savingusmanufacturing.com

President Trump has the authority to take significant action to rebuild American manufacturing through executive orders. By utilizing his executive powers, President Trump can implement various strategies to support and enhance the manufacturing sector in the United States.  In my article, “What do Manufacturers Need to Succeed and Grow?, I highlighted several policies that would help rebuild American manufacturing.  This article points out some actions that President Trump could take to rebuild American manufacturing through executive orders:

Protect Manufacturers from Unfair Trade Practices:  In his first term, President Trump used executive orders to implement tariffs on imports from certain countries. Trump has said he would fulfill a campaign promise to levy tariffs on imports from America’s biggest trading partners immediately. 

During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to impose between a 10 and 20 percent blanket tariff on all $3 trillion worth of U.S. goods imports and at least a 60 percent tariff on all Chinese goods.

In a Truth Social post  on November 25, 2014, Trump promised to implement 25 percent tariffs on Day One on all goods from Canada and Mexico until they clamp down on drugs and migrants crossing the border. He also promises an additional 10 percent tariff on all Chinese goods unless China implements the death penalty for all drug dealers linked to fentanyl.

By continuing to use tariffs strategically, President Trump could protect American industries from unfair competition and create a level playing field for domestic manufacturers.

Reduce Regulatory Burdens: President Trump could issue executive orders aimed at streamlining regulations that hinder the growth of American manufacturing. By cutting red tape and eliminating unnecessary regulatory burdens, businesses would be able to operate more efficiently and invest in expanding their manufacturing capabilities.

President Trump could end the Biden administration’s “electric vehicle mandate.” Biden’s EPA implemented limits on climate pollution from passenger cars, pushing for electric vehicles to make up two-thirds of new car sales by 2032.

Provide Access to Affordable Energy:  President Trump could keep a campaign promise he made during a speech in Michigan to “declare a national emergency to allow us to dramatically increase energy production” in an effort to reduce energy costs.  On Day One, he could issue an Executive Order to  “approve new drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, new power plants, new reactors and  slash the red tape.”  His oft-stated campaign vow to “drill, baby, drill” and “frack, frack, frack” would open up all American sites for oil drilling and fracking.

In a campaign speech on May 11, 2024, Trump swore he would end offshore wind projects on Day One,  “They ruin the environment, they kill the birds, they kill the whales.”

Promote Buy American Policies: President Trump could issue an executive order prioritizing the use of American-made products in federal procurement and infrastructure projects. By mandating the use of domestically produced goods, the demand for American manufacturing would increase, leading to the growth of the sector.

In addition to these important actions, President Trump could use executive orders to do the following:

Invest in Workforce Development: Establish programs that promote workforce development in the manufacturing industry. By providing funding for training programs and apprenticeships, the administration could ensure that the American workforce has the skills needed to drive innovation and growth in manufacturing.

Support Research and Development: Increase funding for research and development in key manufacturing sectors, such as advanced manufacturing, robotics, and clean energy. By investing in innovation, the administration could help American manufacturers stay competitive in the global market.

Establish Manufacturing Task Forces: President Trump could create executive orders to establish task forces or councils dedicated to addressing the challenges facing the American manufacturing sector. These task forces could bring together industry leaders, policymakers, and experts to develop strategies and initiatives to support the growth of manufacturing in the United States.

By taking decisive action through executive orders, President Trump has the opportunity to revitalize American manufacturing and strengthen the country’s economic resilience. Through a combination of policies that promote domestic production, support workforce development, and encourage innovation, the administration can help rebuild American manufacturing and create a more prosperous future for the industry.

Several years ago, I met Bill Waddell at a Lean Frontiers conference where we were both guest speakers. We kept in touch via LinkedIn and he recently sent me a message about his new book, titled Reclaiming American Manufacturing.  His topic was so closely related to the topic of my last book, Rebuild Manufacturing – the key to American Prosperity that I was anxious to read it to see how he proposed to accomplish our common goal.

After reading his book, we had a short conversation via Zoom about how U.S. manufacturing has been devastated in the past 30 years, along with the devastation of the middle class.  His book explains how we got here, and what it will take to set things right again. He draws from his experiences in a long career at the management level of several manufacturers, both domestic and foreign, as well as his experience as a manufacturing transformation consultant in the U.S. and Germany. He started his career in manufacturing in 1978 when he went to “work for a window and cabinet hardware manufacturer, Amerock, in Rockford, IL – which had recently been acquired by Anchor Hocking.” He said he loves everything about manufacturing, and I told him, “I do, too,” and I started as an engineering secretary at age 18 for a company that made electronic and electrical components and assemblies.

I asked why he wrote the book at this time in his life, and he said, “I had some health problems in the last year so I had the time to do it. For the first time, I wasn’t spending all my time in airports.  Also, rebuilding manufacturing is what both candidates were saying.  I thought it would be timely to put my two cents in from the standpoint of someone who was a manufacturing guy. I don’t know a lot about philosophy or economics, but I thought I could contribute to the discussion from the standpoint of someone who knows a lot about how manufacturing really works and how the decisions are really made about why we are going to build a plant in China rather than the U.S. and why we were not going to move it back.  I thought I had a unique perspective.  It hurts me personally to remember the glory days of manufacturing. I live in the Midwest, and every town around me has empty factories. I know what it could be and what it used to be. I think it is an important issue economically and not only hurts me, but my children and grandchildren. If we are not going to be a manufacturing nation, they will not have the quality of life that I have had.

We shared our experiences with the effects of NAFTA.  Because I read, write, and speak Spanish, I used to sell to the maquiladoras in Baja California prior to NAFTA, but it became too complex and time consuming to continue after NAFTA went fully in effect.  He said he learned the implications of NAFTA when he worked for McCulloch Corporation’s chain saw factory in Tucson, AZ that had a plant in Sonora, Mexico.  He was “troubled by the openly abusive labor practices” he encountered and “by the poverty of the employees.”

He said that when he worked as a consultant at plants owned by American companies in China, “working conditions were often wretched, and worker safety was often non-existent.”  I said that while I had never been to China, I had described the horrible working conditions in a chapter titled, “What Are the Effects of Industrialization on China and India,” in my first book, Saving U.S. Manufacturing, based on the research I had done.

Bill said that he was “very well acquainted with the people in manufacturing, from American middle managers to Chinese machinists to German engineers to Mexican electrical harness assemblers.”

In his chapter, “Hollowing Out the Middle Class,” he points out that “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, manufacturing jobs pay an average of a little over $61,000 a year.  If we look at a weighted average of the Health, Education, Hospitality and Transportation jobs that replaced them, it is only $43,000 and change.  For all practical purposes, 11 million people took an $18,000 a year pay cut – 30% – and went from the solid middle class to the high end of the lower class.”

I agreed with what he wrote in that same chapter about the “big financial winners in the NAFTA and Ch8ina trade deals have been the big multi-national manufacturers and the banks supporting them [whereas] 95% of American manufacturers are small or medium sized, most with one location, and privately owned – usually a single owner or a family business.”

I resonated with the points he made about NAFTA and the World Trade Organization in his chapter titled “Bill Clinton: Globalist in Chief.” He mentions that Clinton had his work cut out to get NAFTA passed by Congress.  While the Democrats controlled both the House and Senate, more Republicans than Democrats supported it.    He “garnered enough Democrat support to get it passed” with “a pledge to enter into side agreements with Mexico to assure their protection of the environment and human rights to get it done.  They continued to promise that NAFTA” would create as many as a quarter of a million American manufacturing jobs.”

Bill wrote that this proved to be a lie because “By the time Clinton left office in 2001, 6 million American manufacturing jobs were gone, and the US trade balance was in a steep dive.”

He then describes how President Clinton “set about putting US policy and leadership in line with the World Trade Organization – WTO – in 1995” and then in the year 2000, “Clinton attained membership for China in the WTO (essentially giving them what used to be known as ‘most favored nation’ status).”

After defining globalism vs. nationalism in his chapter of the same name, he made a very astute observation: “The old Democrat Part no longer exists. It would be more accurately called the ‘Globalist Party. And the old Republican Party no longer exists. It would be more accurately called the ‘Nationalist Party.’” He states that the globalist ideology that “people, goods, and information ought to be able to cross national borders unfettered” to create a new economic order in the world explains everything from free trade agreements to climate change.

He then dissects David Ricardo’s Theory of comparative Advantage in his chapter titled “Giving Ivy League Degrees to the Illiterate.” He asserts that “they all seem to have missed Recardo’s fundamental principle and explains that “the Theory of Comparative Advantage is not about cheap labor or cheap production – it is about productivity, as it must be.” He concludes, “If global trade is based on sending work to the places where workers are the worse paid, the collapse of the economies in the developed national is inevitable.”

In his chapter “The Economists New Clothes,” he writes, “The intellect behind globalism comes from a fairly tightknit group. The Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Oxford and a handful of other ‘elite’ schools make up the core of it.” He writes, “The problem isn’t a lack of intellect. It is lack of any real-world exposure or experience.”  As a result, “the elite schools have not been in touch with or contributed anything meaningful to manufacturing since the 1980s…”  He asserts, “The very notion that the Industrial Revolution has ended, or ever will end, is absurd…Manufacturing in this day and age is a very high-tech endeavor not just in a few select highly automated factories – all of it.”  I told him that this is what I have been asserting in every article I’ve written in the past 20 years.

In his chapter, “It’s a Matter of Principle as Much as Economics, he describes the oppressive working conditions, human rights abuses, and air and water pollution of the low-cost labor countries like China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and India.  He comments, “No one should be surprised that the same countries that have a wretched track record of abusing human rights have atrocious air and water quality, and have their people living in dire poverty, struggling just to eat.”  He concludes that “Every transaction requires a willing seller and a willing buyer. In globalizing manufacturing, unaccountable leaders were the willing sellers of their countries’ human and natural resources to the willing buyers at the multi-national companies.”

His last two chapters provide his solutions for reclaiming American manufacturing, two of which are so unique that I couldn’t do justice to summarizing his explanation of them.  I want to make learning about them an incentive to buy and read his whole book.  It will be well worth you time and money.  You can buy his book from Amazon.