At the National Journal Insider’s Conference today, Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) delivered the Keynote Address on the need to rebuild our manufacturing sector. 

The Conference featured a wide array of decisionmakers and policy advisors, including pollsters, current and former Members of Congress, journalists, and others. 

As he has been in the past, Rep. Hoyer was very supportive of a national manufacturing strategy.  Manufacturing is crucial to a strong and prosperous middle class. The last decade has seen a decline in median income, even as the economy expanded.  And Rep. Hoyer knows that innovation and manufacturing go hand-in-hand:

Take the example of Amazon’s Kindle 2 e-reader: it originally retailed for $359, approximately $185 of which went to manufacturing costs. As Harvard business professor Wally Shih has observed, the Kindle may have been designed in California—but of those $185 in manufacturing costs that went into every unit, only $40 to $50 of that value, only about 25%, was added in America. Why should that worry us? Because, as Shih writes, missing out on manufacturing the Kindle’s advanced screen means that ‘the U.S. will miss out on the future industries that spring from it—things like large flexible displays, future generations of electronic signage, and plastic electronics….This same story has played out in high-tech industry after high-tech industry.

Rep. Hoyer promised to introduce an expanded Make it in America agenda, including his own bill that will support and promote job-training partnerships among “advanced manufacturing businesses, community and technical colleges, and local workforce investment boards.”

Rep. Hoyer has repeatedly shown that he gets it when it comes to manufacturing and American Jobs.  His “Make it in America” agenda has supported bills that encourage investment, create loans for small businesses, and end tax loopholes for shipping jobs overseas.

Full text is available here.