There’s an op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post by our friend Bob Samuelson, who most always gets it right but who this time missed the mark. It’s called, “A Phony Science Gap” and aims to debunk the widely-held notion that we suffer a gap in science and engineering with China and India. While trying to make his point, he notes some facts that simultaneously undermine it:

– The number of engineering degrees (the root of our manufacturing innovation) has stagnated since 1990.

– While graduate school enrollment in science and engineering, foreign-born students represent a growing share of the total. We posted this chart back in August in connection with our Labor Day Report that illustrates this point quite well.

– He cites the lone study from the past few decades that claims to show lower-than-previously-stated graduates from 4-year engineering programs in China and goes on to add for solace that “per million people” (emphasis ours) the US graduates slightly more engineers with four-year degrees that China. Some consolation.

Even taking his arguments on their face, the trends buried therein would all be worrisome. If China is still cranking out more 2- and 3-year engineering degrees than all of the US and Canada combined — as this chart shows — that’s a very bad trend for us, for innovation and for manufacturing. We also need to make sure that we are keeping those foreign-born students who are studying here. We want to make sure that that we’re not shipping the next Andy Grove or Sergei Brin back home to compete against us. Think of it as the economic Olympics.

Finally, as this chart showed as part of our Labor Day Report, we have fallen behind in federal outlays for research and development for life sciences and for math, computer, physical sciences and engineering. We need to boost that spending as well, a proposal that’s part of the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative. There is additional good news: From 1993 – 2003, the median salary for engineers with a bachelor’s degree and 1-5 years’ experience rose 34%, as compared to a 7.7% for non-engineers. Not bad.

We would just take this opportunity to remind Bob Samuelson that every survey we’ve done of our member — large and small — shows a shortage of skilled employees. Engineers and scientists — like those feted by the President earlier his month — are the life blood of manufacturing. At the other end of the process — in an unbroken chain — is the US standard of living. We must fight — through education an and smart immigration policies — to make sure we will always have the best and the brightest right here in the good ol’ US of A.

The President was across town speaking to the Asia Society yesterday, focusing on his upcoming trip to India and Pakistan. He talked of steering clear of “protectionist policies” (are you listening, Lou….?) and talked about the interconnectivity of it all, and how this is good for US companies large and small. Here’s an excerpt from his remarks from yesterday. We pass them along because we thought they captured pretty well the up side of world trade, something the MSM tends to ignore.

“The area of America’s relationship with India that seems to receive the most attention is outsourcing. It’s true that a number of Americans have lost jobs because companies have shifted operations to India. And losing a job is traumatic. It’s difficult. It puts a strain on our families. But rather than respond with protectionist policies, I believe it makes sense to respond with educational polices to make sure that our workers are skilled for the jobs of the 21st century.

We must also recognize that India’s growth is creating new opportunities for our businesses and farmers and workers. India’s middle class is now estimated at 300 million people. Think about that. That’s greater than the entire population of the United States. India’s middle class is buying air-conditioners, kitchen appliances, and washing machines, and a lot of them from American companies like GE, and Whirlpool, and Westinghouse. And that means their job base is growing here in the United States of America. …

Americans also benefit when U.S. companies establish research centers to tap into India’s educated workforce. This investment makes American companies more competitive globally. It lowers the cost for American consumers. Texas Instruments is a good example. Today Texas Instruments employs 16,000 workers in America. It gets more than 80 percent of its revenues from sales overseas. More than 20 years ago, Texas Instruments opened a center in Bangalore, which is India’s Silicon Valley. They did so to assist in analog chip design, and digital chip design, and related software development. The company says that their research centers in countries like India allow them to run their design efforts around the clock. They bring additional brainpower to help solve problems, and provide executives in the United States with critical information about the needs of their consumers and customers overseas.

These research centers help Texas Instruments to get their products to market faster. It helps Texas Instruments become more competitive in a competitive world. It makes sense. The research centers are good for India, and they’re good for workers here in the United States.”

Mr. President, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

The Answer: for those of you patiently waiting all day, the answer to our pop quiz is U.S. small and medium manufacturers. On Thursday, we are issuing our report, The Future Success of Small and Medium Manufacturers–Challenges and Policy Issues. If you want to know about today’s manufacturing, you have to know about these entrepreneurs who play a larger and larger role in the success of U.S. manufacturing. Check out the blog on Thursday for a link to the report; we are holding a morning press conference at NAM to release it.

Here’s a pop quiz: who is responsible for 40 percent of US manufacturing production and employs 8 million men and women? If you think you know the answer, hit comment below and let us know. Otherwise, stay tuned for the answer later today or come back tomorrow when we release our latest manufacturing publication that contains the answer.

Talk about walking the walk…

The President has been barnstorming the country this week on the energy theme, making good on his State of the Union promise to make the US less dependent on foreign sources of energy. He was at NAM member Johnson Controls on Monday talking about efficiency and innovation, was in Michigan that same day on solar technology and yesterday went to the National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado to talk about new sources of energy.

We have said many times that America’s manufacturers are at the forefront of energy conservation and that we are inventing all the new technology and new sources. However, conservation and efficiency and increasing domestic supply are not mutually exclusive. it will take time to develop new technologies and America’s manufacturers are hard at work on that front. In the meantime, there is a reserve of oil in ANWR that would have an output equal to that of Texas on-shore. We have a reserve of natural gas in the Outer Continental Shelf that would dramatically bring down the cost of natural gas. Why on earth wouldn’t we tap these while we’re developing new technologies?

We’re glad the President is highlighting this issue. It’s one of paramount importance to al US manufacturers. If you get a chance, drop your representatives a note, letting them know what’s happened to your energy prices and urging them to do something about unleashing our own resources.

Fortune magazine is out with its annual list of the most admired companies in the US. We are proud to say that in the top ten are at least 6 manufacturers (maybe more, depending on your definition) and at least that many NAM members. Not only are America’s manufacturers the most innovative and the best manufacturers in the world, as it turns out, they are also well-represented on the most admired list. Congratulations to NAM members GE, FedEx, Procter and Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Toyota and Microsoft on their selection to the top ten Most Admired Companies in the US.

Not sure if any of you caught Paul Harvey’s commentary yesterday. A sharp-eared blog reader called our attention to it. Here’s link to his show where he points out (at about the 2:22 mark) that 40% of all employers are “understaffed” (we’ve been saying this for a long time), and notes at about the 4:00 mark that in dollar value, the US is manufacturing more goods than ever. We continue to be the largest manufacturer in the world, although not everyone realizes that, apparently. We hope a certain CNN demagogue/commentator was listening to Paul Harvey yesterday and takes heed….

On February 21, the National Academy of Engineering will recognize the invention in 1969 of digital imaging, now so widely used in photography and satellites. In an interesting insight into how things that we use everyday are created, a Washington Post article gives us a valuable insight into the innovation process. It is also instructive to realize that technology first developed in 1969 has only in the last decade become prevalent in consumer products.

According to the Post article, inventors Willard Boyle and George Smith at the famous Bell Labs conceived of the basic design for a silicon memory chip in a one-hour brainstorming session in late 1969. They called their invention a “charge-coupled device” for data storage. The first CCD had six pixels; today’s digital cameras have 4 to 6 million pixels and Eastman Kodak makes a 39 million pixel camera for professional photographers. CCDs make digital photography possible and have spawned products as diverse as dental x-ray machines and the NASA Mars Rover. The integrated circuits are also used in supermarket bar code readers and on the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s no wonder that the National Academy of Engineering will award the invetors the $500,000 Charles Stark Draper Prize today. Too often we take this kind of work for granted. Where are the Boyles, Smiths and Bell Labs of 2006? And congratulations to the Washington Post for prominently featuring a manufacturing innovation story that is relevant to our standard of living today and into the future.

The beauty of living and working in Washington is that you seldom hear a discouraging word. That is, if you spend time on Capitol Hill visiting with members of Congress, to a person when you talk to them about our issues, they will tell you that they support manufacturing. Yessirree, they will tell you, they are huge supporters of all things manufacturing.

As one such manifestation of this love, a bunch of them got together in the last Congress and formed the Congressional Manufacturing Caucus, for which we were quite grateful. After all, anything that brings attention to manufacturing and our importance to the economy and to the world is a good thing. But then we started wondering about whether these folks were really friends after all. We went and checked their NAM vote rating — their report card on votes of importance to manufacturers as decided by manufacturers (not by staff) on issues like taxes, regulatory costs, legal reform, etc. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that fully one-third of the Congressional Manufacturing Caucus had an NAM vote rating of 10% or less. Ouch.

We have just this past week put out our unofficial mid-term vote ratings for the 109th Congress. You can click here to see the vote rating for the entire Congress, or click here to search by zip code for your own member of Congress and Senators. Once you’ve done that, click here to drop a note to your member of Congress and Senators to either thank them or to tell them they need to work harder to back up their rhetoric with their votes. For example, there are 34 Senators and 180 House members below 50%, some from major manufacturing areas. That ain’t great. One or more of them might be your Representative or Senator.

It’s easy to talk the talk, but this gives you an opportunity to see who’s walking the walk, helping to make sure we can stay as competitive as we need to be to compete in this global economy. Check ‘em out, thank ‘em or hold their feet to the fire.

No, you’re not reading an old post — this is a new one, just looks the same. You may recall that we battled valiantly — thanks to many of you — on asbestos last week, trying desperately to get money to sick people, not to healthy folks or trial lawyers. There was a “budget point of order” (there are an infinite number of ways to slow things down in the Senate), which passed by one vote. We expect it may come up again next week (when Sen. Specter says he’s going to get something done, he usually does) and hope it might pass this time. it is very important for you to click here and weigh in with your Senators and tell them not to slow this train down any further, but to let it go to an up or down vote. Let’s keep the asbestos legislation moving forward, let’s do something for the victims, place their interests over the trial lawyers for once. This is going to be funded by defendant companies, not the government. If the fund runs out — which is highly unlikely — it would all go back to federal court. No federal money involved, even the Congressional Budget Office says it’s budget neutral.

Let’s get on with it.