It’s hard to resist the lure of a good photo opportunity, but all these press events show politicians know manufacturing matters.
Between the August recess, the Labor Day holiday and the looming federal midterm elections, Congress is in a relatively quiet period of their legislative calendar. Our elected officials are at home in their districts and states getting local, meeting with constituents. And there’s nothing they like more than touring a manufacturing facility.
Are they trying to glean a little common-person credibility getting their picture taken on a shop floor or in a hard hat? Probably. But do they also recognize how important manufacturing activity is for the local economies they represent? Definitely. One illuminating measure is manufacturing’s multiplier effect; every dollar spent in manufacturing results in $2.69 in spending elsewhere. Manufacturing begets economic activity. Hence all these Congressional photo opportunities.
So who was out there shaking hands with factory workers?
Here we have Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Penn.), who visited W.R. Case & Sons Cutlery and its parent company Zippo, maker of the ubiquitous lighter, at their manufacturing facilities in Bradford, Pennsylvania. Case was featured in our 2024 Made in America Holiday Gift Guide, and we profiled Zippo on our blog last year.
Rep. Rob Menendez (D-N.J.) visited the New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) to tout the program’s benefits. We’re big fans of the myriad extensions of the MEP, which have helped lots of small- and mid-sized manufacturing companies gear up and stay in operation over the years.
Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.), meanwhile, visited the Arkema facility up the road from Geneseo, N.Y., where dozens of workers make chemical products that go into all sorts of stuff from food packaging to PVC pipes and vinyl siding.
And Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.) visited RoMan Manufacturing, which makes electric transformers that have applications in industries like glass, semiconductors and auto manufacturing. That last one’s especially important in a state like Michigan, the historic home of the U.S. auto industry, and RoMan is one of thousands of parts suppliers that would face a significant market disruption if vertically integrated Chinese automakers gain access to the United States.
That’s just a sampling of the manufacturing tours and photo-ops undertaken by our Members of Congress in the past few weeks (Google turns up plenty more). And while these visits could fairly be called PR or campaigning, again: It’s good to see manufacturing being valued by elected officials. Now, when they come back to Washington, they can take up work important to domestic manufacturing; like, for instance, passing a Buy America-compliant surface transportation infrastructure bill.