Manufacturing: We Can't Do Without It

No one in the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel’s Ambassador Ballroom could have missed the message about the need to revitalize and reinvent manufacturing for the 21^st century, not even Quicken Loans CEO Dan Gilbert.

Bruce Katz, the director of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program made a strong case for the need to rebuild a strong manufacturing sector in the U.S. economy. That came after Gilbert told the hundreds of business, government and civic leaders who had come from across Michigan for the two-day 2012 West Michigan Policy Forum that manufacturing is exactly what the “New Economy” doesn’t need.

Gilbert was part of a panel discussion at the Sept. 13 morning session of the WMPF in downtown Grand Rapids entitled, “Why Strong Cities Matter.” The Detroit businessman, who also owns the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA franchise, delivered a closing comment that included a call of a New Economy focused on finance, but not manufacturing.

“This is something like a 5- to 7-year runway and it takes a couple hundred million dollars to build a manufacturing plant,” Gilbert pointed out. “The ‘New Economy’ does not need that. What it needs is an open environment and culture.”

Of course that was something less than a veiled reference to a reoccurring theme at the WMPF, the need as conference attendees see it, to cut business regulation to the bone. Or as fellow “WhyStrong Cities Matter” panelist Dick DeVos put it, “Government needs to be held in check.”

That is another discussion for another time.

We don’t know if Gilbert’s mind was changed by Katz’s presentation, but it certainly opened more than a few eyes and minds.

He began by taking what might have been a direct shot across Gilbert’s bow. “We need an economy that is fueled by production and not debt,” Katz stressed. “Manufacturing exports will be our path to prosperity.”

Katz also said that the U.S. is third in the world now in manufacturing exports, while it is number-one in service exports.

He also made another assertion that must have started more than a few sabers rattling in the conference sponsored by the Grand Rapids Regional Chamber of Commerce. Katz argued strongly for participation in what he dubbed, the “Low Carbon Revolution.”

“You can use it as a political football if you want,” Katz told his audience with a very strong voice and an impressive power point presentation. “But this revolution will be very big going forward,” and he explained that China is far ahead of the U.S. in low-carbon research.

He never let go of the call for a revitalized manufacturing economy in the presentation that would have sounded so good to the generation that gave birth to the Baby Boomers.

“If we don’t produce, we won’t innovate,” Katz said. “We need to build an economy that works for families. And, there is a premium on manufacturing wages.”

In other words, the U.S. will not survive with a population that is making less than a living wage. And there is nothing like manufacturing to fix that.

Here’s the problem: Do we know have enough qualified workers to fill those manufacturing jobs? That is a topic that I explored in a series of articles posted at www.rodkackley.com, and will be a major theme of Manufacturing Renaissance, that is due to be published this fall.

Medical Manufacturing is a big part of the reinvention of Grand Rapids, Mich., documented in my first book, Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community. More information on that is also available at www.rodkackley.com