John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, was interviewed by WJR’s Frank Beckman earlier this week, leading up to Engler’s appearances with former Gov. Jim Blanchard to help raise funds for the Michigan Political Leadership Forum.

The interview opens with the expected jousting and joshing on Michigan and Washington politics, but then Frank turns the discussion to the Milken Institute report, “Jobs for America.” Engler observes:

The big 10,000 foot view is that this nation needs to have a growth strategy, and with a growth strategy you end up getting jobs in the private sector. We don’t think there’s such a strategy in place at the moment, and it’s important to recognize that just like the states compete vigorously against each other, nations are now competing against each other.

Our nation really has opted out. It’s sort of like going to the Olympics and not training and hoping that somehow you’re going to win a medal. Not going to happen.

We think you’ve got to get very aggressive. When we look at the competitive environment in the world, you cannot send Michigan or Ohio or even North Carolina or Mississippi out to compete against Singapore or China or Ireland with some of the things that they’re doing to attract business and investment.

I tell people, Frank, that you want the United States to be the best place in the world to locate a company, to headquarter it. You want it to be the best place in the world to do the bulk of your research and development, and them finally, you want it to be a great place to do a lot of manufacturing, and especially to meet the needs of the North American market.

That’s when you get to the idea that taxes matter, regulations matter, the right kind of education or workforce training - all of that matters. Frankly, we’ve got so much room for improvement, and the conversation in Washington is creating lots of risks, lots of doubts, and solving no problems.

Engler and Beckman also discuss health care policy. The full interview is available as a podcast, “Frank talks with Gov. John Engler, who will be in town for the Michigan Political Leadership program at MSU.”

John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, appeared on Hugh Hewitt’s radio program Tuesday to discuss “Jobs for America,” the new Milken Institute study that details the economic case for policies that will encourage competitiveness and growth of the U.S. manufacturing sector.

The program has posted a transcript of the interview — transcripts being one of the reasons we really like Hugh’s site, www.hughhewitt.com –and here’s an exchange.

HH: Now it’s a great report. It’s almost forty pages long, full of facts, full of details. What’s the key takeaway, Governor? I mean, people should go read it at the Milken Institute website, and I’m sure NAM’s got a link to it, too.

JE: We do, both Milken and NAM have links to this. We’re sending it all over Washington today to every member of Congress, to anybody that we think can influence Congress.

But bottom line, of course, it recognizes I think something your show knows well. Government doesn’t create jobs. Business creates the jobs, and we need to encourage that to happen.

And the report, I think, does something that we’ve needed to do for some time, and I’m just pleased that the NAM could have engaged the Milken Institute to get this done. We really go into the numbers. We dive deeply and say look, if you reduce corporate tax rates, if you make the R & D credit better, make it permanent, if you modernize our system of export controls, guess what’s going to happen? You’re going to create jobs, if we do all three of those things, nearly a million new manufacturing jobs, and nearly three million total jobs right there. And we’re going to add significantly to GDP. This is over a ten year period.

But the implications of this are very clear for Congress. What we need to do is encourage this investment, and get the private sector working. That’s how we get the economy moving.

Thanks, Hugh.

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.

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), speaking today to the National Association of Manufacturers, at the “Leadership Luncheon”:

At a time when innovation is the driving force of how we grow economies worldwide, science, research and development have to be at the top of our agenda. Unfortunately, we’ve seen R&D funding in the United States fall to sixth in the world in terms of the percentage of our GDP. Sixth is not high enough. Again, if you look at historic numbers, post WWII, America has always led in its R&D efforts. We’ve seen those efforts cut back in terms of …it’s too often easy enough to cut those efforts in the short term, in the long term we will pay for those cutbacks.

What do we need? Well, we do need more federal efforts in R&D. That does NOT mean that the federal government should be picking technology winners and losers. That should be left to the marketplace. But in terms of basic research the federal government, I believe, should play an increasingly important role.

By coincidence, Newt Gingrich on NPR’s “Morning Edition” this morning:

There are smart things the government should do. I favor, for example, doubling the size of the National Science Foundation. I think it’s absolutely imperative that we make the investment to remain the world’s leader in science and technology.

Senator Warner’s remarks on technologry and R&D were cited in an NAM news release today, “SENATOR WARNER (D-VA) SHARES WITH MANUFACTURERS HIS VISION FOR STRENGTHENING AMERICA’S COMPETITIVENESS.”

Good report on the state of the play, or no-play, of the research and development tax credit by Brian Wingfield at Forbes, “No Developments.”

It’s favored by business groups, celebrated by presidential candidates and loved by politicians on both sides of the aisle, yet it can’t grab Washington’s attention.It’s the research and development tax credit, which lawmakers let expire at the end of last year in a partisan dispute over tax issues and how to pay for them. Businesses say that without it, other countries like Canada, Ireland and Australia–which have attractive R&D tax incentives–will lure research jobs away from the U.S.

“It’s a motherhood and apple pie issue,” says Monica McGuire, who’s lobbying for the credit on behalf of the National Association of Manufacturers and the much broader R&D Credit Coalition.

 The website of the R&D Credit Coalition is InvestinAmericasFuture.org.