In this election year, with so much at stake for our nation and its economy, I think it's appropriate to politicize this column with a baldly controversial statement: The manufacturing industry is ill-served by one of its primary industry trade groups, the National Association of Manufacturers, and it's time for NAM to figure out how to objectively represent American manufacturing interests or get out of the way and let some other, less partisan group do so.
The impetus for this comes from NAM's insistence that manufacturing policy be tied to one political party: the GOP. NAM's positions on a wide range of issues — taxation, energy, and plaintiff lawsuits, to name a few — are effectively taken straight from the Republican Party's playlist, with little or no attempt to link these positions to the actual problems that beset American manufacturers.
To be clear, I don't propose that NAM favor the Democratic Party — or any party, for that matter. Indeed, making manufacturing a partisan issue is the sin I find unforgivable. NAM is a voice for a single political party from which, not surprisingly, the majority of NAM's executives are drawn. When asked for comment, a NAM spokesperson said the organization is non-partisan and policy positions are set by the board, not the executive team runing the organization.
The problem can be seen in NAM's positions on climate change and drilling for oil. NAM's energy plank has a single overriding position: Cheap energy is good; expensive energy is bad. That works well until you actually look at the problem. For example, NAM fails to account for the fact that the cost of shipping a container from China to New York has recently trebled. Those costs, alongside rising inflation in offshore manufacturing centers, is quickly undermining the cost advantages that have accrued to offshore manufacturing over the years. Add the problems of quality that have plagued offshore manufacturing in the past year (poisoned heparin, leaded children's toys, among others), and all of a sudden offshoring looks a lot less interesting.