our economic manufacturing policies, that is happening at the cost of lowering interest and trust in U.S. assets.
	So how should the administration really grapple with that?
	John, I'm not sure if you've had direct experience with this.
	I know generally across the industry, the impacts of a weaker dollar are going to matter differently if you're an importer versus an exporter.
	So I think it's going to have disparate impacts.
	You know, if you're more of an exporter, then there's one version.
	And if you're an importer, it's otherwise.
	So I think it really is disparate across the industry.
	I agree.
	Okay.
	We are out of time on this panel, but I want to thank both Charles and Johnny for sharing your thoughts.
	Each of you have had important insights.
	We're going to have them stuff off the stage.
	Our next panel is going to start right away, so I would invite our new people to come on board.
	Thank you.
	We appreciate your being here.
	So we have three distinguished experts to help us continue the discussion.
	Adam Hirsch is a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
	Colin Graybau is the Associate Director of the Herbert Steiffel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute.
	And Leslie Tato is the Executive Vice President for Business Operations at TACO Comfort Solutions.
	So Adam, I'd like to start with you.
	And you've heard much of the first panel.
	I know you've written extensively about trade and manufacturing.
	How do you assess the Trump initiative so far?
	Well, thank you for having me here today, Darrell and Brookings Institution, and thank you all for joining us for this conversation.
	I don't assess it well.
	I think, you know, writ large, what the President is doing right now is full speed working to gut what are the foundations of America's economic resilience, economic dynamism.
	Whether it's this chaos of the broad-based tariffs that have thrown business investment, business outlook into turmoil, whether it's gutting support for federal scientific research, attacking the universities where so much of our innovation comes from.
	In fact, the spending on federal research has returns on investment that are 10 to 20 times larger than the return on SP 500.
	So those are going to be very costly in the long term.
	In the one big, beautiful bill that passed just recently, you know, we've gutted spending on education and health care.
	These investments in human capital are what we know from economics are the foundation for economic growth over the long term.
	So these things are going to be very costly for the economy over the long term.
	And while I'm talking about the bill, I just want to address some of the points that were raised on the last panel about tax cuts and regulation.
	You know, businesses don't invest because the cost of capital is low.
	Businesses invest where there's a demand for their products that they can sell.
	And so just lowering the cost of capital is not going to do anything to stimulate investment in manufacturing, particularly when the policies of this administration have created so much economic uncertainty, as well as undermining the consumptive power, which is about three-quarters of our GDP.
	Regulation, sure, there are regulations that can be done smarter and better, but the regulations exist for a reason.
	And usually they exist because there was some problem that rose to such a level that a policy had to be put in place.
	It was too disruptive not to be addressed.
	And so just willy-nilly going in and stripping out regulations is not a recipe for economic success.
	It's a recipe for transferring the costs of those activities from the business onto other parts of the economy, whether it's workers, whether it's consumers, whether it's the general public that's facing more environmental degradation.
	Now, let me say something about the tariff policy, because that's all on everyone's mind right now.
	You know, I've been critical of the trading system that we have for a long time, but what the President is doing is not going to solve any of those problems.
	Absolutely, tariffs can be and have been used as an important tool to support manufacturing and industrial development, but they have to be done right.
	And that means being done in a targeted, narrow way where it's specific to key industries that we need to single out for support.
	When it's done broad-based across the entire economy without much thought to how it's going to affect downstream industries, it's a recipe for a disaster, and it has been.
	We've seen that economic sentiment is at the lowest level or near the lowest level that it's ever been.
	Business outlook, particularly in manufacturing, is also at the lowest level it's ever been.
	Uncertainty is near the highest it's ever been.
	So these things aren't working.
	This week with the renewal of the so-called reciprocal tariffs or Liberation Day tariffs, we've thrown that back into chaos again.
	So, you know, for weeks, business press was reporting that we'd reached peak tariff.
	I don't think they've been paying attention.
	This administration is intent on getting some kind of tariff somehow, even though courts have ruled these tariffs as unlawful.
	So I don't have a lot of optimism about the direction this is going.
	But fortunately, these are all unforced policy errors.
	There are going to be costs to them, even if we reverse them right now.
	But this is something that can be reversed, and we can try to figure out a way back to solutions that are going to improve manufacturing and the overall robustness of the U.S. economy.
	So Colin, your thoughts on the Trump agenda and how tariffs, trade, and taxes are affecting the manufacturing sector.
	Sure.
	Well, first off, I'd like to thank you for the invitation to be here today.
	Thanks for you coming out.
	So with regard to tariffs and manufacturing, I think that the current tariff agenda is entirely antithetical to a vibrant manufacturing sector.
	I suppose some of the logic that animates the Trump administration's approach is that it's pretty straightforward.
	You put tariffs on foreign goods, put them at competitive disadvantage.
	That creates space for American manufacturers to fill that void.
	Manufacturing increases, jobs increase, and all the rest.
	But this is pretty far removed from manufacturing in the 21st century.
	You heard in the previous panel the importance of efficiently sourcing inputs.
	Something like one-third, actually, let me start with another stat.
	Roughly half of what is imported into the United States are inputs.
	These are raw materials.
	These are parts and components.
	These are capital equipment.
	So used in the production of other things.
	Roughly one-third of global trade is intra-firm.
	So these are companies that have operations dispersed around the world that take advantage of each location's comparative advantage to efficiently produce and manufacture.
	So when you increase tariffs, you are tariffing, you are raising the cost of these vital inputs for American manufacturers and putting them on the back foot.
	A great example of this is steel.
	Of course, steel tariffs were first imposed in the first Trump administration, and we've run the studies on this.
	The USITC studied it.
	And yes, output in steel and aluminum went up.
	But guess what?
	Costs for downstream industries, which are far more numerous.
	I think there's something like 70 workers in a downstream industry for every steel worker.
	They suffered even more.
	So it was a net loss to the economy.
	Now we're just taking that and reproducing that all across the spectrum.
	And to what end?
	Look at the Vietnam trade deal.
	So we hit them with 20% tariffs.
	Supposedly, we haven't seen the details on this.
	Well, you know, a lot of something like one quarter of American shoes come from Vietnam.
	So there's a logic here that we want produced shoes in the United States.
	We want our kids to be stitching shoes together.
	These are the jobs of the future.
	This is something to be encouraging.
	So I think that if you want to encourage manufacturing, you need to go in the opposite direction.
	You need to reduce tariffs, both for American exports and imports.
	That's what would really support manufacturing.
	So Leslie, I'd like to bring you into the conversation.
	Now, I know you deal with business operations at a manufacturing company.
	So what are you seeing and how are current policies affecting operations?
	Thank you very much for having me here today.
	So I deal with it every day.
	So global supply chain falls under kind of my oversight and responsibility for TAICO.
	And what we're seeing is there's an instability that's really affecting the business.
	So we have, when it comes to tariffs, we have people internally who are looking at this every day.
	We have a team.
	So when there's an announcement for a tariff, we have to look at that tariff to see how that's going to impact us.
	So that could be materials that are coming in on the water.
	We have to make sure that our bill of materials get updated, pricing gets updated.
	So I think there are a lot of unintended consequences when there are things that we're going to impose a tariff, we're going to have it done on a certain date, and then you get to that date and they say, okay, we're going to wait a little bit on it.
	Part of what's happening, and this is, you know, we just got out of the COVID hangover, what I call the COVID hangover, where we did a lot of protection buying, we overbought, we kind of drove up our inventories intentionally so that we could service our customers.
	And we're seeing a little bit of that happen again with tariffs, right?
	You want to overprotect, you want to make sure that you're getting materials in.
	And so there's an impact to the supply chain and availability of materials and goods.
	And it's that impredictability.
	And there's a bit of a, that feels a little schizophrenic where you want to be able to plan.
	You want to be able to plan out your buying cycles.
	You want to plan out how much money you need for capital.
	You want to plan out how much money you need for all of these things.
	And when you get this kind of start and stop, that impredictability and that instability creates instability within the business.
	And it drives different behaviors in the business.
	And so we're trying to overprotect in many cases so that we have the goods and the materials that we need.
	What I see is making sure that we can, if there could be some stability in what we're trying to do.
	And I bring it back to what is the strategy behind this and where is the overarching strategy for manufacturing and how is this, if it's a component of it, how does it play into it so that we can plan and we can align our strategy with that so that we can be very successful.
	Without that and with this level of unpredictability that's been driven into now the supply chain and the business makes it very difficult to do so.
	TACO's very fortunate, right?
	They've been around for over 100 years.
	So we will figure this out.
	We're innovative individuals and there's a resiliency in the manufacturing industry that we will figure it out.
	But it drives certain behaviors that are not conducive to running a good, solid business when we could, with the predictability we could have, we could do a much better job with that and thus allow us to invest in areas where we can workforce development and all of those other things that folks want to see that we're creating opportunities for.
	We hedge on that a little bit in those investments a little bit because we want to make sure that we can service the business and ultimately service our customers.
	Okay, thank you.
	A question for each of our panelists, how realistic is it to bring jobs back to the United States?
	And you can think about that either in terms of are the Trump policies going to work in bringing jobs back, and then also just given the introduction of technology, robotics, AI, and other factors in the workplace, is it possible, even if the sector does start to come back, that jobs are not going to come back?
	Adam, start with you.
	Yeah, so it's definitely possible, but to be realistic that the manufacturing is not going to be a substantial share of overall employment the way it had been historically.
	And that, yes, that's part of that is international competition, but the larger part is productivity growth and automation, which has meant that we can produce more stuff with fewer workers.
	And that's a good thing.
	That makes us all better off.
	But at the same time, we're not doing the things that are going to bring these jobs back, and we're not doing the things that are going to ensure that they are good jobs.
	The reason that we've cared about manufacturing jobs historically is because they provided a path to a good quality of life, a middle-class life for people that for the two-thirds of the labor force that don't have a four-year college degree.
	And the reason that they could do that was because we had high density of unions in the manufacturing sector.
	Well, that's no longer really the case.
	Unionization has declined precipitously.
	And as a result, the jobs that are being created, new jobs in manufacturing, are not very good jobs.
	They pay barely above minimum wages in a lot of people.
	And so it's not really surprising that it's difficult to attract people into this occupation or occupations because who wants to go earn minimum wage when you have to do difficult work and risk being injured, exposed to hazardous chemicals and things like this, when you could earn the same amount in the service sector.
	And we're not going to make these jobs good jobs without the unions.
	They weren't good jobs before the unions.
	Unions made them good jobs.
	And unions are now have in large part gone away.
	So improving the labor market institutions, protections for workers, opportunities to form a union and bargain collectively is really essential to making these good jobs and attracting people back into the labor force.
	Now, if we're trying to do this right now, the economy is basically at full employment.
	That means if you want to attract more people into manufacturing, you have to steal them from other sectors of the economy.
	And that's going to get even harder to do if the administration moves forward with this mass deportation campaign that they seem intent to do.
	If we lose millions of people out of the labor force, it's going to be even harder to fill the jobs that we want.
	Colin, your thoughts on whether we can bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States?
	Yeah, I think there's a narrative out there that goes something like this.
	The U.S. economy over the last 20, 30 years has done pretty well, but a lot of the gains have gone to white-collar workers, people, knowledge workers, and blue-collar workers have been left behind.
	So it's time to emphasize them, give them their due, create these manufacturing jobs.
	These good manufacturing jobs have been stolen away because of globalization, and we're going to bring that back to benefit, again, you know, blue-collar workers.
	And the problem is that, so there's this kind of implicit idea that there's a lot of people clamoring for these jobs, but that kind of flies in the face of what we know.
	Last year at the Cato Institute, we did a poll, and we asked people, should there be more manufacturing in the U.S.?
	Oh, yeah, 80% said yes, yes, absolutely.
	Do you want to work in manufacturing?
	20% said yes.
	And it's easy to understand why.
	I'm sure that there are lots of interesting manufacturing jobs out there, but I personally, I've worked on an assembly line when I was in college.
	I had a summer job.
	I wore steel-toed boots.
	I worked on an assembly line, stacking cans at a paint factory to be filled with paint.
	It was really boring, repetitive work.
	It paid better than what I could have made elsewhere as a 20-year-old.
	But there's a reason.
	So my colleague said to me, Colin, get that college degree.
	Don't come back here.
	Don't make the mistake I did.
	Now, again, I don't say this to Cassis Purge and all manufacturing jobs, but it's easy to understand why maybe not everyone is enthused or drawn to that.
	And we see that there are hundreds of thousands of open positions in manufacturing.
	We see that earlier this year, the GAO did issued a report about shipbuilding, and they mentioned that U.S. shipbuilders complain we are losing out on workers to Uber, to fast food.
	Again, there was actually another GAO report that came out, I think, a week ago, in which they said out of 105 shipbuilders, like 90 of them said that workforce issues were either a moderate or significant concern for them.
	Just earlier this week, it was reported that the Philly shipyard, which is unionized, they're struggling with 100% worker turnover and finding people that are drug-free.
	So this is not, and that makes sense.
	You know, it can be a dangerous job.
	It's not climate-controlled.
	And this isn't uniquely American.
	We've seen articles talking about people in Asia.
	They don't want to follow mom and dad's footsteps in local factory.
	They want to be a barista.
	They want to be an influencer, something like this.
	They want to work in a climate-controlled environment.
	So, you know, the kind of the premise that undergirds some of this that people are clamoring for these jobs.
	Again, I don't mean this to be anti-manufacturing.
	It's a good thing we have a vibrant manufacturing sector, and there are people that works for them.
	And then to take the step further and think that because of these tariffs, because this trade war, these letters that went out, a lot of them emphasize, hey, you want to avoid the letters, set up production in the U.S.
	Well, that's a lot easier said than done because we're having a hard time filling the jobs that already exist.
	And that's only going to be exacerbated with the restrictions on immigration, which, by the way, is why NAM has traditionally been a strong proponent of immigration reform because they recognize the value of having talent available that maybe not Americans can meet.
	So I think it's a real challenge.
	Leslie, your thoughts on bringing American jobs back in manufacturing?
	I think I need to address this first.
	So this is part of the challenge that manufacturers face is just the representation of what working in manufacturing looks like, right?
	That it's not a minimum wage job.
	We have great jobs that provide really good livings for people that go in, you can go and you can receive training.
	There's career pathways.
	There's a whole career pathway in manufacturing that doesn't look like what you've described.
	I'm sorry.
	We have very successful individuals, college educated, all the way to people who are starting out on their first job, and it gives them a pathway.
	We have people who have worked for TACO for 40 years that started out working on the shop floor and now are in management roles.
	And we've spent and invested time, effort, and money to train and educate them so that they could take on more responsibility and they could grow with the company.
	So I think the vision of manufacturing that you all have is much different than my lived experience every day.
	So I just want to be careful that we're not putting manufacturing in a light that is not, I think, appropriate.
	So I want to say that first.
	And I think it depends on what jobs we want to bring back.
	I don't think we're going to bring all manufacturing jobs back.
	I don't think that ship has sailed.
	But I think we can be very strategic about what some of those jobs look like and how they would add value into a manufacturing strategy.
	If we had a strategy for the U.S. manufacturing as an industry, I think we could be selective and make sure that we are doing some really important work to bring key components that we know are missing.
	Manufacturers manufacture goods and service, but they also make sure that we're providing and have what we need for health care and for infrastructure and for all those important industries along with our national defense.
	We have to have a manufacturing base and I think we have to be very specific about what manufacturers should be here and what capabilities we want as a country and start looking at being very strategic about bringing those manufacturers back here to complement what's here and existing and thriving.
	So I think, yes, some of it can come back.
	Not all of it will, but I think we should be very strategic about what we're trying to bring back.
	Okay, thank you.
	Another question for each of you.
	What would you like to see the administration do?
	And Adam, you were critical of some of its current activities.
	If you were advising them and or members of Congress, what would you want them to do?
	I mean, just stop.
	Just stop.
	You're going in the wrong direction, and we need to stop and turn back around.
	You know, when the president came into office last January, we were amidst a manufacturing renaissance in this country.
	From the time before the Biden administration's bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, and up until when Trump took office, the investment in new manufacturing facilities more than tripled, more than tripled.
	It was the highest it has ever been in the United States history.
	That's all stopped now.
	So that's not to say that everything in those policies was perfect.
	There definitely was improvements.
	Clearly did not earn broad political support for those policies because they were overturned in this one big beautiful bill that just passed.
	But they were working to bring manufacturing investment and manufacturing jobs back in critical industries.
	So we need to, as Leslie suggests, we need to actually have a manufacturing strategy.
	We need to think about what are the industries, the products that are important both for security, national security, as well as economically important to be making here in the United States.
	And then we have to design policies around how we are going to achieve that.
	And that's not just cutting taxes.
	It's not cutting regulations.
	It's about analyzing the whole production chain, understanding where the constraints to having all those complementary pieces working together so that those industries can thrive.
	And to do that, you really need strong state capacity.
	We're here talking in the government studies program at Brooking.
	You need a strong state capacity to be able to achieve these things.
	When China embarked on its economic reforms in the early 80s, they didn't put the political hacks across government.
	They kicked those political hacks out of government.
	And in their place, they put in scientists and engineers, people who really knew how to make things.
	And that was hugely important for their economic takeoff.
	We are going in the opposite direction.
	Colin, your thoughts on how you would advise the administration or members of Congress?
	Yes, so definitely stop and then turn around and go in the opposite direction.
	So we shouldn't be imposing new tariffs.
	We should be removing existing ones.
	We signed this deal with Vietnam that, again, 0% on exports, but 20% on imports.
	Now, compare that to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which reduced something like 99% of tariffs among participants.
	That's what we should be doing.
	Because yes, increased exports, that's great.
	But increased imports at 0% tariffs.
	These are inputs used for our manufacturers.
	That's wonderful too.
	These give us a competitive advantage.
	We need efficient sourcing of components.
	We want to compete in the global marketplace.
	So let's, you know, use for deal making.
	Great.
	Let's make deals in which we give zero for zero.
	I'm not against unilateral tariff reductions.
	I think it's in our own self-interest to have access again to tariff-free inputs.
	So tariff policy, again, just do a 180 on that.
	Immigration, another 180.
	Immigrants contribute to the United States.
	They bring their talent, both in the blue car level, the white car level.
	We should not be turning our back on these individuals that are here to work and contribute.
	This is a total own goal from the policy standpoint.
	And then also, you know, I'll disagree a bit here with Adam.
	I do think there are nonsensical regulations out there that need to be revisited.
	For example, there's been documented over and over again.
j alex halderman ▲ ● ▼		Say you want to set up a factory and the environmental review is taking you two years, something like that.
unidentified		I'm not saying there should be zero environmental review.
		I think we can do better than that.
		Obviously, and then you need steel to build your factory.
		You're paying an artificially inflated price for that.
		And then we have other silly regulations like my personal bugaboo, the Jones Act, which requires the use of U.S.-built U.S. flag ships for domestic transportation.
		This has been identified consistently as an obstacle to manufacturing in the United States.
		So for example, steel producers, you want to produce steel, use iron ore, will that shipped on the Great Lakes at inflated costs because of the Jones Act?
		Or you use a mini-mill that uses scrap metals and input.
		Metal companies have said it's cheaper to send scrap metal to China or Taiwan than other parts of the United States because of this.
		So we're denying ourselves access to efficient sourcing of inputs.
		And then once you have the finished good, it makes it more expensive to transport to other parts of the United States.
		So this is a law that's long outlived its utility if it ever had one.
		And that's just, I use this as an example of other laws that I think that we could stand to do a review of some of our laws and regulations and why they make sense, where they pass a cost-benefit analysis.
		Leslie, what would you like to see the administration do?
		I really do think that we need a comprehensive manufacturing strategy so that we can figure out strategically how we're going to go about this.
		But then I think we need, and I'm going to use this as a blast from an old job that I had, a clear, predictable, and reliable system.
		Clear.
		Let us know what we need to do to participate so that whether that's in a regulatory environment, if that's in a tax environment, give us clear instruction.
		Johnny mentioned before about Buy America.
		Be clear in your instruction about how a manufacturer can play and make sure that they're complying because we want to be compliant, right?
		We want to follow the law.
		So give us clear instruction.
		Then be predictable.
		I want the predictability of so this we don't get the swings of we're going to decide this one day and we're not the next.
		Be very predictable in your action so that we can plan accordingly.
		And then so that we can rely on that and run our businesses accordingly and that we can deploy our strategy so that we can grow our businesses, we can provide jobs, we can do all those things that we want to do as a good employer in the U.S.
		But we need that clear, predictable, and reliable system in order to do that.
		Okay, one last question for our panelists, and then we'll take some questions from the audience.
		What do each of you see as the greatest barriers to improving manufacturing right now?
		Adam?
		Adam?
		Well, I mean, right now, the greatest barrier is this uncertainty and chaos of the tariff policy.
		You know, it's been mentioned by several of my co-panelists and in the previous panel that manufacturers rely on a lot of imported inputs.
		Half of the U.S. manufactured content is from imported inputs.
		Those are raising the costs for manufacturers.
		Having this tariff chaos is inviting retaliation.
		That's hurting U.S. exporters of manufacturers.
		And the uncertainty is absolutely caustic to expansion in this industry.
		You know, if you're going to, by the time you pour cement for a new factory, the cost structure could change before it even dries.
		So how can you make a decision about whether to expand, in what direction to expand, where your market's going to be, whether you're going to hire workers to staff up this production?
		It's an impossible situation for business owners, managers to navigate until we have that certainty.
		Until they have that certainty, everything is going to be stalled.
		Colin?
		So I'm biased.
		I work at the Center for Trade Policy Studies.
		I'm a trade policy analyst, so that's kind of where my mind goes.
		But yeah, I think tariffs are absolutely number one for all the reasons just laid out.
		I mean, just the premise of we want to revitalize manufacturing, so come set up shop here and pay outrageous prices for steel and some of your critical inputs.
		This doesn't make any sense.
		But I won't belabor the point because I think Adam just such a good job of laying it out.
		Leslie.
		What do we need?
		Current barriers to improving manufacturing.
		Current barriers are the unpredictability, right?
		It's driving a behavior.
		It's an unintended consequence.
		And it's driving a behavior that is not allowing for us to do long-term strategic investment because business will hold until there's a pathway forward.
		So we know whether we need to hold off on resources.
		We may need cash and money later, so we're not going to do that investment.
		I think we need some predictability and we need a better window going forward that we can bank on so that we can make some good investments and good decisions.
		Okay, we're going to take some questions from the audience.
		I actually have one from one of our online watchers, and I'm going to tack on an addendum to this question.
		The question is, what is your expectation of jobs increases in manufacturing in the United States in the next few years?
		And the thing I'd like to tack on to that is, so like right now we have 12.8 million workers in manufacturing.
	It's roughly about 8% of the total workforce.
	Granted, the fact we don't know what the macroeconomy is going to look like over the next few years, but would you expect the size of that workforce to increase, decrease, or stay the same over the next few years?
	Adam?
	Well, if we stay on the path that we're on, it's going to decrease.
	We've already lost about 13,000 jobs from manufacturing since January for reasons that have been discussed.
	The new jobs, you know, we're not under this uncertainty of the tariff policy, we're not going to be getting new jobs.
	And if we do, they're not going to be very attractive jobs for most people who might be looking to go into that industry.
	And to come back to the one big beautiful bill, this is not a growth policy.
	And the economic analyses, modeling analyses of this bill actually show that it's going to decrease GDP over the long term across every model that I've seen, including the CBO, including the Penn Wharton business model, which a budget model, which is probably the most favorable assumptions for the dynamic effects of tax cuts, actually shows that it's a decrease in GDP.
	And that happens because the policy is irresponsible and we're going to have to pay higher interest rates to service the debt that the policy is accumulating for us.
	And that's going to crowd out investment and mean slower growth in the long term.
	Colin?
	I'm inclined to agree with that.
	The only kind of fly-in-a-ointment here is that over the last decade or so, we have seen manufacturing go up, and that's correlated with a decrease in manufacturing productivity.
	Because a lot of the reason we lost manufacturing jobs over the last four decades or so, or since the late 1970s, is because of automation.
	And we've been replacing labor with capital.
	So to the extent we're making manufacturing more inefficient, maybe we need more workers to produce the same number of widgets.
	Maybe that's a scenario where we see more employment, at least in the short term.
	But plain, I think this is poor for the long-term outlook of the industry.
	And I think employment is going to be closely tied to that long-term outlook.
	Just add something in there.
	The long-term secular decline in manufacturing employment is not as bad, actually, as the data would suggest.
	And that's because the way we measure employment in the industry is by the kind of firm that you're employed at, whether you're doing a manufacturing activity or not.
	And over the long sweep of several decades, manufacturing firms, like other firms, have moved to outsource their non-core functions, non-manufacturing functions.
	So if in the 1980s you worked for a manufacturing company as an accountant or as a janitor or some back office function, you are a manufacturing worker.
	But increasingly, functions like that were outsourced, not counted in the manufacturing industry.
	And so that brings down the measured level of manufacturing employment.
	Still, we have lost manufacturing jobs.
	Yeah, I think Nike is actually a great example of that, where they basically do just purely design work, and then they have factories that they don't own that produce everything.
	Yeah, so I think that's a great point.
	It's underappreciated.
	Leslie, your expectations on the job front.
	Well, I can speak for takeout, right?
	So it looks good, right?
	We're adding jobs in our facility in Texas.
	We're going to be adding some jobs in our facility in Cranston and Massachusetts.
	So I feel good.
	We've got a strong pipeline.
	We've got a really good product that our customers are willing to pay for, and they rely on the quality of the high-quality product.
	And we've got some nice expansion plans based on growth projections.
	Do you think your peers in the manufacturing area are going to do likewise?
	I think some will and some won't.
	And I think a lot of times it depends on what industry you are in.
	But then I also think a lot of times it's the ability for the company to kind of be forward-looking and plan out and be strategic in their sales approach and where they're going to position themselves.
	So I think the ones that run well and have good teams are still going to see some growth coming up in the next couple of years.
	Okay, questions from our audience.
	Actually, we have lots of questions over here.
	Is it question?
	And again, if you can give us your name and organization.
	Yeah, my name is Alexander.
	I'm a Roseville Fellow.
	I'm a sophomore at Hunter College.
	And this question is directed to Adam.
	Do you think that there needs to be a shift of focus in trying to get private corporations to come back to America and more so policies that help like social safety nets and actually talking about that more than a manufacturing plan?
	Well, right now we're driving them away from America by the hostility that we've shown to investors.
	And I think, yes, the lack of social safety nets is an encumbrance that deters this investment because employers, particularly coming from places where there are safety nets, now have to worry about providing health insurance and retirement plans.
	That's an additional cost.
	If that was taken care of through public safety net, that wouldn't be so much of a problem.
	And you see manufacturing companies all the time complaining about the costs that not just manufacturing companies that the private health insurance means for their business, but that's something that they need to provide for regulatory reasons sometimes, but to be competitive in attracting workers.
	So that would certainly help.
	There's a question near the back.
	Aha.
	Thank you again.
	I guess my general question is, well, I guess to preface it, I think there's kind of an old world mentality at work here where you had 100 people on an assembly line turning cranks and so on.
	But if and or when we're going to bring manufacturing back, it's going to be a very different system.
	In other words, lots and lots of automation and robotics.
	So I guess my question is, how can we compare the before and after?
	You know, is there some way to predict or look ahead and see how many robots we're getting proportional to how many people?
	What will this future of manufacturing in the U.S. look like?
	Thank you.
	I don't have a crystal ball.
	I'd love to be answering that question for you, but I don't know what that would look like.
	I mean, we're having to balance between people and automation because we have to continue to make really good products, right?
	And so we have to do that very efficiently and effectively.
	We've done some integration at TACO, but they're all still people driven.
	The end of the day, as much automation as you have, you have to have people that are still running that equipment.
	So the ratio is different, but there's still a people component to even that scenario.
	I just don't have a crystal ball to say what I don't know what the ratio would be.
	So, I mean, there's certainly going to be more automation in manufacturing.
	I think no one is going to deny that.
	At the same time, the U.S. is far behind other manufacturing countries in investing in these industrial robots and automation.
	So we may have some catching up to do, which could displace workers.
	But it's not a fait accompli that those are going to displace workers.
	The technology needs to be used in complement and supplement with workers.
	And how that shakes out at the factory floor level or at firm to firm level is really a function of the capital-labor relations in the firm.
	Some companies that have a more enlightened approach to their workforce, as Johnny and Leslie have articulated here today, are going to value the contribution of their workers and give them the tools to be more productive.
	Some are going to see it as a distributional conflict where they want to replace workers and use it to drive down the wages of the workers that are left.
	Another question near the back.
	Thank you.
	My name is Anton Hajar.
	I'm a retired union lawyer.
	And my question has to do with the transfer of wealth that we're seeing under the new administration.
	And one of the most influential graphs I've seen from the EPI has been the tracking of productivity gains and the share that went to labor and to capital.
	And that's been diverging for many years now.
	Is there a way to reverse that?
	Because the purpose of economic policy is the overall well-being of people.
	So if you haven't seen this graph, what it plots is labor productivity and median wage growth.
	And labor productivity goes up in basically a straight line, although after the early 80s, it angles down a bit because there has been a general productivity slowdown.
	But median wages is basically flat from the late 1970s until now with some periods of uptick, only when we had really full employment.
	So there are a number of factors that go into causing this divergence.
	One is the erosion of labor market institutions, including unionization and collective bargaining, erosion of the real value of the minimum wage.
	Another is taxation.
	We've seen the top income tax rates cut and cut and cut.
	So just more is being accumulated at the top.
	That also changes business strategies and compensation strategies, what businesses are going to do, how they're going to manage their business.
	Trade competition from low-wage countries is a part of that, but it's actually a fairly small part of that.
	The best estimates really across the board show that low-wage trade competition has added about 5% of that wage, contributed 5% to that growing wage disparity.
	We could overcome that easily by having stronger labor market institutions.
	Right up here, up front.
	Thank you.
	My name is Rehan, and I'm working for the Pulse Institute, a think tank based in Chicago.
	So I have a question about the manufacturing, bringing the manufacturing back to the United States, because we have seen that over the past decades, the United States came to the Asia countries and brought their know-hows and helped those Asian countries thrive in the manufacturing.
	But now, we're also seeing that maybe like some Asian countries like China or Vietnam, they also have good interest in coming to the United States to set up their factories.
	And there are also some successful cases, for example, the fuel gas from China.
	And of course, they stepped some turbulences at the beginning, but now they have earned some profits.
	And most of their workers are Americans, and then they help the dental in Ohio thrive a little bit in the economy.
	So I was wondering what would be the importance for bringing some know-how back from the Asian countries, from those manufacturing countries, to let them set up the manufacturing here.
	And also, given the current political sensitivities, and what could be the current administration's views of bringing the foreign greenfields to the United States, and what could be the benefits, and what could be the shortcomings.
	Thank you.
	Well, just let me take issue a bit with the premise.
	We talk about often, not just you, but you hear a lot of record bringing jobs back to the U.S.
	The implication being they left.
	They were taken from us.
	Let's keep in mind, the United States is the world's number two manufacturer.
	I think that gets overlooked and underappreciated.
	And we're, you know, number one is China, and China also has a vastly larger population than we do.
	And in terms of our manufacturing output, we're either at or close to an all-time high.
	In terms of manufacturing value add, we are at an all-time high.
	So manufacturing is doing pretty well.
	And as far as bringing some of these jobs, trying to shift production from Asia to the United States, keep in mind there's probably a good reason that's being done in Asia.
	It's probably the low-cost, most efficient place to do that manufacturing.
	So when you advocate for that, you're saying I want to make these less efficiently in the United States, which is going to mean higher costs.
	There's a trade-off there we need to acknowledge.
	And personally, unless there's a compelling national security reason for producing a particular good here in the United States, I just think that that's a misguided way of going about things.
	I want things to be produced at their lowest cost, to be the most affordable to Americans.
	So if we're, you know, again, shifting things from a more efficient place of manufacture to a less efficient, to me, that's misguided.
	I'd agree with that.
	I would agree with that.
	I don't think we should confuse lower cost with more efficient.
	And in some cases, they may be more efficient, but in some cases, they're lower cost because they're not meeting the same quality standards or pollution standards or labor standards that would be required to produce in the United States.
	And when we think about China, all of the industries which are in global chronic surplus capacity, steel, aluminum, paper, cement, glass, these are all hugely polluting industries that We couldn't produce at those costs because we care about the emissions that are going into people's communities here in the United States.
	So, the way to attract more of that activity back to the U.S. is to set up regimes that require offsetting those costs of pollution.
	The U.S. and the European Union were working towards this under the Biden administration with the GASA, which stands for, I forget, the general agreement on sustainable steel and aluminum, something like that.
	And the European Union has been implementing now a carbon border adjustment mechanism, which would levy costs on imports that don't meet pollution standards.
	And I think we need to think about ways that that mechanism can be expanded to other social bads so that we can incentivize that more production in systems of social good.
	Near the back, there's a question.
	Oh, actually, yeah, right there.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	I was raising my hand for many moments.
	Hi, everyone.
	Thank you for the discussion.
	My name is Sarah.
	I'm with Dragonfly Energy, a small lithium-ion battery pack manufacturer based out of Nevada.
	So I have traveled a long way.
	I was hoping to share a bit of my perspective as a small business and ask for your recommendations consequently.
	So we employ about 150 people total.
	So when I go out into the floor, I see all the pain points from these issues.
	And I've since been transferred into a government affairs role to kind of make sense out of what is going on in recent months.
	I think something that's coming from my leadership in terms of what they're concerned about with both the Biden administration and the Trump administration is this issue of due diligence.
	In northern Nevada, where we are located, there's been a big boom in the industry because of Biden's investments.
	But questions have arisen, of course, from who is making those decisions in those investments?
	How does the government on a federal level decide what is worth investing into?
	And who are they supporting?
	We have competitors within the region like Tesla and Panasonic who can directly onshore their technology from other nations that have established them.
	But as a small business working to make a small level innovation to the field and establish an economy in the area, it's difficult to see how we're being supported in any way and filling the gaps of manufacturing.
	In a business like lithium-ion, those facilities to process the material to make electros simply do not exist in the U.S. and they have not been invested into like they have been in China, who now dominates the market.
	And there's no clear pathway to fill in these gaps.
	So from your expertise, how would you guys recommend a policy shift or a sort of planning to help fill in the gaps of manufacturing so that it is sustainable, is creating good jobs, and is something that a company at a small scale can invest into and plan to grow in the future?
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Well, so as Leslie keeps saying, and I keep lifting up, we need a comprehensive manufacturing strategy.
	And what we're doing now is the unstrategic and anti-manufacturing, even.
	But when it comes to your industry, the reason that China has achieved such dominance in manufacturing in this supply chain is because they did have a manufacturing strategy to achieve that.
	And it's going to be hard to wrestle that free from the system, especially when we are in continuous conflict and we've seen how the export restraints that China has imposed in retaliation for tariffs can be used to hurt U.S. industry.
	So we're going to have to find a way to reconcile with China so that we're not both looking to be zero-sum once and for all,
	the dominant economy of the world, but that we can have an economic relationship that's built on mutual benefit and exchange and only then, I mean, that's not going to extend to everything.
	We're going to have security concerns and so on.
	But there's no other way to achieve that from the market position, dominant market position that China has established.
	Okay.
	On the aisle, there's a question.
	So given that you're the three of you are, I think, in general agreement about the tariffs, it didn't seem like the speaker from NAM was in agreement.
	And if tariffs are disruptive to manufacturing, why is the National Association of Manufacturers not presenting a stronger case about tariffs?
	And if the Trump administration is pushing development in America and pushing development of business, why is it doing it in this fashion?
	And does it have anything to do with building a large army of security police where the budget is even larger than France?
	I mean, what's the end game here?
	What's the goal here?
	And it just doesn't fit for me because back in the day, National Association of Manufacturers was always associated with business interests, and it still seems to be to me.
	So I just don't understand why this is happening the way it's happening.
	I think in fairness, I think we would have to ask NAM that question.
	I think we would ask a representative from NAM and get some clarity.
	I don't want to speak on behalf of that organization.
	But again, I think it's perspective about where you are and what you're trying to do.
	And I think the overall policies, again, I keep going back to it.
	And I know I'm sounding a bit like a broken record, but I think having a strategy that we can all know and understand and how we play into that strategy will be very beneficial.
	Tariffs, whatever you think of them, can have positive and negative connotations, right?
	It depends on how they're applied and what's done with those.
	I think making sure that there's a strategy so that we understand that and know and understand the why will be very beneficial.
	And without that, I think it's too hard to presuppose that we know.
	I can't speak to it, at least, and maybe you all can, but I can't because I can't determine or really decipher what the intent is always.
	Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to speak for the National Association of Manufacturers, but maybe I can say some things that they're unwilling to say because they don't have, I don't, I'm not a corporation that has something on the line here.
	But a lot of businesses are scared.
	They're scared of what the president might do to them and what kind of concessions he might try to extract from them if they are too critical or they try to cross them.
	This is not theoretical.
	We've seen businesses already undergo this in the legal industry and universities, tech industry, media industry.
	It's just going to keep growing unless something happens to change the course.
	And within the National Association of Manufacturers, there's a membership group of businesses that represents a wide array of businesses.
	Some are export-oriented industries, as Colin mentioned earlier.
	Some are import-intensive industries, so they have diverging interests within that group.
	And I think it's strategically, when the organization's interested, keep a low profile and try to work behind the scenes to negotiate benefits for their members where they can without rocking the boat.
	Yeah, I would just add that I think that's a dynamic that goes beyond.
	I don't want to pretend to know what NAM's motivations are, but I do think that generally speaking, that is a dynamic you find.
	We shouldn't mistake silence for assent or agreement with a policy.
	I will note that my recollection is that the NAM speaker did emphasize the critical role of inputs that that was mentioned and a desire for zero for zero on tariffs.
	So take that for what it's worth.
	And then as far as what the end game here is, what the goal is, I mean, if you look at some of the statements, these letters that went out this week, the grievance that was cited was the trade deficit, which is, personally, I find that a ridiculous obsession that doesn't tell us very much at all about our economic health.
	But there you have it.
	That's what they say, at least, is they believe that we run these trade deficits.
	Those deficits reflect unfair trade policies by our trading partners, and therefore we're punishing them with tariffs.
	But again, I think that that line of thinking is entirely misguided.
	Okay, I think we have time for one more question right over here.
	So you can make this a really good question.
	Thank you.
	Hi, I'm Sophia.
	I'm a current student at Princeton.
	My question is: all three panelists referenced the need to focus on reshoring manufacturing for industries conducive to the U.S., notably those that are important to national security.
	Recent years have seen a ramp up in efforts to make semiconductor chips and tech-related manufacturing domestic, with companies such as TSMC making massive moves to put fabs in America.
	Would you consider the burgeoning AI and chip industry critical to national security?
	What are your insights around the administration's current strategy towards this?
	That is a great closing question.
	Thank you.
	I'm not a national security expert, but what the national security experts say is that, yes, this is critical to national security.
	I have nightmares about what AI national security may play out over the rest of our lifetimes.
	But clearly, semiconductors are a component of that.
	And it's not just for national security, but also for economic security.
	We saw during the pandemic where there were critical shortages of semiconductors, production lines shut down in the automotive industry because they didn't have the chips that need to go into a car.
	And about half of the content going into a new car is in chips.
	Living here in DC, just as a personal anecdote, some I came out one day last year to go to my car and it was up on blocks and someone had stolen all four wheels.
	And when I went to replace them, it was a lot of money.
	It was almost $3,000.
	And the reason is because I didn't know there were semiconductors in the wheels, in the brakes, and so on.
	So they're quite critical.
	And when that has a large economic impact when we can't supply them, let alone if you need them for security purposes.
	Well, we are out of time, but I want to thank Adam, Colin, and Leslie for sharing your thoughts.
	All of you had terrific insights, and we appreciate you sharing that with us.
	And for our audience, we very much appreciate you showing up as well.
	So thank you very much.
	Later today, President Trump's director of minority outreach, Lynn Patton, will speak to entrepreneurs about the Trump administration's engagement with small business owners.
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