The White House has announced the names of the members of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which meets for the first time this afternoon.

The 23 members include nine current manufacturing executives or people who have led manufacturing operations so that’s good. President Obama earlier appointed Jeff Immelt, head of General Election, to chair the advisory group.

The full list of members is here.

The manufacturers:

• Lewis “Lew” Hay, III is chairman and chief executive officer of NextEra Energy, Inc., one of the nation’s leading electricity-related services companies and the largest renewable energy generator in North America
• Ellen Kullman is chair of the board and chief executive officer of DuPont. Prior to becoming chief executive officer in 2009, she served as executive vice president and a member of the company’s office of the chief executive.
• A.G. Lafley is the former Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer of Procter & Gamble. He currently serves as Special Partner at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and as a Director of the General Electric Company
• Darlene Miller is the owner and CEO of Permac Industries, a Minnesota machining company custom manufacturing precision parts for customers worldwide.
• Paul S. Otellini is President and Chief Executive Officer of Intel Corporation. Mr. Otellini previously had served as Intel’s president and chief operating officer, positions he held since 2002, the same year he was elected to Intel’s board of directors.
• Antonio Perez is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Kodak. Since joining the company in 2003, Mr. Perez has led the worldwide transformation of Kodak from a business based on film to one based primarily on digital technologies.
• Brian L. Roberts is Chairman and CEO of Comcast Corporation and Chairman of the Board of Directors of NBCUniversal.
• Matt Rose is Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Corporation.

The one small-business representative on the panel is Darlene Miller of Permac Industries.

UPDATE (11:05 a.m.): The Washington Post reports, “The president will assemble a motley crew of business executives and others Thursday to solicit ideas on the economy at the White House.” Post must have meant “motley” as in the sense of diverse, not harlequin-like.

With President Obama in Michigan today, it’s a good time to catch up on an editorial we overlooked when it first came out. Drawing on a recent and highly recommended speech by GE’s Jeffrey Immelt, The Holland Sentinel argues, “To renew economy, renew manufacturing“. We’ll excerpt liberally, but read the whole thing.

By now, we assume, most Americans have been disabused of the notion that our economy can prosper by letting people in other countries make all the things we want to buy. For those who didn’t recognize it before, the economic meltdown should have driven home the reality that the hot shots in the financial sector who merely shuffle money around and wager billions on ephemeral investments don’t add any real wealth to our economy; instead they have put millions of Americans at risk. The service sector is critical to our economy, but ultimately America has to make things — things that people in other countries want to buy — to maintain international economic leadership. Ceding sector after sector in manufacturing to foreign producers and concentrating on services has not brought us prosperity.

And the conclusion…

Immelt called for an increase in investment and research and for new public-private partnerships to promote industry, but to us the key to reviving this valuable part of America’s economy may be in fostering a change in the national mindset. As a nation, Americans don’t seem to value the work of making things.

To many bright young people, manufacturing is an old, slow and messy way to get ahead in life. They’re drawn to finance, law and medicine, fields that offer higher social status and a quicker route to financial security than engineering and science. No one makes television series about people working in research labs to find a more efficient way to make a product. The impatience of Americans works against many manufacturers as well. As investors, we demand quick returns from companies rather than long-term growth. In a get-rich-quick world, few people esteem the entrepreneur who slowly and patiently builds a company of real value. Often, the easiest way to meet Wall Street’s demands is to lay off workers and ship their jobs overseas.

A prosperous modern economy requires both strong service and strong manufacturing sectors. We cannot forever continue running huge trade deficits and expect our currency to remain strong and our standard of living to remain high. America cannot give up on its manufacturing sector, and has to learn again the importance of making tangible products of real value.