| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| Joining us to talk about the Trump administration's trade and tariff agenda as it relates to manufacturing is Scott Paul. | ||
| He is the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing. | ||
| Scott, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mimi, great to be with you again. | |
| So I want to start with this Fox News article, tariff uncertainty threatens $490 billion in U.S. manufacturing investment. | ||
| What's your take on how the trade and tariff uncertainty is affecting manufacturing in the United States? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's a good question, and it is having an impact because any capital decision like where to invest, where to locate production, how to hire workers, particularly those that you're going to need for the long term, is a bit up in the air until the policy is settled. | |
| And I think we know some of the contours of the policy right now. | ||
| There have been a number of agreements, bilateral agreements that have been announced, but it's also been reported that those haven't been fully executed, that we don't know what the bottom line is going to be on those, or if they may also be subject to change somehow. | ||
| And so I think for a lot of businesses, to the extent they were thinking about either reshoring production or building up new factory lines, that they've hit the pause button until there's a little more certainty about where this is going to land with China, with some of the other countries, with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement as well, which is a big chunk of our trade. | ||
| And not all of that is settled yet. | ||
| Now, when you say hit the pause button, these things take a lot of time to really ramp up and to get the benefits of it. | ||
| I want to share with you an opinion that was printed in The Guardian. | ||
| This is Susan Helper. | ||
| She's an economist at Case Western Reserve University. | ||
| She worked on industrial policy in the Biden and Obama administrations. | ||
| She said that Trump's tariff rates on some countries and markets, like 15% on the EU, Japan, and South Korea, are too low to spur much investment. | ||
| Questioning why a company would build a major factory to circumvent such a duty. | ||
| A semiconductor fabrication plant, that's a billion dollars. | ||
| You need to get a payback, and that takes several years. | ||
| If the tariffs are 145%, as Trump once imposed on China, that's attractive for building a plant. | ||
| But if you fall back to 15%, then it's really hard to get a return on your investment. | ||
| What do you think of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I don't think that Dr. Helper is wrong, and I respect her work quite a bit. | |
| I think that there's probably what you would call an optimal tariff rate, and that's the rate at which you're attracting in that foreign investment to come into the United States and to build things here instead of importing it. | ||
| And I think that will land for some countries. | ||
| I don't know in the case of Japan or Europe that you'll see a lot of that diversion to the United States. | ||
| I think in the case of those countries, that the tariffs are probably more of a revenue strategy. | ||
| And I think that's an important thing that underpins all of this is some of this to the administration, I will say, is about bringing some manufacturing back. | ||
| Some is about rebalancing trade. | ||
| Some of it is about building up revenue to either try to lower our debt or to offset the costs of some of the other priorities the administration is trying to do. | ||
| Now, the minority arm of the Joint Economic Committee, that's a congressional committee, and it released its August report, and it said that U.S. manufacturing jobs fell by 37,000. | ||
| That's May through July. | ||
| What's your reaction to that? | ||
| And what have you seen among your members as far as jobs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, there's been some treading water. | |
| And in an economy that has about 12.7, 12.8 million manufacturing jobs, those changes are very, you know, that's like a treading water number, basically. | ||
| I think it's important to point out that we've been treading water in manufacturing since February of 2023. | ||
| And so that predates a lot of the tariff uncertainty. | ||
| And part of the reason is that, and I think this is an accurate criticism, is that interest rates have been too high for manufacturers to both borrow to make capital investments and they've probably priced out some consumers from affording loans to buy things like automobiles, for instance. | ||
| And so I think that's had an impact. | ||
| And we're also in kind of the unusual situation where the U.S. economy, while it certainly has its challenges, has been generally doing better than many of our peers around the world. | ||
| And that's limited export opportunities for manufacturers for some period of time. | ||
| Basically, since the end of the pandemic, it's been like that. | ||
| And so now with the tariff uncertainty, that adds another layer of, I think, weight to trying to build on manufacturing jobs. | ||
| I do think that once some of the tax policy kicks in, once some of the tariffs are settled, that we might see some growth in manufacturing, but there's still a lot of important decisions that need to be made between now and when we arrive at that point. | ||
| So you say that manufacturers are treading water. | ||
| What does that look like from a business perspective? | ||
| How do you tread water? | ||
| Do you just wait on any major decisions, major hiring, major capital purchases? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, and it's important to point out that manufacturing is not a monolith. | |
| So everybody has different strategies. | ||
| Everybody's impacted by this in different ways. | ||
| People that are manufacturing consumables that folks can't do without are generally going to be doing okay, right? | ||
| Things that are more discretionary purchases, you might run into challenges. | ||
| Things that have complicated supply chains, you might run into challenges. | ||
| But what it basically looks like is if you were going to buy a new piece of equipment to increase your productivity, you might be deferring that decision until you have a little more certainty about the tariffs. | ||
| If you were thinking about sourcing from a domestic supplier instead of your supplier in China or Vietnam or somewhere else, you may want to do that, but you may not want to do that until you know exactly what the policy is going to be. | ||
| And so it's not like there's a lot of manufacturers that have gone out of business. | ||
| That's certainly not the case. | ||
| But we're also not in a period where we've seen spectacular growth at all. | ||
| And unfortunately, and some of this predates the tariff policy because of the interest rate situation in the global economy. | ||
| But the sooner we can arrive at some certainty, the more capital expenditures, the more hiring I think we're going to see inside domestic manufacturing. | ||
| I'd like to join our conversation with Scott Paul. | ||
| You can call us. | ||
| The lines are Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We also have a line set aside for those working in the manufacturing sector. | ||
| So you can call us on 202-748-8003. | ||
| That's the same line you can use to text us. | ||
| Well, earlier this month, Apple announced plans to invest $100 billion in U.S. manufacturing. | ||
| I want to play you a portion of that announcement at the White House, and then we'll talk about it. | ||
| Today, Apple is announcing that it will invest $600 billion. | ||
| This would the B, in the United States over the next four years. | ||
| That's $100 billion more than they were originally going to invest. | ||
| And this is the largest investment Apple has ever made in America and anywhere else. | ||
| And it's just an honor to have you. | ||
| As you know, Apple's been an investor in other countries a little bit. | ||
| I won't say which ones, but a couple. | ||
| And they're coming home. | ||
| $600 billion. | ||
| It's the biggest there is. | ||
| The company is also unveiling its ambitious new American manufacturing program, which will bring factories and assembly lines across our country all roaring to life. | ||
| Areas that we're not doing so well are doing very well. | ||
| We have about $17 trillion coming into the United States, which is more than ever before. | ||
| That's never even come close. | ||
| There's never been anything like it. | ||
| Even you, that's even a lot of money for you. | ||
| But we have commitments of more than $17 trillion. | ||
| That was as of a couple of weeks ago. | ||
| These investments will directly create more than 20,000 brand new American jobs and many thousands more at the Apple suppliers like Corning, Broadcom, Texas Instruments, and Samsung, who all deal in that world. | ||
| He says $600 billion. | ||
| That is a big number. | ||
| How does that show up in the United States? | ||
| How does that impact our economy and our jobs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, obviously this is going to be a very significant event for the communities where Apple has or is planning manufacturing facilities. | |
| And this is one of the important things that I think is the great hidden benefit of manufacturing. | ||
| And it's easy to cast as being that's part of yesterday's economy, but the truth is you ask any mayor, you ask any local official if they can get a factory. | ||
| That's exactly what they want. | ||
| They'd rather have a factory than virtually anything else because it means that factory is going to also attract some downtown businesses and it's going to attract some retail stores and it's going to spur more economic development and those jobs are likely to be good. | ||
| Now from Apple's perspective, they have had some manufacturing in the United States. | ||
| It's been on their very high-end products and that require less physical manipulation and a lot less putting together of parts. | ||
| Now, to be very clear, this announcement is not about bringing iPhone production to the United States. | ||
| We're a long way from that right now, and Apple is still deeply embedded in China. | ||
| They may be doing some final assembly of those products in India now, but that big part of their business is still in China. | ||
| Nevertheless, it's encouraging that you have an industry leader, a market leader that is choosing to invest in the United States. | ||
| And as the president indicated, that's going to have a ripple effect for other suppliers like Corning and like Broadcom, who build components who go into Apple products. | ||
| That's going to expand their business as well. | ||
| So this is a step in the right direction, I think. | ||
| Let's talk to callers. | ||
| We'll start with Stephen in Lexington, Kentucky, Independent. | ||
| Good morning, Stephen. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I am in the manufacturing world. | |
| I work for a global manufacturer that has been struggling this year. | ||
| It's been a very whiplash kind of economy, you know, at one moment. | ||
| We think we have it figured out. | ||
| The next we don't because of such of the reactive rather than proactive approach from this administration. | ||
| We're also noticing, I'm in the automation world, and we haven't had enough people in the automation world since 2020. | ||
| So it's been an ongoing thing. | ||
| But I'm noticing when we're bringing stuff in from abroad, let's say we brought a machine from Mexico. | ||
| The people here, you know, locally in Kentucky, they are running around like chickens with their heads cut off because we don't have the people. | ||
| We don't have the experience with this machine. | ||
| It was kind of brought onto them and inherited quickly. | ||
| And so it just seems like it's a very chaotic moment. | ||
| Sales are down. | ||
| We've had to let people go. | ||
| We had to let, you know, the older employees, we kind of convinced them to, you know, take an early retirement. | ||
| We're trying to cost cut or cost save right now. | ||
| It's a downtime. | ||
| I'll say, you know, on the optimistic side, we're going to keep operating as normal. | ||
| And then when it does come up, we're going to be blasting off into outer space. | ||
| But at this moment, it's very painful. | ||
| Were you able to hear? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I heard almost all of it. | |
| There were a couple of parts where it cut out, but I got almost all of Stephen's comments. | ||
| So this is interesting because it shows the paradox in manufacturing. | ||
| On the one hand, you have this whiplash and you feel like you're being moved back and forth in a boat that's in choppy seas. | ||
| On the other hand, you've got this ongoing problem of having a Help Wanted sign-out and having a difficult time in some circumstances building up your workforce. | ||
| And the reason, yes. | ||
| Yeah, I was going to say, why is that? | ||
| I mean, are there not enough people looking for those jobs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, part of it is geography, right? | |
| And just when you've had areas that have been either depopulated or have little population growth, it's just harder, number one. | ||
| Number two is that, and this has been true for a while, is that the way in which high schools determine success for too many kids is are they going to go to a four-year college instead of can they find a good job with a few months of training and get into a factory or into the trades. | ||
| And I do think that we've arrived at a point where it's becoming, I think, more acceptable for this generation to have careers that utilize their hands and their minds as well. | ||
| I don't think that was the case essentially for the last 20 or 30 years. | ||
| And so, you know, factory owners have to be, I think, a little more innovative than they have in the past about how they reach kids. | ||
| They have to put a little skin in the game when it comes to training. | ||
| They have to think about things such as childcare, which might not have been an issue 30 years ago when they were hiring, but it sure is today for everybody. | ||
| So it takes some adaptability to be in that modern hiring workforce system as well. | ||
| Let's talk to Harold, Memphis, Tennessee, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Harold. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| I would like to make a point. | ||
| The point is we are not prepared basically for the future. | ||
| We have a group in Washington not supporting the people. | ||
| We are not prepared based on the policies that they are presenting. | ||
| They kick the can when I say Congress is kicking the can down the road. | ||
| We are not for the future. | ||
| Harold, we're starting to lose you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| These policies that we have. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So the policies. | ||
| He didn't quite get it out, but anything you wanted to say about the policies in D.C. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm going to take advantage of that and just try to channel what I hope Harold was getting to here, which is that I do think that to have an economy that is robust and resilient in the future, it will take more than tariffs, right? | |
| Or it will take more than a tax bill. | ||
| It's going to take some investment in our workforce. | ||
| It's going to take continued investment in innovation. | ||
| That's always what made America stand out among economies around the world. | ||
| And it's going to take continued investment in our infrastructure to do all of this. | ||
| Because if you think about it, there's stories now about how our energy grid is strained already by the demands of AI, by residential consumption. | ||
| And if you have a manufacturing boom, that's going to put another strain on that. | ||
| So we need to build up our energy grid and really get into that. | ||
| Same with logistics. | ||
| We have a rail system and other systems that could be constrained as we ramp up this activity. | ||
| And so that's going to take some investment as well. | ||
| And yes, I don't see a focus from Congress on those issues. | ||
| So I think Harold is right about that. | ||
| I want to ask you about steel. | ||
| The AP headline, Nippon Steel finalizes a $15 billion takeover of U.S. steel after sealing national security agreement. | ||
| The deal included a commitment to invest $11 billion to upgrade U.S. steel facilities. | ||
| What was your reaction to that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I've been in many of those facilities, and they've been a part of the steelmaking legacy in the United States for a long time, and they serve important markets like automobiles and durable goods, things like washing machines that we buy or things for construction. | |
| And so I think it's exciting that steel in the United States is viewed as an attractive investment. | ||
| Because I remember a time not so long ago when a lot of companies were going bankrupt in steel and you were seeing a lot of factory shutdowns and layoffs. | ||
| And so I'm hopeful that we will see some modernization, some new equipment put in that is going to keep our steel industry globally competitive because it is a base material that goes into almost everything that we utilize in our daily lives, as well as like for national security purposes and construction and what have you. | ||
| So it's an important sector. | ||
| I'm glad it's getting some attention. | ||
| Let's talk to Matt in New York, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Matt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi. | |
| Hi, Mr. Paul. | ||
| My name's Matt. | ||
| And, you know, I was just, I'm not that smart of a person, but I was just wondering how Don Trump's trade and tariff policies have made us enemies with Canada, who are like our brothers and sisters who we just get along with great. | ||
| And now all of a sudden there's like hatred between us when we're such friends with them. | ||
| I also wonder if he's put a tariff on the Epstein files and that's why we can't get at them. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, with respect to Canada, we have a very close trade relationship with Canada. | ||
| We've had a free trade agreement with Canada since the 1980s. | ||
| It was one of the first free trade agreements that we had. | ||
| There's a lot of trade that goes back and forth across the border. | ||
| And a big chunk of the trade imbalance with Canada happens to be energy that's coming into the United States that makes our energy costs lower. | ||
| And so I don't know that we want to disrupt that. | ||
| And I think that's excluded from a lot of the tariffs as well. | ||
| But I am hopeful that as we move ahead, that we arrive at a point where with the U.S. and Mexico, with the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, which is part of what used to be called the NAFTA and is now the U.S. MCA, | ||
| but which is now kind of just like two kind of like little bilateral things because of the tariffs that the president has put on, that we get to a point where we can find that right balance of regional economic integration and opportunity for American workers. | ||
| Because I think there is a way to structure it where it could benefit citizens and workers in all three countries. | ||
| I don't think we found that yet, but my hope is that we get there soon and that it is a priority. | ||
| And I know a lot of folks in Congress are paying attention to that as well. | ||
| I want to ask you about the Big Beautiful bill. | ||
| There are provisions in it intended to boost manufacturing. | ||
| If you could, we'll put that on the screen when we have it, some of those provisions, but if you could talk about your take on those. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I do think that there were some facets from this legislation that could be very important for manufacturing. | |
| And that is, you know, one of those features is called like bonus depreciation or upfront expensing that makes it a lot easier for a company to make a large capital purchase. | ||
| And Mimi, I mentioned this before with like if you're thinking about a new piece of equipment that's going to help you both hire new workers, get new markets, make your process more efficient. | ||
| It's going to be easier to do that with this feature of the tax legislation in place. | ||
| And so I'm excited about that aspect of it in particular. | ||
| And I think that could be beneficial to American manufacturing. | ||
| Let's talk to Micole in Florida, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| So my thing, I've been listening to everything you're saying, but I'm in the United States, I'm in Florida, and I'm in the workforce. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Now, the issue that I have is that I'm kind of on board with bringing warehouses and bringing everything back to the United States. | ||
| But this is going to create, to me, another problem because, see, when I was in high school, they taught you mechanics, wood, they taught you electronics. | ||
| They taught you how to make stuff, how to look at the eclipse and the moon and everything like that. | ||
| And schools today aren't structured for that. | ||
| They're structured, like he said, for you to go to college. | ||
| They're not structured for you to go in these warehouses in these companies. | ||
| And then with the automation that's going on, nobody is prepared. | ||
| So as quiet as it's kept, a lot of Americans are losing their jobs right now because in the last 15 or 20 years, nobody has been trained in the United States. | ||
| So now you got this workforce, you know, 40, 45, 50, 55 who's not eligible or doing or eligible for Social Security or anything like that. | ||
| And they're being forced out of their jobs. | ||
| But yet, as we're being forced out of our jobs, you're not preparing our young adults to take on these jobs. | ||
| Like, you're going to have to restructure the whole educational system in order to match what's going on with the reconstruction of the United States, because these kids is not trained. | ||
| It's just like I said, well, if we go to war, what these kids going to do? | ||
| Pull up with a gun and TikTok them to death? | ||
| Because these kids aren't trained for any of this stuff. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's get a response for you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I want to say, I almost want to hug Nicole because I think she's spot on with all of this. | |
| And I wish more policymakers would hear that message is that, and we've identified a couple of the key gaps that we have in the United States. | ||
| One is how we approach workers who mid-career need to make an adjustment to another career. | ||
| We don't do a good job of that traditionally in the United States. | ||
| We have a lot of agility and a lot of entrepreneurship, but our workforce training system unfortunately hasn't been that agile. | ||
| The second point of this was headed back to high school and building skills as well as educational attainment for young people today. | ||
| And I think that's an important aspect of it. | ||
| It is true that at some point in time, shop class disappeared from a lot of high schools. | ||
| It's coming back in, actually, because I think that there's an awareness that there needs to be some pre-apprenticeship program or some level of basic skills that students need if they're going to go on in careers that don't require a four-year college degree, but can be well-paying. | ||
| Things like welding or being an electrician or, again, doing some factory work where you can have a family supporting job with, say, six months or a year of additional training beyond high school. | ||
| And so I wish that there was more focus on this. | ||
| There are a couple of green shoots. | ||
| For instance, recently Congress and the President made a change to allow the utilization of short-term Pell Grants for things like learning how to weld. | ||
| That used to not necessarily be the case. | ||
| And so I'm encouraged that we're getting there, but the progress is way too slow. | ||
| I want to talk about artificial intelligence. | ||
| You mentioned it in terms of the energy that it requires for the data centers. | ||
| But how does it impact manufacturing? | ||
| What are the pros and cons of more AI in manufacturing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's a very, very good question. | |
| And so there are a lot of benefits that can be derived out of artificial intelligence for manufacturing. | ||
| Both, think of it, improving processes, improving the chemistry of materials, aiding in efforts for manufacturers to be lean. | ||
| Lots of different ways where it can be helpful, identifying markets. | ||
| The list is almost endless. | ||
| It is probably less likely to have a major impact on employment than it is in some other sectors because in manufacturing production, it's either you or it's you and a robot or it's a robot. | ||
| But there's some combination there and there's always going to need to be humans in a factory. | ||
| The kind of jobs that they do may vary. | ||
| And it used to be physical manipulation. | ||
| Now it's a combination of physical manipulation and also maintaining or coding machines or robots to do some of the work as well. | ||
| Even in a Tesla factory, which is a marvel, you have things that look like they're out of Terminator alongside thousands of people. | ||
| And so you do have that employment component to it as well. | ||
| And so I see a potential upside for this working if we get it right. | ||
| I don't think it's a disaster at all for manufacturing jobs. | ||
| Here's Steve, Independent, Frankfurt, Kentucky. | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning, ma'am. | |
| My question is, I've noticed that gold went up like $1,000 one week. | ||
| And I was like, wow, what's going on there? | ||
| So I started looking into it, and our currency has dropped 10% in the last six months, which is the worst in 50 years, my understanding. | ||
| And they said part of the reason is because of tariffs and I don't know what other policies, but obviously it's costing us 10% more to buy the same thing we bought six months ago. | ||
| What's your opinion on this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, with respect to tariffs and cost increases, we've seen so far, the hard evidence is that outside of a couple specific areas, we haven't seen a widespread consumer impact. | |
| Now, the soft data, like how people are feeling about things, tells a bit of a different story and shows some underlying concern that consumers have about the potential for inflation. | ||
| Now, there's some goods for which there's no substitute for imports and which are subject to a higher tariff. | ||
| And so one example, and I know I'm dependent on this every morning, is coffee. | ||
| And so you've seen an increase in the price of coffee, for instance. | ||
| In other things, you haven't seen that price component come in for one of a couple of different reasons. | ||
| It could be that suppliers, retailers, manufacturers, warehouses stockpile things ahead of the tariffs, and they're offering those inventories now. | ||
| It could be the case where the companies have found alternate suppliers from, say, China or another source that was subject to a higher tariff. | ||
| It could be that the manufacturer renegotiated a contract with their overseas supplier, and that overseas supplier wanted the work, and so they said, okay, we will negotiate down the price with you this time. | ||
| It could also be that the company is willing to take a slightly lower profit margin in order to keep market share. | ||
| Now, the thing that will keep prices in check in the United States is that American consumers, like consumers all over the world, are very price sensitive. | ||
| And so if something's too expensive, they're just not generally going to buy it or they're going to defer the purchase. | ||
| And so it will align. | ||
| So I don't know that we're going to see double-digit inflation or things like that, other than for a couple of items for which there's absolutely no substitute. | ||
| Coffee is the best example of that, I think. | ||
| But I think in a lot of other cases, the price or inflation effect is going to be very nominal. | ||
| And by the way, it's not going to be nearly what we've seen from things like car insurance, housing, other things that aren't constrained by tariffs, basically, that have been real drivers of inflation over the last couple of years. | ||
| The tariffs aren't going to impact that one way or another. | ||
| Eric in Buffalo, New York, Democrat, good morning, Eric. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How you doing? | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| It's a push and pull on everything with trade and commerce and goods. | ||
| But coming to the labor force, we have to get these kids, kids, I'm talking the young employment involved in education with skilled trades. | ||
| You still have to have a workforce that has to be involved with their hands building, you know, welders, electricians, like they said, like the gentleman was saying, off the couch and involved, you know, and just along with everything else, you know, you know what I mean? | ||
| We have to have building, you know, integrated with high-end and education. | ||
| You know, it's everything, you know, all together. | ||
| Everybody's got to work together with everything. | ||
| You know, it's. | ||
| All right, Eric. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, this is an important issue, and it gives me the opportunity to talk about a couple of things that give me some optimism that I've seen. | |
| For instance, incorporating AI, and I think this is brilliant. | ||
| There are now these like virtual welding exercises that students can do where you're not in the situation where you're actually welding, but it's done via virtual equipment, and it gets you socialized, and I think more, you know, you have greater awareness of what the challenges and opportunities are. | ||
| That's one aspect of it. | ||
| I think another aspect that I've seen are a lot of programs in high schools that have started up that are making products for local companies. | ||
| And they've asked, and you see this at the college level all the time, but I think that you're seeing this in high school. | ||
| And all we need for a lot of these programs is scale. | ||
| That takes resources, that takes replication. | ||
| But I am optimistic because I do see local communities starting to provide some solutions for these challenges that a lot of the callers have raised up about where the worker is going to come from. | ||
| On the Republican line in Albany, Georgia, Evie, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Do you hear me? | ||
| Yes, we can. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, good morning, Mimi, and good morning to the citizens of America. | |
| Scott has been on many times with the Alliance. | ||
| I was just looking and knowing that he was coming on, I looked back at some of the videos that you had on C-SPAN, where he stated that there wasn't, his general concern is, of course, the import competition. | ||
| He's been in existence for about 17 years. | ||
| He says that he primarily represents steel workers. | ||
| You keep using the word manufacturing. | ||
| Word manufacturing for me means consumer goods. | ||
| They had the data on, and I'm looking for it as I'm talking, that shows that consumer goods, Samsung sends in washing machines, they send in microwaves, they send into the port of Savannah, where I am here in Georgia. | ||
| And those are the consumer manufactured goods, not steel. | ||
| So I would like for him to explain to us, and as far as this trade talk, when they sent, most of the manufacturing is firms that have 10, 20, 50 people, not hundreds of thousands, because those manufacturing places are in Mexico and in China and India and Vietnam. | ||
| And that happened 40 years ago. | ||
| So as far as young people going to trade, you should have had that 30, 40 years now coming where you would have that establishment, which he claimed, which he says, not claim, I'm sorry, which he said he did not have with that supply chain. | ||
| It's not about going to a trade school. | ||
| This is about the manufactured goods that left North Carolina with the meals, that left the firestones, the Michelins. | ||
| That is what happened in America. | ||
| And that was done by corporate CEOs that flew flames, not an army. | ||
| Scale, exactly. | ||
| You need scale. | ||
| But scale is a 30-long, 40-year, which is where we have been when those jobs left the Joe Biden, when you were on during the Joe Biden era, when Joe Biden gave subsidies and credits to these companies. | ||
| Have that commerce lady to come on. | ||
| That's who the former commerce of Rhode Island, I believe she was the governor. | ||
| She's the one that instituted a lot of these challenge grants. | ||
| Right now, like I said, Georgia and rural counties have these Evie, Rod Portman and Jared Brown, they got rid of that working class man. | ||
| Okay, Evie, Evie, let's get our response. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, first of all, thank you for being engaged in all of this and for taking the time to understand more about it. | |
| Yeah, when you hear the word steel workers or something like that, we're hard to pin down in Washington because we have a labor component and a business component, which sets us apart from a lot of other associations. | ||
| And even though the Steel Workers Union says steel, they also make things ranging from neutrograin bars, Gatorade, to that heavy steel that we were talking about. | ||
| And so there's all sorts of products in there. | ||
| But I think the caller is absolutely right in terms of like the evolution of this challenge that it is, we've seen it play out in some cases in slow motion over the last 30 or 40 years. | ||
| And it has been a lot of large multinational corporations that have utilized the advantages of certain trade policies to shift production overseas where they can produce the good for a lower cost and bring it back in at virtually no cost. | ||
| And so one of the things that the tariffs are trying to correct is that problem. | ||
| One of the things, and I supported all of these efforts that the Biden administration was doing to try to lift up some specific sectors of the economy that are very important, like semiconductors or automotive production in the United States, and to keep that momentum going. | ||
| I think that's critically, I think that's critically important. | ||
| And again, I just want to say that I do think that we've encountered serious challenges with manufacturing in the United States over the last couple of decades. | ||
| I have reasons for optimism because, you know, in part, I think the pandemic opened up a lot of folks' eyes about, hey, we actually need AI is great, apps are great, but we need to make some things in the United States, too. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That is Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing. | ||
| You can find out more about that organization at AmericanManufacturing.org. | ||
| Thanks so much for coming in today. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mimi, thank you, and thanks to the callers. | |
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