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Though we’ve long been frustrated by the fact that the federal government spends taxpayer dollars on foreign-made goods, we found one recent example of this practice particularly infuriating.

During last year’s 10th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) purchased 70,000 commemorative bracelets for their workers. Unfortunately, these bracelets, which were intended to honor lives lost here in America, were made in China.

The 9/11 bracelets are just the tip of the iceberg.  Due to glaring loopholes in existing Buy America legislation, federal agencies have spent billions on foreign goods and services, including $500 billion in the past five years alone.

This is unacceptable. Luckily, a bill was recently introduced in Congress that is a step in the right direction: The Invest in American Jobs Act (H.R. 3533).  It will help ensure that taxpayer dollars are used to buy American-made goods for federally funded highway projects by giving preference to American-made steel, iron and other materials.  Click HERE to tell your member of Congress to support the Invest in American Jobs Act.

Tell your representative that it’s time to stop outsourcing federal purchases, and to focus on creating American jobs. Urge them to co-sponsor the Invest in American Jobs Act, a great first step toward keeping federal purchases American-made.

Together We Can Keep it Made in America.

Here’s a random point of discussion for the day… Take a look at the photo in this blog post. It’s a manhole cover on 9th Street in New York City, near 1st Avenue.

[Coincidentally, it is located right near the New York office of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM).]

Here’s the question: Why wasn’t this manhole cover made in the U.S.? Why was New York City taxpayer money used to buy a foreign manhole cover instead of an American-made one?

Let’s hypothesize that the City of New York chose to purchase from India due to lower cost. Ie: The manhole covers imported from India were X percent cheaper for Y quantity.

QUESTION: Is there anything wrong with NYC going with the lower-cost option?

Well, actually, let’s find out WHY the Indian version was cheaper. Why might India be able to underbid its U.S. counterparts? (more…)

If you want to field a good baseball team, you don’t just show up on opening day and say “Let’s play.”  No, you carefully plan your team.  You make sure to get the best pitchers (“pitching, pitching, pitching,” as they say).  And you make sure your sluggers take a lot of batting practice.  In short you work at it and you plan.

The same fundamental idea applies to building a nation’s manufacturing sector.  With global competition so aggressive, it’s not enough to simply hope that other countries will buy your exports.  You have to make a concerted effort to build up your factories and then give them the tools to succeed.

Take Germany, for example. The German workforce continues to be well-paid and highly unionized while the country enjoys the position of being a manufacturing juggernaut.  The secret?  Thriving labor conditions are combined with smartly targeted niche production, industrial specialization, and deliberately localized financing.

Simply put, Germany has identified and implemented the key steps it needs to field a home run-hitting industrial sector.

However, almost every industrialized nation has adopted similar tactics.  Common sense tells us that manufacturing generates value-added income.  It produces wealth and supports good-paying jobs.  Why shouldn’t these countries do what it takes to win?

Sadly, the United States is the one major country without any semblance of a manufacturing strategy.  The U.S. has no concerted plan to address predatory trade from other countries or to focus investment on new areas of technology.  The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) has repeatedly offered a key plan for U.S. manufacturing, one that would pull together efforts in these key areas.

The latest country intent on bypassing the U.S. on the road to industrial success is India.  As Adrienne Selko reports in IndustryWeek, the Government of India is ramping up its factories: (more…)

Excellent debate on CNBC featuring the Alliance for American Manufacturing’s Scott Paul about the currency manipulation bill.

Last Thursday, President Obama suggested that voters give Congress an earful on the horrible state of the economy. He was right to do that. There is plenty that Congress can do to spur private sector job creation that would not swell our federal budget deficit.

Taken together, these steps would provide a significant boost to the productive sector of the American economy. Creating one manufacturing job will support four or five other jobs in the economy, which is why it makes sense to adopt a coordinated manufacturing policy which would include the following steps:

• Establish a national infrastructure bank to leverage capital for large-scale transportation and energy projects.

• Reshape the tax code in a revenue neutral way to provide incentives for job creation and inward investment. (more…)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In a special July 4 guest column, Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing says one way we can all show our patriotism and boost the economy is to do our best to buy American-made products.

Enjoy the fireworks today and thank our Founding Fathers for the freedom we enjoy. While you are at it, thank them for making manufacturing a central part of the American idea.

Paul Revere was a patriot; he was also a manufacturer. In fact, the company bearing his name still operates today, now in upstate New York. Alexander Hamilton is well known as our nation’s first Treasury secretary, but few Americans know that he also wrote our nation’s first manufacturing policy in 1791. (more…)

By Scott Paul
Executive Director of Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM)

When IHS Global Insight revealed this week that China has passed the United States to lead the world in manufacturing output, the response from some in government and manufacturing was to quibble with the data. The correct response is to develop a national manufacturing strategy, so that we can once again lead the world in manufacturing, which is a position we’ve held for 110 years.

Why a strategy? Well, Germany has one. China has one. South Korea has one. In fact, every other industrialized nation has a network of currency, trade, tax, investment, innovation and skills policies that promote domestic manufacturing. We stand alone in allowing our jobs to be freely outsourced overseas. Our economic and training policies spur on a service and financial sector economy at the expense of investments in manufacturing.

First, let’s consider the data on the size of manufacturing. Manufacturing accounts for one-third of China’s economic output. For most of our industrial competitors, the number is somewhere between 15 and 20 percent. In America, manufacturing accounts for less than 13 percent of our GDP, and that figure is falling every year.

The rate of growth in manufacturing in China has averaged over 20 percent per annum over the past three years. In the U.S., despite a recent rebound, that figure is only 1.8 percent. We’ve shed 50,000 factories and 5.5 million manufacturing jobs over the past decade. Meanwhile, one company in China — Foxconn — created more manufacturing jobs last year than the entire U.S. economy. (more…)

By Scott Paul
Executive Director of Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM)

Our new man in China, Gary Locke, will have a big, bilateral economic mess to help clean up. The United States posted a record $273 billion trade deficit with China last year. China continues to slow-walk the Yuan’s appreciation against the dollar. And, China shows few signs of easing up on its mercantilist and protectionist policies that help to keep our export outs, and give Chinese production an unfair advantage in our market and others around the world.

Secretary Locke — announced by the president to become our next ambassador to China if confirmed by the Senate — compiled a pretty good record at the Commerce Department on these issues. The Administration stepped up trade enforcement to a degree we have not seen for 25 years, including landmark cases on Chinese tires and clean technology products. But, the Commerce Department refused to consider China’s currency manipulation as an unfair subsidy, which has prompted Congress to consider stepping in.

The mess that Ambassador Locke would need to clean up has been decades in the making. President Clinton’s team negotiated an exceptionally weak deal as China entered the World Trade Organization. The U.S. agreed to lower tariffs on Chinese products, end its annual trade-linked review of China’s human rights record, and diminish many of our trade enforcement options. In effect, the deal tied America’s hands even as China’s economic power — and mercantilism — expanded. (more…)

By Steven Capozzola
Media Director, Alliance for American Manufacturing

Bill Lambrecht at the St. Louis Post Dispatch has written an excellent article documenting some of the unexpected problems U.S. manufacturers are facing from illegally dumped imports from China.

Lambrecht relates the story of Missouri’s Mid Continent Nail.  The Poplar Bluff, MO-based company was relieved when a 2008 case with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) found that Chinese companies were dumping low-cost nails into the U.S. in an effort to undercut the pricing of U.S. manufacturers.  The ITC determined that these ”dumped” nails broke laws guarding against unfair trade.

Following the ITC ruling, the Commerce Department imposed duties on certain nail imports, which should have helped Mid Continent and other U.S. manufacturers of nails for home and industrial use.

Unfortunately, Mid Continent never saw the hoped-for gain in sales.  Instead, underpriced Chinese nails kept coming into the U.S. market. (more…)