The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) has done it again. In contrast to their stated interest in supporting American manufacturers, they’ve criticized someone who wants to strengthen U.S. manufacturing.
In a recent item, NAM praises Dan Ikenson’s criticism of Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson. In a column fretting about declining U.S. manufacturing, Meyerson had noted that “Since 1987, manufacturing as a share of our gross domestic product has declined 30 percent.”
Facts are stubborn things, and that 30% drop-off since 1987 happens to coincide with a decline of roughly 6 million U.S. manufacturing jobs and a loss of more than 40,000 U.S. factories in the last decade alone. However, Ikenson isn’t bothered by this decrease in manufacturing’s share of GDP. He says it’s simply a reflection of the “rapid growth of other sectors of the economy.”
Unfortunately, these “other sectors” aren’t producing new jobs either.
Citing Ikenson is a funny proposition, though. He’s the same fellow who has dismissed ongoing $700 billion annual U.S. trade deficits as not having “anything to do with trade policy.” In fact, Ikenson embraces the trade deficit because “as the U.S. economy slows down, the trade deficit is growing smaller.”
Not everyone wishes for a slower U.S. economy, however—not least the 5.3 million manufacturing workers who’ve lost their job in this decade alone.
Key CEO’s such as G.E.’s Jeffrey Immelt now suggest that dismantling U.S. manufacturing is a mistake. In a recent letter to shareholders, Immelt went so far as to say that the “popular 30-year notion that the U.S. can evolve from being a technology and manufacturing leader to a service leader is just wrong.”
Immelt’s words are echoed by Nucor Corp. CEO Dan DiMicco. In an interview with 60 Minutes, the steel manufacturing executive said he favors creating “new jobs here in America, not overseas, not in China, not in Europe.” DiMicco has some actual hands-on experience with American industry and he believes that supporting U.S. manufacturing could very well “benefit the U.S. economic engine, get it started again.”
There seems to be a problem, though, when some of the nation’s leading CEO’s say there’s a manufacturing crisis while their trade association shares a different view.
Bottom line: trade deficits matter, lost jobs matter, shuttered factories matter.
##
