Here’s What to Expect From the White House’s Made in America Week

The President has unveiled “Made In America” Week. Our Nation’s leadership is focused on promoting and cultivating this critical sector that changes lives for the positive.

Manufacturing creates opportunities for people in our toughest neighborhoods. Our nation’s factories pull people from poverty into the middle class. We need these manufacturing jobs because they pay great. According to the National Association of Manufacturers, USA Factory workers are paid on average $81,289+ per year including benefits. If the company is exporting – the compensation tops $94,000 per year on average! No minimum wage jobs here. Moreover, 92% of USA factories offer health insurance to their team.

This Presidential initiative is spotlighting the idea that we should not order from overseas but instead buy from fellow Americans. This will grow opportunities for our people in the USA to get to that first rung on the ladder and climb up. “For too long our government has forgotten the American worker. Their interests were pushed aside for global projects and their wealth was taken from the communities and shipped overseas” states White House director of media affairs Helen Aguirre Ferre. The White House showcasing domestically made products from all fifty states is calling attention to good things going on in the USA.

America is a manufacturing powerhouse – if it were its own economy, it would be the ninth largest economy in the world. This vibrancy is an opportunity machine for our people looking for a career. 3.5 million jobs will be available in manufacturing in the next decade due to retirements and solid growth of our dynamic sector.

My company, Marlin Steel, purchases USA steel (from Illinois and Indiana) and fabricates racks and baskets in the USA. Every time we get a one million dollar job, we have to hire five more people. These new team mates buy homes (more than half of my team own homes) and cars to get to work. The dignity of having a job that pays the bills so they can send their kids to college and have nice vacation is satisfying and stabilizes the middle class. In addition, we give our vendors big orders and they have to hire more people – expanding a wonderful virtuous positive cycle. When purchasing managers (to save a buck and disregard quality and on-time deliveries) send the orders overseas, all these benefits are shipped overseas – where Mexican and Chinese vendors’ employees buy homes and cars (not Americans).

Developing job creating manufacturing policies to foster a positive environment will surge USA employment and stabilize our families and make it easier for purchasing managers to do the right thing and buy American. We need these five policies enacted to keep this positive inertia flowing for the sake of our workers:

1. Infrastructure Investments – Roads, Ports, Bridges, Airports, Electrical grid, Sewer, etc. systems are sub-par in the USA. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the USA a “D+” because our infrastructure was unacceptable. We should have an “A” – we need to invest today to get his country growing at the rate we need.

2. Tax Reform – Simplifying our tax code and reducing our manufacturing taxes so our workers can compete with China and Mexico.

3. Health Care Reform – Marlin’s rates have more than doubled in eight years. We need relief because our clients will not tolerate us passing on these price increases.

4. Regulation Reform – The Average small factory pays $35,000+ to adhere to burdensome over the top paperwork. We can have clean water, soil and air and just labor protections with less burdensome paperwork.

5. Improved Education in our K-12 – more STEM for kids so our talent pool are capable of tackling the demanding challenges of 2017 tasks.