Indiana lost a whopping 17,108 manufacturing jobs in the last 12 months, 2.4% of the state's manufacturing workforce, according to a new report out by Manufacturers News Inc. It doesn't take long for the reality of those numbers to settle in, does it? Predictably, most of Indiana's job loss came in the automotive industry; 11,174 jobs since last year, attributed to several big plant closings. In fact, Madison County, where major employer Guide Corp. shut down a plant recently, saw industrial employment drop by 40%. How can a community sustain itself when faced with those numbers? Over much of the last decade, local and state policymakers and business leaders in Indiana have focused their efforts on spurring growth in the high-tech, high paying bio-tech and advanced manufacturing sectors. These efforts might be paying off -- pharmaceutical industrial jobs grew by 2.3% in the last year. But, at the same time federal policymakers have taken relatively few steps to protect American jobs, including not enforcing and strengthening our trade laws. As a result, China and other countries have been allowed to break the rules, manipulate their currency, subsidize whole industries and pay exploitation-level wages. For every gain a state like Indiana has seen, it’s also faced comparable or larger losses due to factors beyond state and local control. Indiana, which has the nation’s eighth largest manufacturing workforce – nearly 677,000, has lost 14% of its manufacturing jobs (more than 110,000) since 2000. How many more reports like this one do we have to see before we realize that states like Indiana are facing a very dire future if we leave this trend to continue? How many more good jobs need to be lost? For most Americans, it's clear that there is a problem. It's time policymakers in Washington realize that too.