What are the keys to increasing manufacturing jobs in the United States?

This is the question James R. Hagerty sets out to answer in a Wall St. Journal article posted last night.

Hagerty acknowledges that various elected officials, President Obama included, have announced plans. Ranging from ending tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas to offering grants for equipment upgrades, none of these plans offer exactly what the manufacturers Hagerty spoke to want.

What do they want?

1.) A lower corporate tax rate.

The article states:

A recent ranking by the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy found the U.S. had the highest effective corporate tax rate of the 34 countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The typical marginal effective tax rate for U.S. manufacturers in 2012 was 35.6%, the study found. That includes income and several other types of taxes faced by corporations at the federal and state level but excludes property taxes and temporary or narrowly targeted tax breaks.

2.) Improved Infrastructure

Hagerty interviewed Jim Dugan, spokesman for Caterpillar. Dugan stated:

Roughly since about 1970, the U.S. has dramatically underfunded infrastructure…We now use Canadian ports to import some parts for our U.S. factories because U.S. ports are so backed up and outdated."

3.) Better Education

Hagerty states:

Manufacturers also are clamoring for better educational performance in areas such as science, math and engineering to overcome a shortage of skills needed to operate, program and repair factory machinery. The latest comparison by the OECD showed that 15-year-old students from Shanghai and Hong Kong far outscored their American counterparts in math and science.

'You can have all the tax breaks you want, but if you don't have workers with the right skills, you're going to lose those jobs,' says U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo, (R., Ill.).

Read more here.