A GROWTH AGENDA: Four Goals for a Manufacturing Resurgence in America

Manufacturers are ready to power the economy. With the right policies in place, we will transform a difficult and sluggish recovery into an economic resurgence. After all, manufacturing has the highest multiplier effect of any other sector of our economy. Investments in manufacturing multiply across the economy, creating jobs and growth in other sectors.

Simply put, manufacturing makes America strong.

Unfortunately, Washington is holding manufacturers back. Our competitiveness is slipping, so much so that it’s now 20 percent more expensive to manufacture in the United States compared to our competitors, and that figure excludes the cost of labor.

An uneven economic recovery continues to send mixed signals to businesses and consumers. Unemployment is high. The global economy remains shaky. Too many Americans no longer believe that our country’s best days are ahead of us. Those naysayers are wrong—assuming we get our policies right.

The United States needs a comprehensive plan for economic growth. A bipartisan commitment in Washington to pro-growth policies will make our nation a more competitive place to do business.

To succeed, manufacturers need our elected leaders to choose policies that make this country a better place to invest, a better place to innovate and a better place from which to export. They must choose policies that strengthen our workforce so that it meets the needs of manufacturing in the 21st century.

This strategy is a blueprint for competitiveness that will unleash the economy and manufacturing’s outsized multiplier effect. Importantly, manufacturers’ aspirations—the four goals laid out in the pages that follow—are ones that all Americans who want to maintain our country’s economic advantage can rally around. To advance manufacturers’ cause, we must put policy above politics.

Making America strong: That’s what manufacturers have been doing for more than a century. And with the right policies in place, manufacturers in America will make this country even stronger.

Jay Timmons
President and CEO
National Association of Manufacturers