With White House Backing, an Envoy for Manufacturing

[mike r]

Source: New York Times

Not since Ronald Reagan has an American president spoken so emphatically about the importance of manufacturing. “We’ve got to go back to making things,” Barack Obama says, embedding that view in his oratory. Yet manufacturing’s presence in the American economy continues to shrink, defying the administration’s attempts to reverse that trend.

The president has named Ron Bloom, a Harvard M.B.A. who has worked both on Wall Street and in the labor movement, as a special adviser to help tackle the problem. Mr. Bloom’s tools, however, are limited. Apart from his persuasiveness, they have consisted mainly of tax credits and subsidies, much of it flowing to new industries, like the production of wind turbines, solar panels and auto batteries powerful enough to replace gasoline engines.

The goal is to invigorate private sector initiatives in these industries, then in a host of supplier companies and eventually throughout manufacturing. That, in a nutshell, is the administration’s manufacturing strategy.

But some, including the United Steelworkers union, say it is not enough. The union is pressing the administration to challenge China over what it calls unfair subsidies for its clean energy industries.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/business/economy/10manufacture.html

[zipplewrath]

1. renegotiate NAFTA?

I suspect that isn't in the cards though.

[notesdev]

4. NAFTA isn't even the big one

MFN for China is the big one.

There's basically one country I am comfortable "free trading" with and that is Canada.

[nyy1998]

6. Not even the EU, Australia, or New Zealand?

[pampango]

9. We import more from Canada and the EU combined than from China and Mexico combined.

Our trade deficit with the EU ($61 billion) is greater than with (Mexico $48 billion). We actually have a trade surplus with Australia of $12 billion in 2009. (There's one free trade agreement that works to our advantage.)

In 2009 our imports from those places was as follows:

China - $296 billion
EU - $282 billion
Canada - $226 billion
Mexico - $177 billion
Australia - $8 billion
New Zealand-$2 billion

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c6021.html

[nyy1998]

13. Ah, very interesting numbers

The point I was making was whether those places were "taking American jobs" when their economies feature workers as well paid(sometime better) then the workers we have here.

[pampango]

14. I think Martians must be "taking our jobs" since Earth's manufacturing employment is down all over.

(Who knows what the pay scale is for Martians. :) ) As to your point, I think "taking American jobs" is used most often against poor countries, not Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the EU, regardless of the statistics of where most of our imports come from.
--------------------------
"One interesting tidbit: While Americans sometimes complain that the country doesn’t “make” anything anymore — a sentiment related to manufacturing’s long-term slide in this country — they should know that declines in manufacturing jobs are common in the rest of the developed world, too:



In the United States (the red line), manufacturing as a share of total employment has fallen 15.5 percentage points in recent decades, from 26.4 percent of jobs in 1970 to 10.9 percent in 2008. In some other countries the decline has been even steeper. In Britain, for example, the share of employment held by manufacturing has fallen 21.9 percentage points in the last few decades, from 33.9 percent in 1971 to 12 percent in 2008.

There are several generally accepted explanations for these trends. They include productivity growth and new technologies; the rise of the service-sector economy; and the shift of manufacturing jobs to areas of the world where labor is cheaper."

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/manufacturing-around-the-world/
---------------------------
Deindustrialization in terms of employment has been occurring in many developing countries, including the two rapidly growing economies that have been successful in expanding their shares of world trade in manufacturing products, namely, China and India. Such deindustrialization is characterized by a net transfer of jobs from agriculture to services, many of which are low-paying and precarious and are not covered by formal mechanisms of social protection. This has been particularly the case in many Asian countries.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=14&ved=0CCQQFjADOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2F157.150.195.10%2Fesa%2Fsocdev%2Frwss%2Fdocs%2F2007%2Fchapter1.pdf&rct=j&q=manufacturing%20jobs%20world%20statistics&ei=xA2KTNrxAsmRnwfrk8S2Cw&usg=AFQjCNGji6n3OJFdyCelZWX3l-2MPEYiyA&sig2=QlsQN9Nq_zfi--hkdxKcVA&cad=rja

[nyy1998]

15. Excellent post, now where's your chart on the Martians manufacturing employment?

;-)

[MARALE]

2. Well, this is a good start

though I think it is a little too late. The Chinese government does subsidize their industries. But as soon as the workers start buying things and demanding a better wage, it might get more competitive. What we need more of is manufactured in the USA rules. Many other governments are putting this in place over the next few years and companies are building manufacturing sites in those companies to comply.

[madmax]

3. I don't know what the answer is but,

whenever I'm looking at something I need to buy I grumble loudly when others are near. I bitch that everything is made in China, we have no jobs, the prices of the junk from China has risen although quality has not. Then I put the offending item back with a sigh of disgust.

Some people chime in and agree. Just trying to plant some seeds for thought.

[No Elephants]

10. Last time I grumbled, a post office worker replied that it made no sense for us to manufacture

anymore. "Now, we 'just' have to find something else."

O.K., I'll bite: What?

[hack89]

12. I don't think we will ever manufacture inexpensive consume items again

the future of American manufacturing lies in high end goods that requires skilled and educated workers - that's why education reform is so important. A modern economy needs a modern education system.

[wordpix]

5. I agree with the pres but also, we need to return to our agrarian roots

Save farmland, encourage organic farms, r&d for biofuels, rooftop gardens, city and community gardens, blacktop-to-parks, and plant fruit and nut trees along the streetscapes. Lots of jobs in food: canning and preserving, farming, food coops with locally grown food, planting/maintaining orchards.

It would beautify the cities and countryside after decades of abuse and neglect, too.

[No Elephants]

11. A lot of our agarian roots seem to be under factory farms and real estate developments now.

[Tansy_Gold]

7. With "limited" tools and a Wall Street background,

Mr. Bloom does not inspire confidence.

But I'm sure he'll work very will with Messrs. Geithner and Summers and Rubin and Bernanke, and since it's all about getting along with The Boys, I see a blooming future for Mr. Bloom.



TG, NTY

[JDPriestly]

8. I like UAW's idea.