The manufacturing industry is like the seat of a three-legged stool.\u00a0 One leg is manufacturers and what they can do to \u201csave themselves.\u201d\u00a0 The second leg is people and what they can do as entrepreneurs, business owners, employees, consumers, and voters.\u00a0 The third leg is what government at all levels can do by means of tax policies, regulation, incentives, and national trade policies.\u00a0 This stool has been toppled over because only manufacturers have been trying to \u201csave themselves.\u201d\u00a0 It will take the cooperative effort on the part of all three \u201clegs\u201d to save American manufacturing.<\/p>\n
People are starting to wake up to the importance of manufacturing to the American economy.\u00a0 They have already woken up to the fact that we\u2019ve lost too many manufacturing jobs and that is causing our unemployment rate to stay so high.\u00a0 They are waking up to the need to revitalize, rebuild, re-invent American manufacturing to \u201csave\u201d it.<\/p>\n
On September 28, 2010, a Conference for the Renaissance of American Manufacturing was held in Washington D. C. attended by more than 200 manufacturing executives, legislators, union leaders, trade policy experts, and state and federal officials.\u00a0\u00a0 At this conference, Sen. Don Riegle Jr. of Michigan warned that the U. S. economy is on a \u201cdownhill trajectory\u201d and \u201cgoing at a velocity that is very dangerous\u2026 The people are screaming to the elected officials that they think we are on the wrong path \u2013 because we are on the wrong path.\u201d<\/p>\n