President Obama has made the revival of the
manufacturing
sector a hallmark of his jobs agenda.
- In 2009, President Obama led the federal effort to rescue the domestic auto industry, overcoming the opposition of many who claimed it would be better to let the Big Three fail. Because of President Obama’s leadership, the U.S. auto industry has seen a complete turnaround since June 2009,
adding back 217,000 jobs
. Jobs in the auto industry have accounted for roughly half of U.S manufacturing job growth in the past two years.
- Among many trade enforcement actions, the administration has enforced
trade
sanctions against China to stem job-displacing imports of tires, coated paper, steel pipe, tubular goods and more. He has brought a complaint to the WTO alleging that China has illegally subsidized its clean energy industry. Overall, President Obama has brought twice as many trade cases against China as President Bush, and he recently announced the creation of a new Interagency Trade Enforcement Center to improve coordination of U.S. government action against unfair practices by our trading partners.
- To discourage offshoring, President Obama has called for a minimum tax on all U.S. profits earned overseas and has offered companies that scale back foreign operations a 20 percent tax credit for locating those factories back in America.
- President Obama has inititated a series of steps to encourage manufacturing investment and extend assistance to small manufacturers. These efforts include increasing available capital for small and growing firms, innovatiion initiatives focusing on efforts that build cooperative industry and university R&D and 100% accelerated depreciation, which is part of the American Jobs Act.
