washington business
In Their Words
In August, AWB played host to the Conference of State
Manufacturing Associations at Suncadia Resort in Cle
Elum. Washington Business sat down with Jay Timmons,
President and CEO of the National Association of
Manufacturers, during his visit to the state to discuss the
state of manufacturing, workforce development and the
2012 presidential campaign.
AWB is the state’s manufacturing association
and a member of the National Association of
Manufacturers. Tell us about the challenges
facing manufacturers in our country today.
Jay Timmons
National Association of Manufacturers
Other countries are salivating at the prospect of taking
away our mantle of economic leadership, so they’re
offering manufacturers incentives, they’re making the
regulatory regimes in their countries less burdensome,
they’re lowering taxes — they’re doing everything
right while we’re doing everything wrong.
We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world
right now. We have an enormously burdensome regulatory
regime and the regulators continue to look at relationships with
business as adversarial — instead of partnerships — and our
energy policy is … laughable. Because we don’t have one.
We’re not taking advantage of our own domestic resources
and other countries are. So as energy costs go up, as the cost of
the tax burden goes up, as the regulatory costs go up, it’s 18
percent more expensive to do business in the United States than
it is anywhere else in the world — and that’s after you take out
the cost of labor. So, labor costs eventually will equalize around
the world, as other economies start to grow.
I’m not at all worried about being able to compete on the labor
side. In fact, I hope our workers are always the highest paid in the
world. I think that is the mark of true leadership. But those other
costs that we can impact from Washington and the states are the
things that are driving up costs of doing business and making
manufacturers make decisions they don’t want to make. They’re
patriotic Americans. They want to create jobs here in this country, they want to manufacture products here in this country, but
unfortunately, they’re being forced by our own federal government to look elsewhere in order to be competitive.
“…manufacturers and their employees have to
take this election more seriously than they’ve
taken any other election to date.”
22 association of washington business
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a significant amount of manufacturing that’s being done here — there is. Twelve percent of our GDP
is manufacturing, and it’s an incredibly important part of our
economy. But going back to the original point: any job in manufacturing has such a high multiplier effect, that it’s important that
we grow that part of our economy. We want more manufacturers.
We want to bring jobs back to this country. We want to create new
jobs in this country, encourage investment here.
There seems to be a stigma about manufacturing —
and manufacturing jobs — in this country.
Why are fewer high school graduates considering
careers in this industry?
Again, I think it’s a matter of educating the general public on
what manufacturing is today. Manufacturing today is not your
grandfather’s manufacturing. My family prospered because my
grandfather left the farm and went into manufacturing at Mead.
He was a line worker for 40 years, and because of his work, he
allowed my family to move into the middle class.
More kids are going to college to be doctors these days. And
we thought OK, well instead of worrying about being one of