Policy issues
The NAM's policy issue work is focused in the areas of labor, employment, health care, energy, corporate finance, tax, bilateral trade, multilateral trade, export controls, technology, regulatory and infrastructure policy. [5] The organization emphasizes four pillars that are supposed to make America great: free enterprise, competitiveness, individual liberty, and equal opportunity.
The NAM releases a Manufacturing Outlook Survey every quarter. As of the second quarter of 2018, according to the NAM, 95.1% of manufacturers registered a positive outlook for their company, "the highest level recorded in the survey’s 20-year history." [6] The same survey found that manufacturers rated "the inability to attract and retain a quality workforce" as their top concern. President Donald Trump mentioned the NAM’s survey in an event at the White House in April 2018. [7]
The NAM’s Manufacturing Institute is a 501(c)3 dedicated to developing a modern manufacturing workforce to help manufacturers get skilled, qualified and productive workers to remain competitive. The Institute sponsors Manufacturing Day on the first Friday of October, a nationwide event for manufacturers to host students, parents, and policy-leaders and "address common misperceptions about manufacturing."
In 2017, the NAM launched the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project (MAP), a campaign run through the Manufacturers’ Center for Legal Action (MCLA) to combat frivolous, politically-motivated lawsuits against energy manufacturers. As of August 2018, three of those lawsuits have been dismissed from court. [8]
According to NAM, manufacturing employs nearly 12 million workers, contributes more than $2.25 trillion to the U.S. economy annually, is the largest driver of economic growth in the nation and accounts for the majority of private sector research and development. [1] In 2022, after the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic led to new competition for a dwindling labor force, NAM predicted that, by 2030, 2.1 million US jobs in manufacturing could go unfilled. [9]
Legislation
Opposition to federal right-to-repair legislation
In July 2024, NAM signed a letter to members of both the House Committee on Armed Services and the Senate Committee on Armed Services opposing Section 828 of S. 4628, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025, entitled "Requirement for Contractors to Provide Reasonable Access to Repair Materials," which would require contractors doing business with the US military to agree "to provide the Department of Defense fair and reasonable access to all the repair materials, including parts, tools, and information, used by the manufacturer or provider or their authorized partners to diagnose, maintain, or repair the good or service." [13]
History
NAM was founded by Thomas P. Egan, late President of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce and head of the J.A. Fay and Egan Co., woodworking and machinery company, not long after reading an editorial in the magazine Dixie, out of Atlanta, Georgia, during the depression of 1894. This editorial urged the manufacturers of the time to organize and work together to improve business conditions nationally. Under Egan's leadership, organization began, and a group was created; they called themselves the "Big 50"; he invited them, and asked them to invite others, to Cincinnati. On Jan 25, 1895, in the Oddfellows Temple, where 583 manufacturers attended, NAM was created. [15] "The U.S. was in the midst of a deep recession and many of the nation's manufacturers saw a strong need to export their products in other countries. One of the NAM's earliest efforts was to call for the creation of the U.S. Department of Commerce". [16] The organization's first president was Thomas Dolan of Philadelphia [17] (not, as erroneously listed in some sources, Samuel P. Bush).
The early history of NAM was marked by frank verbal attacks on labor. In 1903, President David MacLean Parry [18] delivered a speech at its annual convention which argued that unions' goals would result in "despotism, tyranny, and slavery." Parry advocated the establishment of a great national anti-union federation under the control of the NAM, and the NAM responded by initiating such an effort. [19]
In an address at its 1911 convention, NAM President John Kirby Jr. proclaimed, "The American Federation of Labor is engaged in an open warfare against Jesus Christ and his cause." [20]
The NAM also encouraged the creation and propagation of a network of local anti-union organizations, many of which took the name Citizens' Alliance. [21] In October 1903 the local Citizens' Alliance groups were united by a national organization called the Citizens' Industrial Alliance of America. [22]
The NAM, in the late 1930s, used one of the earliest versions of a modern multi-faceted public relations campaign. The aim of this effort was to convince the American public and academia of the existential merits of an economic system free of governmental regulation and initiatives, and to combat the policies of President Franklin Roosevelt. [23] [24] [25] NAM made efforts to undermine organized labor in the United States before the New Deal. [26]
The NAM lobbied successfully for the 1947 Taft–Hartley Act to restrict the unions' power. [27]
The advent of commercial television led to the NAM's own 15-minute television program, Industry on Parade , [28] which aired from 1950–1960. [29]
President Donald Trump addressed the NAM board in 2017. [30] NAM hired several former Trump officials as lobbyists. [31] During the 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol building, NAM equated the events to "sedition" and called for Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment of the United States Constitution "to preserve democracy." [32]
The United States Department of Commerce (DOC) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government concerned with promoting the conditions for economic growth and opportunity.
The International Trade Administration (ITA) is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that promotes United States exports of nonagricultural U.S. goods and services.
The United States federal executive departments are the principal units of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States. They are analogous to ministries common in parliamentary or semi-presidential systems but they are led by a head of government who is also the head of state. The executive departments are the administrative arms of the president of the United States. There are currently 15 executive departments.
The United States Chamber of Commerce (USCC) is a business association advocacy group. It is the largest lobbying group in the United States. The group was founded in April 1912 out of local chambers of commerce at the urging of President William Howard Taft and his Secretary of Commerce and Labor Charles Nagel. It was Taft's belief that the "government needed to deal with a group that could speak with authority for the interests of business."
Union busting is a range of activities undertaken to disrupt or weaken the power of trade unions or their attempts to grow their membership in a workplace.
The Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950 is a United States federal law enacted on September 8, 1950, in response to the start of the Korean War. It was part of a broad civil defense and war mobilization effort in the context of the Cold War. Its implementing regulations, the Defense Priorities and Allocation System (DPAS), are located at 15 CFR §§700 to 700.93. Since 1950, the Act has been reauthorized over 50 times. It has been periodically amended and remains in force.
The United States–Korea Free Trade Agreement, also known as KORUS FTA, is a trade agreement between the United States and South Korea. Negotiations were announced on February 2, 2006, and concluded on April 1, 2007. The treaty was first signed on June 30, 2007, with a renegotiated version signed in early December 2010.
Green jobs are, according to the United Nations Environment Program, "work in agricultural, manufacturing, research and development (R&D), administrative, and service activities that contribute(s) substantially to preserving or restoring environmental quality. Specifically, but not exclusively, this includes jobs that help to protect ecosystems and biodiversity; reduce energy, materials, and water consumption through high efficiency strategies; de-carbonize the economy; and minimize or altogether avoid generation of all forms of waste and pollution." The environmental sector has the dual benefit of mitigating environmental challenges as well as helping economic growth.
The International Innovation Index is a global index measuring the level of innovation of a country, produced jointly by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and The Manufacturing Institute (MI), the NAM's nonpartisan research affiliate. NAM describes it as the "largest and most comprehensive global index of its kind".
Jerry J. Jasinowski is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Association of Manufacturers and Founder and Past President of the Manufacturing Institute.
Nicholas Everett Hollis, born May 11, 1944, in Randolph, Vermont, became a leading trade expansionist over the last three decades of the twentieth century sponsoring dozens of high-level trade/investment missions and international conferences utilizing influential business and government positions in organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), Industry Center for Trade Negotiations (ICTN), U.S. Department of State/Agency for International Development (USAID), Agri-Energy Roundtable (AER), and most recently as president of The Agribusiness Council (ABC), a nonprofit organization founded by Henry Heinz II in 1967.
The Illinois Manufacturers' Association (IMA) is a trade association for manufacturing companies in Illinois. It bills itself as "the oldest and largest statewide manufacturing trade association in the United States." Based in Oak Brook, Illinois, and founded in 1893 by businessmen opposed to legislation limiting the working hours of women, IMA has more than 4000 member companies. The association lobbies on behalf of Illinois manufacturing interests and has its own political action committee and polling organization. IMA's president and CEO is Mark Denzler. The IMA publishes a quarterly magazine, The Illinois Manufacturer.
Richard Lane Hudson Jr. is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for North Carolina's 9th congressional district since 2013. A member of the Republican Party, his district covers a large part of the southern Piedmont area from Concord to Spring Lake.
Rohit Khanna is an American politician and lawyer serving as the U.S. representative from California's 17th congressional district since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he defeated eight-term incumbent Democratic Representative Mike Honda in the general election on November 8, 2016, after first running for the same seat in 2014. Khanna also served as the deputy assistant secretary in the United States Department of Commerce under President Barack Obama from August 8, 2009, to August 2011. Khanna endorsed Bernie Sanders for president of the United States in 2016. In 2020, Khanna co-chaired the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign.
Manufacturing USA, previously known as the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, is a network of research institutes in the United States that focuses on developing manufacturing technologies through public-private partnerships among U.S. industry, universities, and federal government agencies. Modeled similar to Germany's Fraunhofer Institutes, the network currently consists of 16 institutes. The institutes work independently and together on a number of advanced technologies.
The Trump tariffs were protectionist trade initiatives during the first Trump administration against Chinese imports. During the first presidency of Donald Trump, a series of tariffs were imposed on China as part of his "America First" economic policy to reduce the United States trade deficit by shifting American trade policy from multilateral free trade agreements to bilateral trade deals. In January 2018, Trump imposed tariffs on solar panels and washing machines of 30–50%. In March 2018, he imposed tariffs on steel (25%) and aluminum (10%) from most countries, which, according to Morgan Stanley, covered an estimated 4.1% of U.S. imports. In June 2018, this was extended to the European Union, Canada, and Mexico. The Trump administration separately set and escalated tariffs on goods imported from China, leading to a trade war.
An economic conflict between China and the United States has been ongoing since January 2018, when U.S. President Donald Trump began setting tariffs and other trade barriers on China with the goal of forcing it to make changes to what the U.S. says are longstanding unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft. The first Trump administration stated that these practices may contribute to the U.S.–China trade deficit, and that the Chinese government requires transfer of American technology to China. In response to US trade measures, the Chinese government accused the Trump administration of engaging in nationalist protectionism and took retaliatory action. After the trade war escalated through 2019, in January 2020 the two sides reached a tense phase-one agreement. By the end of the Trump's first presidency, the trade war was widely characterized as a failure for the United States.
The United States government applies economic sanctions against certain institutions and key members of the Chinese government and its ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), certain companies linked to the People's Liberation Army (PLA), and other affiliates that the U.S. government has accused of aiding in human rights abuses. The U.S. maintained embargoes against China from the inception of the People's Republic of China in 1949 until 1972. An embargo was reimposed by the U.S. following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. From 2020 onward, the U.S. imposed sanctions and visa restrictions against several Chinese government officials and companies, in response to the persecution of Uyghurs in China, human rights abuses in Hong Kong and Tibet, military-civil fusion, support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and fentanyl production.
The Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association is a trade advocacy organization headquartered in Harrisburg, the capital of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Association was founded in Harrisburg on 9 October 1909 by Joseph R. Grundy, a manufacturer from Bucks County. The group’s original members were Pennsylvania individuals and companies engaged in the manufacturing of goods as well as trade and local associations representing the manufacturers.
Jay Timmons is an American lobbyist and government official. Since 2011, he has been president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), one of the largest U.S. trade associations. Earlier in his career, Timmons was executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and chief of staff to Virginia Governor George Allen.
