As most of you by now know, the NAM has a new President in former three-term Michigan Governor John Engler. He is busy getting settled in (having started October 1) but has already hit the ground running. He is determined to continue to raise the profile of manufacturing and to grow our influence in Washington and beyond.

As if to make the point, the Washington Post ran a photo of some familiar-looking folks gathering to see the President make his acceptance speech on the day after the Election. View image That’s my new boss there, second from right, between Colin Powell and Tommy Thompson, two down from Don Rumsfeld and three down from Tom Ridge.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words…..

Wow — it hasn’t taken long for the chatter to begin. Am hearing from a lot of you on a wide range of topics. Let me know when you reply, by the way, if you will allow your comments to be posted or if they are intended for me only (thanks, Mom!).

On “Don’t Get Daschled”, Gage McCotter of The Auto Truck Group in Bensenville, Ill. writes: It’s not only Democrats who found they were out of touch with their constituents on Nov 2nd. Phil Crane, a 16-term pro-business Republican congressman from one of the most conservative districts in Illinois, lost to his Democratic challenger because the broad consensus was that he had lost touch with the district and had become lazy. He could be the poster child for the term-limits proponents. Being a reliable voter for pro-business legislation isn’t enough anymore.

In response to “Dick Kelch and Capital Formation”, Steve Dunn of Seneca Wire of Fostoria, Ohio, says, “One small point concerning the “Need to go to the feds” for capital formation. We need to quit trying to have it both ways. Either we are on our own without or with minimal interference from the government or we accept their meddling and regulation in exchange for their help. Quit acting like babies and asking for everything.

Oh, and most importantly, Frank Newton of Newton Screen Printing in Butler NJ — who I’ve known since 3d grade — in response to news of my new blog said simply, “You must have a lot of time on your hands…”

My old friend Rich Galen over at Mullings (www.mullings.com) was talking the other day about the growing use of the verb “to Daschle”, as in “I don’t want to get Daschled”. It is surprising how potent Sen. Daschle’s defeat has become on Capitol Hill. It has become a morality tale, an object lesson for anyone who is straying too far from their roots, whose record and constituents grow too far apart.

This is especially true among the class of ’06, the 33 Senators who are up for re-election in two years. Download the list. Some of these folks will be getting a little jittery, looking over their shoulders in the coming two year session, the mighty 109th Congress. We are hopeful that we have a real shot at some long-awaited legislation like legal reform and can maybe make some headway with the folks who don’t want to get daschled.

Got an e-mail from my old buddy Dick Kelch of Ashton Plastics in Xenia, Ohio. Dick is no shrinking violet and we have a brisk e-mail dialogue. Dick lets me know if I jump the track. In any event, he wrote to say, “You guys have to work on capital formation and working capital help from the Feds. Nothing else. I am tired of preaching this and GW always says he wants to see action… The banking community is really putting the screws to everyone and not making ANY working capital loans.”

Was wondering if any of you were experiencing the same thing. This is one of those issues that we heard a little bit about a few years back, then nothing. Is it bubbling up again?

Dick Kelch, by the way, is a septuagenarian manufacturer with movie star looks who embodies all that is great about manufacturing. He has battled back from some tough times to innovate and invent new consumer products that are already very popular with seniors. Click here for our Just In Time profile of Dick from just a month or so ago.

Lawyers, it seems, are always detroying wealth while mfrs are busy creating it. This is a rant about lawyers Download file

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Among the issues the new Congress will have to face are some critical trade votes. For starters, the President’s Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) will expire on 6/1/05, but can be extended for two more years. Also, under the Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994, Congress has the opportunity to vote every 5 years on whether the US should remain a member of the WTO. We stay in the WTO absent a vote to remove us.

These are both critical votes. More trade is better than less trade. We added almost 300,000 auto jobs in this country in the years after NAFTA passed, even though some folks speak of NAFTA in only pejorative terms. Of our 90,000-some exporters to Australia, some 70,000 are small manufacturers, puncturing the old myth that trade somehow only inures to the benefit of large companies. In our membership is an army of small and medium manufacturers (SMMs) who are aggressively exporting around the globe.

As for the WTO, while some folks may carp, anarchy is a bad alternative. We need to say in the body of nations and take every opportunity to make sure our trading partners comply with the full range of WTO rules.

Click here Download file
for a link to the NAM press release on these upcoming critical trade votes.

Greetings, all!

It’s great to be back at the keyboard, after a bit of a hiatus to re-charge the battery. As many of you know, for 5 years I wrote the cover of Workplace Watch, our HR newsletter, handing it over one year ago to the capable hands of Sandy Boyd. Damn if she didn’t make it better. Oh well, in the absence of a deadline I didn’t write anything for a while, putting my toe back in then water fairly recently writing some pieces for our Small and Medium Manufacturers (SMM) publication, “Just in Time” and for our Public Affairs newsletter, “PA Corner“. I’ll still be doing this and will link to those pieces if they’re any good, i.e., in case lightning strikes.

Enough personal stuff. I thought post-election was as good a time as any to start NAM-blog. Truth is, I was holding my breath for the last several months, making it tough to write in the first place. In this blog, we’ll be bringing you some thoughts on policy issues related to manufacturing, some rants, some random chatter, and links to relevant news and developments. I may enlist the help of some colleagues later on, when it’s time to depart from the rhetoric and get down to content.

To get you started, here’s a link to a schmaltzy piece that should make you all proud that you voted. Click here It’s such an important duty and one that almost 120m Americans discharged last Tuesday. Among those 120m Americans were a few million manufacturers, many making the difference in key battleground states.

So anyway, it’s good to be back. If you have an idea for topics, or want to vent or complain, just e-mail me at pjcleary@nam.org. Keep watching this space every few days for updates. Thanks to all of you who voted, who made a difference in this election. Watch this space for info over the next few days with real hard evidence that – thanks to the efforts of manufacturers and their workers – we’re moving unmistakably toward a more manufacturing-friendly Congress, little by little.

A GOTV Story “After two years in Washington”, actor-turned Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) once famously said, “I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.”
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