One last look at the terrific Town Hall meeting we held in Manchester, New Hampshire this week.

AAM did what we set out to do—to rally the people and sound the proverbial “firebell in the night.”  We launched our Town Hall campaign on Tuesday night with a resounding triumph in granite-solid Manchester, New Hampshire.  And it seems that while the people “get it,” not everyone has put “manufacturing crisis” on their radar.

Manchester’s Palace Theater is a great, old-time venue.  Built in 1915, it has that timeless look of classic Americana—balconies, orchestra pit, box seats, drapes, curtains, red-white-and-blue bunting…  We all felt right at home during our first ‘Keep it Made in America’ Town hall meeting.

Fortunately, we drew a lively, enthusiastic crowd.  You can read a play-by-play description of the event on New Hampshire’s Granite Grok, including some interesting quotes from our host, John Ratzenberger, such as:
“I would rather my grandchild’s crib was made here rather than in China.”
“When a factory shuts down, it’s not just the factory, it’s the whole town.”
“You’ll never see the name of a Chinese factory on your kid’s little league uniform.”
“China doesn’t have scrubbers, they dump toxic effluent into their rivers. Our plants are clean.”

You can also view some footage of John being interviewed after the meeting ended.  It’ll give you a sense of the crowd’s lingering excitement—the people milling around, the big stage, the lights, the signs saying ‘Keep it Made in America.’

Unfortunately, Tim Russert didn’t make use of all this intense voter interest when he moderated the Democratic debate on Wednesday night.  He simply didn’t discuss jobs.  Thankfully, China managed to creep into the discussion during a question of product safety issues, with Christopher Dodd offered a barbed “We’d shut down a domestic company in 20 minutes if it were producing products as bad as what China is shipping to us.” 

Ideally, Russert would have attended the Manchester Town Hall meeting, or at least flipped through the Manchester Union Leader to ponder the more than 27,000 manufacturing jobs that the state has shed in the last seven years.

All in all, though, AAM is very excited by the launch of our Town Hall campaign.  And the buzz continues to build.  We’ll be moving on to Des Moines, Iowa for the next Town Hall meeting on October 17.  We’re already receiving plenty of media interest, so if you plan to attend, start marking it on your calendar.  Or visit our website for more information.      

PS: check out AAM Senior Analyst Kerri Houston’s latest op-ed on manufacturing, published in the New Hampshire Business Review.

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Yesterday’s Town Hall meeting in Manchester, NH was a great success and a lot of fun.  Host John Ratzenberger gave a terrific talk to a few hundred concerned New Hampshire voters and led a discussion with panelists that included local and state public representatives. 

Earlier in the day, John discussed the Town Hall meeting with CNN’s Kitty Pilgrim.  You can scroll down through a transcript to read what was said.  There’s also a short article on John Ratzenberger and the Manchester Town Hall meeting in the Boston Herald.

Stay tuned for videos and clips. 

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AAM is in Manchester, NH and we’re geared up for our first “Keep it Made in America” Town Hall meeting, hosted by John Ratzenberger.  We’ve doing media interviews throughout the day, and the reaction has been amazing.  People recognize and understand that their jobs are on the line, and that the future of the U.S. economy is on the line.  Simply put: cheap imports are no substitute for good paying jobs.

We’re expecting a terrific turn-out.

The Town Hall meeting starts at 6:30 pm EST and will be BLOGGED LIVE on GraniteGrok.  Stay tuned for more news.

The AAM team heads up to New Hampshire today for our first “Keep it Made in America” Town Hall meeting.  (The meeting will be held tomorrow night in Manchester, but we’re arriving early to make sure that we get everything just absolutely perfect). 

We’ll be posting information on the event as often as possible, so make sure to check back to this blog.  In the meantime, check out an article on the Town Hall meetings in today’s Washinton Examiner.

See you in New Hampshire.

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A national Town Hall meeting will be held in Manchester at 6:30 pm this Tuesday night, Sept. 25, at the Palace Theater.  New Hampshire bloggers are invited to attend and cover the event.  The theater is Wi-Fi enabled.

A brief summary:

1. The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), a national, non-partisan organization based in Washington, DC,  is sponsoring the event.

2. The meeting will be hosted by TV’s John Ratzenberger (‘Cheers,’ The Travel Channel’s ‘Made in America’).

3. The meeting precedes the Democratic and Republican debates on Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 26 and 27. 

4. The event will focus on New Hampshire’s continued loss of manufacturing and textile jobs.  Voters will be encouraged to ask candidates blunt questions about what they’ll do to help save U.S. manufacturing.

Attendance is free, and is open to the general public.  Bloggers are encouraged to RSVP in order to reserve media seating and Internet access.  This is a non-partisan event.  No campaign paraphernalia or propaganda from any political party or candidate will be allowed inside (t-shirts, signs, buttons, etc.)

To RSVP, or if you have any questions, please contact Steven Capozzola at: scapozzola@aamfg.org, 202-393-3430. 

 Special thanks to Cow Hampshire’s Janice Brown for the nice mention of our Town Hall meeting.  We’re also grateful to Doug Lambert at GraniteGrok for his interest and Brian Lawson at NH Prez Watch.

The big day is here and we have some big news…

The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) has partnered with actor John Ratzenberger (“Cheers,” The Travel Channel’s “Made in America”) to host a national series of “Keep It Made In America” Town Hall meetings this fall.  We hope to see you there.

By the way, AAM’s Scott Paul published a piece on today’s Huffington Post that discusses the Town Hall meetings.  Read it here.

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In yet one more “same old, same old” news item, there’s an article in today’s Providence Journal about a longtime Pawtucket, RI factory that will be closing its doors and moving operations to India.  Following a decision by parent company Tecumseh Products to move offshore, Pawtucket’s Vitrus Inc. will be closing its doors and laying off its workers. 

According to the Providence Journal’s Benjamin Gedan, Vitrus’ 50,000-square-foot plant is located “where America’s Industrial Revolution began.”  Unfortunately, and if present trends continue, it will now be one of the places where America’s industrial age ends.

Manufacturing is often viewed, incorrectly, as simply an assembly line, nuts-and bolts, operation.  What many Americans don’t realize is that modern manufacturing is unusually hi-tech, with most line workers operating state-of-the-art, computerized systems that form and shape parts to tolerances of less than one thousandth of an inch.  As U.S. factories close, these valuable skills are being lost, and may never be replaced.

In other news, ManufactureThis commented yesterday on the dollar’s continuing fall against the Euro.  At the close of trading yesterday, the Euro reached a record $1.3971.  It remains to be seen when, and if, the Euro will break the psychological benchmark of $1.40.

The ongoing outflow of U.S. capital due to our continuing, massive trade deficit is exerting downward pressure on the dollar in all the wrong places.  This is but one troubling offshoot of flawed U.S. trade policy.  If jobs and production continue to move offshore, the country will continue to lose productive assets.

A final note: Keep checking both this blog and the AAM website for a big announcement in the near future about our plans to help strengthen U.S. manufacturing.
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Today, the Bush administration is holding a National Summit on American Competitiveness with executives from global companies such as Wal-Mart, FedEx and General Motors, as well as academia.  Designed to boost American innovation and competitiveness, the conference will examine four key areas: “the role of the private sector; education and workforce issues; energy independence; and partnerships in innovation.”

While rising energy costs undoubtedly affect American manufacturing, the issues of innovation and competitiveness deserve serious scrutiny.

But U.S. manufacturing workers aren’t losing their jobs because of failed “education.”  In fact, they’ve known an important bottom line since they learned it in kindergarten—cheating isn’t fair. 

The U.S. is losing manufacturing jobs because countries like China employ illegal trade practices such as subsidies and currency manipulation.  And as long as China cheats, and the U.S. takes no forceful action in response, no improvement in “innovation” will make any difference. 

The attendees at today’s summit would be better served if they read Dr. Peter Navarro’s stinging rebuke of China apologists in today’s Wall Street Journal.  According to Navarro, China’s “gross currency manipulation” effectively imposes a “stiff tariff” on U.S. exports—exactly the sort of “protectionism” that Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez decried when announcing today’s event.

So forget the highfalutin talk of “competition.”  By definition, competition requires that every participant sprint from the same starting line.  It’s not a fair 100-yard-dash if China starts each race on the 40-yard-line—as their currency pegging allows.

In other troubling news, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reported yesterday that a falling dollar may pose potentially serious long-term problems for the U.S. economy—not the least of which is inflation at a time of already surging gas prices. 

A weakened dollar could mean higher interest rates as the U.S. tries to attract further loans to subsidize its massive trade deficit.  It also means less investor confidence in the dollar.

In a sign that the dollar may well be losing its preeminence, EPI notes that U.S. private investment abroad has more than tripled over the past 18 months, raising “the chances of a rapid, disorderly dollar decline and a financial crisis that could cause domestic interest rates to spike and push the economy into recession.”  With the dollar falling in value, foreign central banks may also diversify their holdings and sell off U.S. assets, adding to concerns of looming inflation.

The question is whether the U.S. can simply keep borrowing enough money to stay in place.  Much better would be a situation where U.S. trade comes into balance.  A helpful start would be for the U.S. to get its trade policy right.  Strong enforcement of U.S. trade laws, both to reverse the decline of U.S. manufacturing and ease an ongoing accumulation of foreign debt, seems a logical starting point.

Too bad they’re not talking trade policy at the big innovation summit today.
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Apparently, it’s not just children’s toys made in China that have been coated with unsafe lead paint.  A recent ABC news item reveals that at least two Chinese factories shipped contaminated steel to the U.S., and that the steel may have been installed in buildings or condominiums.

AAM has previously noted that production outsourced to China typically utilizes a corner-cutting, low-cost approach.  And since lead-based paint costs less than lead-free paint, some Chinese factories have found it economically advantageous to use the leaded paint when coating steel products.

Not so in the United States, where lead paint is almost universally banned from production due to potential health hazards.

The United States imported 2.6 million tons of finished steel from China in 2006.  Identifying the lead-tainted steel will pose difficulties, and any resulting clean-up efforts could prove extremely costly. 

There are tradeoffs to globalization.  As AAM reported in its ‘Enforcing the Rules’ study, good-paying U.S. jobs offers far greater benefits to the overall economy than the fleeting appeal of illegally subsidized imports.  The health hazards of these unregulated imports offers yet another example of outsourcing’s drawbacks.
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