This evening, President Obama delivered his 2015 State of the Union address. Portions of the president's speech focused on middle-class economics and the U.S. manufacturing sector.
Commented Alliance for American Manufactuing President Scott Paul:
"President Obama has oversold the manufacturing resurgence. Yes, 786,000 jobs have been added in manufacturing since 2010. Most of those jobs were added as the result of increased demand during the recovery. Some of them were added thanks to the auto rescue. Virtually none of those jobs were added due to reshoring. We’re only one-third of the way back to recovering all of the manufacturing jobs during the Great Recession, so we still have a long way to go. I’m a manufacturing booster, like the president, but we’ll need more aggressive policies to get to a true resurgence.
"The president deserves credit for effective initiatives on free community college, training, innovation hubs in manufacturing, and infrastructure. That’s a formula for rebuilding manufacturing in America in the 21st century. We will benefit enormously down the road from these policies if they are fully enacted.
"I’m still baffled as to why the president is pursuing a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement without addressing the very serious issue of currency manipulation, particularly with Japan. By ignoring the concerns of industry, workers, and majorities of the House and Senate, he’s not only putting the TPP at risk, he’s putting a whole lot of auto jobs in the US at risk, too. One of the lasting legacies of the administration (“General Motors is alive and Osama Bin Laden is dead”) could only be half-true if the TPP doesn’t manage exchange rates the right way.
"Finally, his focus on middle-class economics is inspiring. Such policies — infrastructure, a social safety net, public education, research, equitable taxation — helped build American prosperity in the post-WWII era. A 21st century version of this is long overdue."
Read more about the state of the union for middle class Americans here.