Alliance for American Manufacturing

It’s High Noon,

And welcome to the Early Shift. We’re in the midst of a big day in data land. We’ve got new trade figures and a new employment report. And the #AAMeter is begging to be updated. It's just begging, seriously.

So how’s the manufacturing economy doing? Well, uh ...

After revisions, the nation added only 88,000 manufacturing jobs in - wait for it — all of 2013.

— Zachary Goldfarb (@Goldfarb) March 7, 2014

Egads. With those revisions considered, the #AAMeter has gone down; America has created a total of only 100,000 manufacturing jobs since January 2013. And that milquetoast rate of growth has a lot to do with the aforementioned trade data, which continues apace in the wrong direction. The Stars and Bars ran another trade deficit in January, this one $39.1 billion. Our goods deficit with China alone in January was $27.8 billion. Queue the Sad Trombone for President Obama’s promise to create 1 million manufacturing jobs by the end of his second term. The progress on that promise is going over like a lead balloon, and a half-hearted focus on innovation hubs isn’t gonna get us there. Faced with Congressional inaction? Pshaw. We’ve got the rest of the blueprint that the president should be following right here.

So what else is happening out there?

This morning, CNN Money has an excellent story on the history of Maker’s Row, the legit website that serves as an online matchmaker for domestic manufacturers and apparel companies.

ICYMI: China isn’t letting the loads of cash it gets from its lopsided trading relationship with the U.S. go to waste. The Wall Street Journal reports that Beijing’s military budget is growing rapidly, even outpacing the growth of its own economy.

Lastly: A Boy Scout badge in advanced manufacturing? Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.

And that’s it. That’s it and that’s all for this Friday’s Early Shift. Have a good weekend, everybody, chewing over those trade figures and jobs numbers. They may be hard to swallow, but we hope it’s still a good one.

-AAM