From the National Summit in Detroit: The Policies of Slippage
Wednesday, June 17, 2009Highly recommended, Daniel Howes’ column, Detroit News, “U.S. letting manufacturing slip away“:
Forget the bailouts and the billions of taxpayer dollars pumped into the rescue of Detroit’s auto industry — the crisis in American manufacturing is far from over.
“We’re absolutely still falling behind,” Richard Dauch, chairman of American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc., told me in an interview Tuesday, day two of the National Summit at the Marriott Renaissance Center. “We’re now immersed in a global war and we simply need to learn how to compete again in America.”
But America, judging by the government-imposed burdens weighing on its manufacturers and the headlong rush toward a green promised land that may or may not deliver as advertised, increasingly looks like a country unsure whether it wants to fight to preserve the jobs that countries around the world want because they create wealth — now.
Howes highlights corporate taxation — second highest statutory rates in the world — as working against competititiveness, and there are many other damaging policies being pushed at the same time U.S. manufacturing slips, e.g. “Made in America” protectionism and the Employee Free Choice Act.