In Peoria

Thursday, November 27, 2008

NBC Nightly News this evening carried a report on Peoria, Illinois, where manufacturers are adding jobs. The thesis of the story is that businesses are learning from past mistakes and doing things differently. Doug Parsons, CEO of Excel Foundry and Machine, comments to the point, “Never get too dependent on one customer, one industry, one product line – you constantly need to be reinventing yourself.” NBC reporter Janet Shamlian notes the company now ships a third of its products overseas.

The workforce issue is also touched upon as Jeff Bahnsen of Foremost Industrial Technologies, a machine shop, says they’re looking to hire people.

Yet the story is so sketchy as to be fundamentally misleading. Shamlian refers to Peoria as “what used to be a one-company town” and calls the area “an unlikely pocket of prosperity.” Peoria has added more jobs this year than any other region in the state, she says.

Caterpillar. Peoria is home to Caterpillar. With all due credit to all the fine companies and manufacturers featured in the story, how can you do a report about Peoria’s economy without naming Caterpillar, a company whose exports rose 20 percent in 2007? NBC also referred to Excel’s export success. We suggest there might be a connection — strong manufacturing exports have encouraged economic growth making Peoria a very likely pocket of prosperity, indeed.


Posted @ 9:57 pm | Category: The Economy, Trade | Author: Carter Wood | Tags: , , | No Comments

WSJ: Manufacturing Exports Drive Local Economies

Thursday, September 11, 2008

From today’s page one Wall Street Journal, “Exports Prop Up Local Economies“:

Much of the world may be struggling with the economic downturn, but life has been getting better in Columbus, Ind., Kingsport, Tenn., and Waterloo, Iowa.

These out-of-the-way places have become trade hot spots as U.S. exports, fueled by the dollar’s fall, continue to provide a rare spark in an otherwise gloomy economy.

While many economists expect a recent snapback in the value of the dollar and a spreading global slowdown to soften that growth, exports have become a key to greater local prosperity more than at any time in decades.

Columbus, population 40,000, is an export powerhouse thanks largely to diesel-engine maker Cummins Inc., which has added 1,000 jobs there since 2003. Kingsport, population 44,000, is home to Eastman Chemical Co., which is spending $1.3 billion to upgrade its sprawling chemical plant there on the strength of its global sales of plastics and fibers. And Waterloo, population 68,000, owes its healthy export economy to Deere & Co., which has announced its second major investment this year of its tractor plant there.

The stories reaffirms with numerous examples from U.S. manufacturers — and NAM member companies — the themes we emphasize here at the National Association of Manufacturers: U.S. exports are a bright spot in the economy offsetting slowdowns in other sectors, and given their importance it is critically important that Congress enact the three pending Free Trade Agreements with Colombia, Peru and South Korea. See our recent Labor Day report for more.

The article by the Journal’s manufacturing reporter, Timothy Aeppel (who consistently writes accurate, interesting stories), concludes with some observations from Drew Greenblatt, owner of Marlin Steel Wire Product in Baltimore, NAM board member, and tireless testifier to the ability of U.S. manufacturing to compete globally:

Marlin has sold baskets in Mexico and Canada for several years and more recently has found customers far beyond, in places like Denmark, Japan, Israel and New Zealand. “But my all-time favorite is Taiwan,” says Mr. Greenblatt. “Think about the concept: There’s a Chinese shipping clerk over there that opened a box and pulled out wire baskets that say ‘Made in U.S.A.’”

 


Posted @ 10:28 am | Category: Trade | Author: Carter Wood | Tags: , , , , | No Comments

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