Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association President and CEO David N. Taylor recently lauded a variety of National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) efforts that have significantly helped the U.S. and state economy get moving again.
“NAM continues to be a great partner in manufacturers’ efforts to retool, provide critical supplies to our frontline health care workers, and keep their businesses alive through the pandemic,” Taylor said.
Most recently, NAM sent a letter signed by more than 300 association members to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador warning that the country’s shuttering of automotive plants and other “essential manufacturing facilities” could negatively impact North America’s supply chain. On Friday, the Mexican government announced that it would reopen its automotive factories.
Domestic and international trade policy will be essential to ensuring the health, safety, and well-being of all Americans, NAM said in a statement.
“This is a time, more than ever, where we need to realize that trade is for allies,” Taylor said. “Creators will respond, and it’s been proven throughout history that the United States and our allies will prevail. Now we need to ensure sound public policy at the state and federal level to allow us to do it again.”
NAM, which also unveiled a nationwide framework for reopening the U.S. economy, stated that the restarting of Mexico’s automotive plants could serve as a precedent for other Mexican manufacturers whose products are likewise integral to the North American supply chain and the fight against COVID-19.
“Our industry has been on the front lines throughout this crisis, providing the equipment and products to keep our country safe, healthy and fed,” said NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons in announcing the plan last week. “The nation is counting on us to continue to play a leading role in this effort, and lawmakers must equip us with the tools we need.”
Timmons is a member of the White House’s COVID-19 Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups, which was formed April 14.
“As the nation prepares to move from relief to recovery and bringing our $22 trillion economy out of its ‘induced coma,’ I look forward to working with the Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups, including the 44 NAM member companies that were also named, to drive this next phase of American renewal, while putting the health and well-being of the American people first,” Timmons said.
Congress is already taking action on some of the recommendations laid out in NAM’s “American Action Renewal Plan,” organized under three categories – Response, Recovery, and Renewal. Specifically, under the “recovery” part of the plan, NAM recommends “strong and clear legal reforms that protect the essential manufacturers that must remain open to provide vital goods and those that retool their factories to make urgently needed equipment and supplies.”
Gov. Tom Wolf’s handling of businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic – the process for determining which businesses were deemed essential versus non-essential as well as the timeline of when small businesses could safely reopen – has frustrated a number of Pennsylvania Republicans and the business community.
“In Pennsylvania, unfortunately, that work [to keep businesses open] has been made more difficult by Governor Wolf’s failure to include employers in his decision-making, which is going to make the road back to recovery steeper than it needed to be,” he said.
Wolf announced April 22 a green, yellow, red plan to reopen the state’s economy, which will begin May 8. However, he also said that a region or county will need to average fewer than 50 new positive cases per 100,000 residents for 14 days in order to begin moving away from the statewide lockdown.