“The Council on Competitiveness’s report ‘Make: An American Manufacturing Movement’ represents a call for action by Washington,” Rep. Lipinski said. “Many of the solutions it offers are clearly deserving of strong support as they would help boost domestic manufacturing and get Americans back to work. These include increasing the use of countervailing duties to combat illegal trade practices by foreign countries, improving STEM education, focusing R&D investment on manufacturing challenges, and increasing public-private partnerships to boost investment in transportation and other infrastructure. Other worthwhile recommendations are developing a network of advanced manufacturing clusters, creating 21^st Century manufacturing apprenticeship programs, increasing use of high-powered computer modeling by industry, and speeding commercial application of federally funded research. Passage of the National Manufacturing Strategy Act would help ensure the report receives the serious attention it deserves and that Washington actually takes action to implement the policies needed to fuel the growth of U.S. manufacturing and job creation.” 

Rep. Lipinski’s National Manufacturing Strategy Act is designed to forge broad, bipartisan support for an actionable plan to revitalize American manufacturing. The bill passed the House last year 379-38 and the current version, H.R. 1366, has again drawn strong bipartisan support. H.R. 1366 requires the establishment of a Manufacturing Strategy Board consisting of representatives from the public and private sectors and labor. Every four years, the board will conduct a comprehensive analysis of the manufacturing sector covering matters ranging from financing to trade to the defense industrial base. Based on this analysis and ample public input, the board will develop a strategy that includes specific recommendations to the President, Congress, and industry for bolstering American manufacturing. To make sure we stay the course, the board will assess the implementation of its recommendations annually, and the GAO will conduct a separate review.

“Continued offshoring not only eliminates existing American jobs, it threatens our ability to innovate and develop the next generation of high-tech products, as well as to independently provide for our own national security,” Rep. Lipinski said. “We need to start reversing this trend immediately if we are going to remain the world’s economic leader and create the roughly 12.2 million jobs we need to return to prerecession employment levels. I urge my colleagues to closely examine the report by the Council on Competitiveness and to support the National Manufacturing Strategy Act.”

(December 8, 2011)

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