Manufacturing in the United States continues to offer some of the best-paying jobs, but increasing regulatory burdens and skyrocketing business costs are rapidly threatening to erode the industry and our nation's competitiveness according to Jay Timmons, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers.
Timmons was at Suncadia in Cle Elum Sunday to address members of the Conference of State Manufacturing Associations. AWB, the state chamber of commerce and manufacturing association, hosted the event; AWB President Don Brunell is the current chair of COSMA.
In an interview, Timmons shared his optimism about the industry, but was pragmatic about the challenges facing manufacturing and the country's businesses as a whole. While keeping one eye on the other Washington and the debt crisis ("it's a perfect example of the mess in Washington [D.C.]"), Timmons was frank about the vulnerability of our country's manufacturing industry.
"Other countries are salivating at the prospect of taking away our mantle of economic leadership, so they’re offering incentives, they’re making the regulatory regimes in their countries less burdensome, they’re lowering taxes –- they’re doing everything right while we’re doing everything wrong."
Both Democrats and Republicans in current and previous administrations and sessions of Congress share in the blame, in Timmons' eyes, for the state of the nation's competitiveness climate. Continued increases in corporate taxes, energy and regulatory costs have made it 18 percent more expensive to do business in the United States than in other parts of the world, and that's after you take out the costs of labor, he added.
"But those other costs that we can impact from Washington [D.C.] and the states are the things that are driving up costs of doing business and making manufacturers make decisions they don’t want to make.They’re patriotic Americans. They want to create jobs here in this country, they want to manufacture products here in this country, but unfortunately, they’re being forced by our own federal government to look elsewhere in order to be competitive."
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