National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons Talks Regulations
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. This is a really important conversation. I did a chart years and years ago on the Bloomberg, which was the decline of manufacturing employment in America. And there's ebbs and flows to it. But if you run it on a log axis, frankly, folks, it's a really smooth, just...

technological-driven decline in employment is the population of manufacturing in America. Jay Timmons is the CEO of the Group for Manufacturers, a national association for manufacturers. As we mentioned, he's out of the Ohio State. He's done a lot of work for various political types of North Carolina and is driving the voice of manufacturers. What's the number one thing, Jay, the president gets wrong

about manufacturing in America, all the stereotypes that are out there. What's President Trump most get wrong? - You know, I think that what a lot of Americans get wrong is that manufacturing is a very modern technology driven operation. And it is not the manufacturing that you might think about from your father or grandfather's days.

This is something that has a different type of skill set that's required. And so manufacturers right now are investing a lot in training that next generation of the manufacturing workforce. I saw a chart yesterday that showed the complete Lockean philosophy, folks, of individualistic America, the complete failure of America to retrain the workforce after the last 40 years. Lighthizer, among others, has been great on this.

How in God's name do we start acting like Europe and actually retrain manufacturing types put out of work? So let's not act like Europe completely when it comes to manufacturing, but I agree with you that they have some really good apprenticeship programs.

And we're pretty proud of our apprenticeship work that we do at the National Association of Manufacturers through the formerly known as the Toyota Fame Program. So we were spreading that across the country.

I think what we really need to focus on, though, if we truly want to grow manufacturing investment here in the United States, we've got to make things less expensive here in this country. So by that, I mean our tax policy. 2017, those tax reforms, they were, as President Trump said, rocket fuel for manufacturing investment, hiring, wage growth in our industry. Those things are expiring.

And we need to get those renewed, and so we're waiting for Congress to do that. The regulatory burden is another big cost driver, about $50,000 per employee per year in compliance costs for manufacturers. Should we do credits like LBJ a million years ago? Just do direct credits to manufacturing? I think...

Well, I think tax policy is actually, that would help drive that investment, right? So if you have lower tax rates and you're able to compete against the rest of the world,

That's really where I think we want to settle. Jay, what types of manufacturing jobs do we really want to bring back to the U.S.? Do we want to bring textile mills back to the U.S.? What do we want to bring back? So I do think that the narrative that the manufacturing workforce is in decline is actually a false narrative. We're right now at about 13%.

approaching 14 million manufacturing employees. That's been pretty stable for the last decade. It is stable in the last six, seven, eight years. I'll give you that. Yeah. But we want to grow it, right? We want to grow that here. And so those jobs, and I appreciate the question, those jobs are really very different than in the past. So highly technical jobs. So we want people to be trained with a very different set of skills than perhaps

even five, ten years ago, right? And so to your very first question, that falls on manufacturers to invest in training their workforce. And I'm pretty proud of what we are doing in the sector right now to accomplish exactly that. But we need those economic policies that help facilitate that. So it seems like...

You know, a lot of folks are now questioning the value of a college education. And a lot of folks are saying, boy, trade schools are really what we need. Talk to us about trade schools. You're just so lucky to have an Ohio State person here. Come on.

Talk to us about the... Trade schools are becoming extraordinarily important in the manufacturing sector. But I also want to say that we have something for everyone in manufacturing. You know, probably about 45% of the jobs in manufacturing require nothing more than a high school degree.

But there are positions that require a four-year degree or technical training, even advanced degrees, all across the board. I want to go to Paul's emotion, and I'm going to double-barrel here. The Financial Times, I'm sorry, I can't cite the author, it was one of their great newsletters,

had that wonderful survey three, four days ago. Everybody wants to bring Jay Timmons' world back to America. More manufacturing jobs, but a huge body of Americans don't want to work in manufacturing. There's a poll, spoke volumes. But the videos that have gone viral, which is fat people like me sitting in a machine doing mundane factory work, that's the stereotype Paul was just talking about.

I mean, the fear is you got some 400, 600, 800 people outside Hong Kong doing make work. Do we want to bring those jobs back here?

I want to grow the types of jobs we have here in this country. And I know it sounds kind of trite to say, but I love opening up the doors to manufacturing facilities for young people. My daughter, Ellie, is traveling with me this week. It's her spring break. And we've been able to go into a couple of plant floors. And I think

her eyes were opened about the possibilities in manufacturing. Those jobs are pretty exciting. They change constantly and they provide really a lifelong and frankly... Did President Biden advance that with all his legislation? I think that the Chips and Science Act was very important for this country. I think that the investments that we made in infrastructure were very important for this country. And in the IRA bill that was passed,

Right. There were some policy provisions that we thought were very important as well. So, look, I mean, manufacturing changes. And I'm not going to sit here and say that, you know, it's manufacturing as a Republican industry or a Democratic industry. It's an American industry. And when manufacturing succeeds. You've been in the trenches of the Capitol. I mean, what you just said, is that app that Republicans and Democrats are on the same page?

I think every single person I talk to, I don't care if they're Republican or Democrat, they want to see manufacturing succeed. Now, having said that... Even people that went to the University of Michigan? That's still out for debate. But listen, I understand that there are different...

philosophies on how to accomplish that. But I can tell you from what I, when I talk to manufacturing leaders, what they say is reduce the cost of doing business here in the United States and we will flourish. And when either side or both sides focus on that, that is exactly what we'll see in this country. The cost of production, the cost of manufacturing in the U.S.,

My understanding from 60 years on this planet in business education is that it's higher here, materially higher here than the rest of the world. That's why the jobs went to other places around the world. Can the U.S. compete on a cost basis, manufacturing-wise, do you think? Yes, they can. And how do we do that?

Some people will say, "Oh, well, the cost of labor." You know what? Don't give me that. I want to pay our people more. I want our people in this country to be paid more. If we're going to do that, that means that we've got a lower cost that we actually have control over. And I sound like a broken record, but I'm going to go back to tax reform. 2017, those reforms were rocket fuel. And now we have members of Congress saying, "Well, maybe we don't have to do quite as much as we did before. Maybe we can raise taxes on small businesses." No, that's not going to work.

is just not going to work. What types of manufacturing would you like to see in the U.S. that maybe we're not doing right now?

Actually, we're doing almost everything. I just want to do more of it. Like, can we make an iPhone here versus Foxconn in China? I believe that those are the types of jobs that you'll see coming here with the right policies, yeah. How do you respond to it? Technology, production. In the last couple days, they've reduxed the Trump Arnaud visit to Texas to try to make handbags for Louis Vuitton, whatever, leather projects as well.

How do you respond to the stereotype Americans can't do the fine work

that we get out of Asian manufacturing and employment. I'll give you one example. Gretsch, now owned by Fender, makes white falcon guitars in Japan. They're exquisite. Nothing was ever made like that out of Michigan years ago. How do you respond to the fact Americans can't do the fine manufacturing work of Asia? Well, maybe we should do that in Ohio.

But it's a big part of Ohio, right? No, I'm just... Listen, I think Americans can rise to the challenge of literally anything in the terms of manufacturing. But I do have to say this. We can't do everything here in the United States much as we would like to, but we can do a whole lot more. Right now, we have 500,000 open jobs in manufacturing. And to your point...

are people really inspired to go into manufacturing? That is the job of our manufacturing institute, to make sure young people see. - Well come on, pay is the solution there, right? - Well pay is the highest in any sector of the economy. - Okay. - Right, the average pay. - I must ask, how do you respond to job loss in Windsor, Ontario, and job loss in Michigan in manufacturing auto? I mean this is nuts, what we're going through right now. - Some of that is going south.

right, where there are lower costs of doing business. And some of that is demand. And some of that is additional potential costs like tariff policy that could have a negative impact on our ability to be productive here in this country to lower the cost of production. We're hearing, you know, the whole discussion of tariffs are creating a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace. Are you hearing that from the manufacturers you talk to? Every single day.

Yeah. So are they pulling back on capital investments? I think that they're very, to be very blunt about it, I think manufacturers are very concerned. They want to see progress. The president has given himself 90 days, I don't know what that's down to now, about 80 probably left, to negotiate deals from around the world. And we are very hopeful that we're going to see some policies that are zero for zero tariffs. I understand the Italian prime minister is proposing exactly that right now for the EU.

But we also have a couple other issues. We've got critical minerals, critical inputs, like critical minerals or machinery for shop floors, chemicals. That we can't do here right now. We've got to figure out a way to bring those into these discussions as well. And then incentives, by the way. But is there bipartisan support?

to fix, say, pharmaceuticals that are made in China or Europe, or rare minerals have been co-opted by China. I don't see the bipartisan support. Well, what I hear is we want to make sure that our supply chain is strong and is kind of unbreakable. If you think back to COVID,

our supply chain was broken. And so we weren't able to access things like PPE. We were, as an organization, we were calling the entire world to get PPE here to New York. Lisa, put up your back. We got to go. But Jay Timmons, this is a manufacturing at your best. This is an Anthony Volpe, American-made torpedo bat of the New York Yankees. I was going to ask you about the torpedoes.

That is a fine American manufacturing. Exactly right. That's for the great American game. Baseball. There you go. Yeah, let's hit it out of the park. We're going to hit it out of the park as the Yankees did last night. Jake Timmons, thank you so much. She's CEO and president of the National Association of Manufacturers. Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Valley with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning.

With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.