13: The Importance of Manufacturing Jobs - with Harry Moser

a BROADcast for Manufacturers

Meet Harry:

Founder of the reshoring initiative after being president of GF machining solutions for 22 years. Awards include industry week's manufacturing Hall of Fame. He's participated actively in President Obama's January 11 2012 insourcing forum. He's a member of the Department of Commerce Investment Advisory Council. He's frequently quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, New York Times New Yorker, and USA Today, and he's seen on Fox Business Market Watch and other programs.

Lori: What is the mission of the reshoring initiative?

Harry: Basically, to eliminate the $1.1 trillion goods trade deficit, we import over a trillion dollars more than we export. And that has cost the US about 5 million manufacturing jobs. So when we achieve that when we achieve our mission, US manufacturing will increase by 40%. So if to all those who are listening, imagine you all of your businesses were up by 40%. How wonderful that would be for you for the country for your employees for all the kids who would now have would look and say, Wow, manufacturing career, let's go become manufacturers! This would be great for the country.

Lori: Absolutely. So why is it important to bring back these jobs to achieve this balance of trade?

Harry: Oh, as I said those, just having the jobs is good. If you think of the country's social ills, many people talk about income inequality. And part of that income inequality is that there's a couple of billionaires making a million a year you don't have one end of the distribution. But the biggest cause of it is that in the middle of the income distribution, we've lost those five or 6 million manufacturing jobs that that pay, you know, 50,000 or $100,000 a year, and 10s of 1000s of owners of small machine shops and foundries and things like that, that have gone under so company owners that made 100, 200, whatever, $1,000 for years. So you've had this hollowing out of the middle class significantly due to offshoring, due to the loss of jobs offshore. Another thing you see from that is the opioid epidemic. It's generally agreed that much of that which has occurred in rural America, was due to the company, town, the company, which was the main employer in the town going under for the work going off offshore. Now, these people couldn't find a comparable job, opioids, etc. So just all kinds of reasons why we'll be better off when those jobs come back.

Lori: Do you see any trends, any favorable trends that are in our direction? Things going the right way?

Harry: Oh. Yeah, I'm happy and chipper here, I wouldn't be otherwise. So when we founded the reshoring initiative in 2010, to track reshoring by US companies, and FDI, foreign direct investment by foreign companies think General Motors and Toyota, for example. So in 2010, when we found it, 6000 jobs were announced coming back, last year, 260,000 were announced. And this year, if things continue as they have in the first half, it could be 350,000. So we're up 5060 times over what it was 12 years ago. So it's been, it's been amazingly pleasing, rewarding, you know, good for the country, etc, etc. But it's still not enough. If you the despite those jobs coming back, the American consumer is so voraciously, consuming things coming in from China and offshore, that the trade deficit is continuing to rise. So we need to bring back 500,000 or so a year to counter that trend. And so it's, there's still, I've still got a lot of work to do.

And so much more…

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reshorenow.org/

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