Today the Council on Competitiveness released a strategy outlining five challenges and solutions to help boost manufacturing in the United States titled Make: An American Manufacturing Movement.

From the introductory letter of the report:

“Manufacturing remains a driver of innovation and job creation, even as automation and technology make manufacturing more efficient. The United States must implement sound policies to grow the manufacturing sector.”

The five challenges outlined:

• Fueling the Innovations and Production from Start-up to Scale-up.
• Expanding U.S. Exports, Reducing the Trade Deficit, Increasing Market Access and Responding to Foreign Governments Protecting Domestic Producers.
• Harnessing the Power and Potential of American Talent to Win the Future Skills Race.
• Achieving Next-Generation Productivity through Smart Innovation and Manufacturing.
• Creating Competitive Advantage through Next Generation Supply Networks and Advanced Logistics.

The report details the policy changes to help meet these five challenges. The recommendations range from tax to trade and workforce development, as well as reducing regulations which are harming the ability for manufacturers to compete.  

Several of the key policy recommendations include:

• Congress should require agencies to begin reducing the costs and burdens of current and proposed regulations.
• Congress and the administration must take action on fiscal reform to achieve $4 trillion in debt reductions by 2021.
• Congress and the administration should ensure the President’s Export Control Reform Initiative is completed by the end of 2012 and push for improved export control systems.
• Congress, states, academia, industry and national laboratories should renew efforts to expand STEM education and create opportunities to integrate into the workplace.

Manufacturers are facing unprecedented challenges as they continue to recover from the recession and are looking to Washington for policies which will help them compete with the growing global competition. In October the National Association of Manufacturers released A Manufacturing Renaissance: Four Goals for Economic Growth, which is a blueprint of policies which will set us on a path for sustained global competitiveness and get American’s back to work.

John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, packed a lot of policy perspective into his seven-and-a-half minute interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick on Squawk Box. The discussion included green jobs, nuclear energy, infrastructure, trade and the Administration’s need to develop a “growth strategy.”

Engler was attending the National Energy Summit this morning, and CNBC was on hand. There are other very good interviews:

• Powering Up With Coal: Steven Leer, CEO of Arch Coal, discusses alternative energy, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, the coal industry and more with CNBC’s Becky Quick.
• Energizing the Future: CNBC’s Becky Quick interviews Mayo Shattuck, CEO of Constellation Energy, at the National Energy Summit.
• Blue Chips Take on Energy Jim Owens, CEO of Caterpillar, and Chad Holliday, of Dupont, discuss their energy initiatives with CNBC’s Becky Quick.
• Making Energy Affordable: CNBC’s Becky Quick interviews John Hofmeister, founder and CEO of Citizens for Affordable Energy and the former president of Shell Oil.
• Sustaining a Competetive America: CNBC’s Becky Quick interviews Deborah Wince-Smith, president of the Council on Competitiveness, at the National Energy Summit.

With all the efforts being made on behalf of expanded domestic energy production, especially OCS oil and gas, we’ve been letting the nuclear sector slip a little in terms of attention. But many good things are happening in what must be a key industry in ensuring an adequate, affordable supply of baseload power.

NEI Nuclear Notes is always a good place for updates, like this one:

A $200 billion pool to finance and drive private investment in carbon-free energy infrastructure is one cornerstone of a comprehensive action plan that the next U.S. president should implement in his first 100 days to secure America’s energy supplies, the Council on Competitiveness said in a report [PDF] issued today.

A “clean energy bank,” modeled after the U.S. Export/Import Bank, would provide financing for the development of energy solutions that avoid, reduce or sequester carbon as well as supporting infrastructure. Among the options: nuclear, renewable and biofuels.

Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and chair of the Council’s Energy Security, Innovation and Sustainability Initiative, said jumpstarting energy infrastructure investments is the “unaddressed element to date to transforming our energy sector.” Absent the investment stimulus needed to build nuclear power plants, renewable projects and infrastructure such as a “smart” electric grid, U.S. energy policy will continue to languish, Jackson said.

Other recent headlines:

• NRC Renews FitzPatrick Plant License for 20 Years
• The NRC Dockets the Yucca Mountain License Application
• The Safety of US Nuclear Plants Continues to Improve

And they keep a good watch on the politicking and positions on nuclear energy of the major candidates.