A healthy, growing manufacturing industry is essential for good, middle-class jobs, for broadly shared prosperity in the US, and for long-term economic growth. Manufacturing is essential for national security, health security, and a robust, resilient supply of many essential and non-essential goods.
The US must make the US dollar competitive again, rebalance trade, and support US manufacturing with effective Buy American policies to relaunch manufacturing growth. We must use tariff policies where required against foreign predation, dumping, IP theft, and other anti competitive policies of foreign governments. We must use targeted industrial policies when necessary to support industries deemed essential for national security or economic security.
The U.S. goods deficit with China fell by roughly $2 billion in September, coming in at $15.03 billion. China has dropped to fourth place in terms of the countries in which the U.S. has its biggest goods gap.
A proposed 807-mile natural gas pipeline intended to bring gas from Alaska’s North Slope to a new export terminal in the Kenai Peninsula in Southcentral Alaska will be fabricated in Korea despite the Administration’s headline “fifty percent” steel tariff.
China is beating the U.S. to the Moon, namely the dark side of the Moon we never see from Earth. It’s colder there. And darker. And China has the energy technologies they’ve invented themselves to make machines work there. We do not.
Democrats on the House Committee on Small Business kept to their year-long messaging that tariffs are raising costs and hurting companies. There were many interesting themes from the Nov. 20 hearing titled How Main Street is Revitalizing Domestic Manufacturing.
To trade away aluminum and steel workers’ home market in exchange for padding Big Tech’s bottom line overseas is immoral and wrong. The Section 232 actions on aluminum and steel should be singularly focused on rebuilding domestic output across the supply chains, not used as leverage to help Google and Meta become even more profitable.
The Commerce Department should look to 7 C.F.R. Part 6 as a terrific example of how USDA has ensured that quota allocation benefits domestic manufacturers, not speculators.
