State of Our Manufacturing Economy

Floor Speech

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Ms. STEVENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise within this Chamber this evening to give an address on the state of our manufacturing economy. It is certainly very significant to do so this evening in the well of our House of Representatives, one of the more sacred and distinct places of our democracy, where we deliberate, exchange, and make our Nation's laws.

Certainly, the weight of a great history is also upon us, and some profound and oftentimes troubling questions are asked of us. How do we make government work for the people we represent? How do we restore trust, faith, and accountability in our Federal Government?

Henry Clay once said that government is a trust, and those elected into office, into Federal Government, are its trustees, and they work together for the benefit of the people.

We hear and see the aching headlines of dysfunction, of inability, of stagnation, questions around progress and where we seek and look to go. Trust in government is at its lowest levels, according to Pew.

We are waiting for an infrastructure deal. We are waiting for tenets of social justice, of economic justice, of equal opportunity for education.

This House of Representatives in this 116th Congress has passed some remarkable bills, over 200, in fact, bills that colleagues who preceded me worked for years to get to the House floor. Now, the American public waits for those bills to become law, to be passed through our Senate, to be signed into law. That is why we are here today.

It is very intentional this evening that I speak from the well of this Congress to whoever may be listening.

The facts are also upon us. Today, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the third time this year as the U.S. economy continues to slow down amid ``ongoing trade disputes and weak global growth.''

For is it such a fact that 98 percent of the world's consumer base exists outside of the United States that we are in a race to sell our best-in-class product from our best-in-class workforce to the international markets before us.

We are closing out this decade in just a few short weeks. It feels like months. We are entering into a new decade, and we are asking ourselves what our competitiveness agenda will be.

Tariffs, the tariff war that we are in so far has cost U.S. businesses $34 billion since January 2018. Individual households are now at risk to pay hundreds more for consumer goods as they are increasingly impacted by this trade war: individual households, our American middle class, bearing the burden of this fallacious trade war.

Yes, we need to be tough on China. Yes, we need accountability. Yes, we need to take on illegal dumping and currency manipulation and strong-arming and the taking of our IP, but we need to do so in a way that positions us for success, that positions the American middle class on a trajectory for growth and reclaims what we have lost since the mid-1990s. That income, median income, has not increased since the mid- 1990s. That rests upon us as an economic charge.

Today, industrial activity is at its lowest point since June 2009--an Earth-shattering year, by the way, in the middle of a Great Recession-- today, with productivity inventories and new orders falling.

I represent these manufacturers in southeastern Michigan. I represent a shining, incredible asset, the most robust supply chain of auto manufacturers in the country. I have devoted this first year in my first term in Congress hand in hand with these small businesses, with these midsize companies who employ countless people who live in the neighborhoods, who send their children to the schools I represent.

To the other service businesses who benefit from this strong economy, why get in the way of growth?

So far, Michigan has lost 6,200 factory jobs. And we are not the only State with this type of industry as its lifeblood that is showing signs of a slowdown: States like Ohio, which has also shed 2,400 manufacturing jobs; Pennsylvania has 9,100 fewer manufacturing workers.

I hear from these individuals, these small firms, and they are wondering what it is going to take to reignite investment in our workforce and investment in them. A trade war that we have now spent more in agricultural subsidies than we have on the entire U.S. auto rescue.

The auto rescue was not a man-made crisis. It was part of a larger economic conundrum, a set of economic policies that set us on a trajectory of near implosion, of implosion of our financial banking, insurance, housing.

And the lifeblood of our industrial base and good, bipartisan policymaking, of which I was a part of, came together to save the auto industry--200,000 Michigan jobs, millions more across the country--an auto industry that is humming on incredible and remarkable innovation today. I know this. I see it.

Some more facts: 2 to 1 patents in autonomous vehicle technology coming out of my district; 75 percent of the R&D; rampant proliferation of electric vehicle technology going into industrial parks and seeing what is akin to, and nothing short of, an innovation renaissance.

We are waiting for the electric vehicle tax credit bill. We are waiting for an economic policy not of resistance, not of fighting, but of positioning us for success.

The statistics and the facts and the headlines are real, and they mean something in Michigan's 11th District to the manufacturer in Livonia, to the small business in Novi, to the hub of automobile manufacturing taking place in Auburn Hills, that I-75 corridor. And yet we want to compete; we want to sell; we want the investment in our American workforce.

Who and how are we paying for it? This is a referendum on our economic policy that is coming from agencies and administrators whom the body that I serve in has oversight appropriating and authorizing authority over.

Our Federal deficit has swelled to nearly $1 trillion. It is basically at $1 trillion in this year. It happened quietly. It was maybe a peep of a headline. We can't even fathom what a $1 trillion deficit in this country means.

This isn't to shame any individual about their spending habits, because, I guarantee you, any of my colleagues engaging in such personal egregious behavior would be declared bankrupt and unfit for office.

Our Nation cannot function with a $1 trillion deficit for the long- term. It comes at the expense of every American, and particularly an undue and saddled burden to the next generation, to those under the age of 18 who cannot even place a vote yet and are counting on us to enact policies.

So when the headlines start to rumble, of which they have, about a manufacturing slowdown, about an acute manufacturing recession, how can that be when we have such incredible innovations proliferating? It is because we have not reconciled our economic policy. It is because we have not embraced an economic policy for the middle class as a whole of government.

Our Democratic Caucus has, our Democratic Caucus reverberating the mantra of ``for the people.'' That mantra has a value for the people because, you see, this tax cut that we passed last Congress, that was passed last Congress without a Democratic vote, 80 percent of it going to the largest corporations, not doing anything for our middle class, not doing anything for our small and midsize manufacturers.

Remember that headline, ``Cuts to Research Funding,'' sending us a generation back on scientific research. It is one of the reasons, as a subcommittee chair for the Research and Technology Subcommittee, we have had over a dozen hearings around how to manifest our country's research and technology agenda for inclusive growth.

Productivity. Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT professor and author of a great book on the future of work in the digital age of manufacturing, recently testified in front of my committee, declaring several things which are of note to this body. He declared, his research, the research, the primary facts that drive these headlines, our research tells us that we face two urgent economic challenges: a lack of productivity growth and too much inequality.

What do we do next? How do we reclaim this agenda of economic rights, of economic growth for everybody?

As Mr. Brynjolfsson went on to say in his testimony, for two centuries since 1776, since ``The Wealth of Nations'' was written, Americans benefited as we created an economic system that generated shared prosperity. But, over the past several decades, the benefits of economic growth have been much more unequal.

Not only has median income barely grown since the 1990s, as I previously stated, but other social indicators, have worsened. Deaths from despair, namely, suicide, drug addiction are skyrocketing. We also know that life expectancy has declined in this country for the third year in a row.

He goes on to say that these challenges, this schism of inequality and lack of productivity can be solved.

I have taken up that challenge and believe that a middle-class economic agenda can reverse course for us, reinvesting in public education, making higher education affordable, on-ramps and pathways to opportunities for the skilled workforce, tax credits for companies that want to do on-the-job training.

For is it not the case that our workforce spectrum, our future, those students being educated for the jobs that they are in demand to fill and those in the existing workplace who are swinging through the jungle gym of opportunities, making their way at their place of employment, they represent who we should be investing in.

They represent a phenomenal opportunity for us to support not the household name businesses, but the businesses that want to train those workers and deserve credit for doing so, the businesses that want to sell--I have a lot of them in Michigan who want to sell their products internationally--giving them the opportunity to do so through good policy that invests in global citizenry, invests in global outlook, and allows us to bring American innovation to the world.

The plight of American greatness in the post-9/11 era has been the plight of innovation that we, as Americans, proliferated the internet, the use of information technology that is captured on the internet. It started in the late nineties with less than 10 percent of information technology on the internet. By the year 2007, 98 percent, and then today, an entirely different internet.

We now talk about the Internet of Things, the interconnectedness of devices through the technology and the wireless networks, which have a great and profound benefit to our manufacturers in Michigan. We are leaders in this industrial Internet of Things space. We are designing, producing, making, and shipping in ways that we never have before, and it needs to be shared, the prosperity. That is, what we know, we all want.

So we look to revive some of the successful economic policies of 10 years ago, of pieces of legislation like the States' small business JOBS Act that spurred investment of American products into international markets.

We also raised the question of supply-chain security. This is particularly important to those of us in Michigan, in Metro Detroit, recognizing how important that supply chain was in World War II. We manufactured our way to a new world order, to the ringing notions of freedom that we helped to usher in throughout the West, creating a system of government that was admired and bestowed and that grew our middle class.

We recognize the troubling dilemma that we have with our rare earth minerals. In May, China, frustrated, threatened to cut off supply to the U.S. as part of the U.S. trade war, supply of these rare earth minerals that go into our devices that secure the production of some of our incredible innovations, like our smartphones.

America depends on China for 80 percent of its rare earth imports, and that is not a desirable position to be in. We must reclaim our supply chain. We have to reclaim or categorize an agenda for rare earth minerals.

The global rare earth market is projected to grow in value from $8.1 billion to $14.4 billion by 2025, as driven by the demand for electric vehicles, cell phones, and other products.

Here is a story of a manufacturer in Michigan, a company in Northville called soulbrain MI, that develops and delivers quality lithium-ion electrolytes in steel cases--which they are paying tens and tens of thousands more for, not realizing a profit--which is a core component of the lithium-ion batteries that go into our electric vehicles.

It is just one of two producers that we have in the United States, and yet they pay the price because of the policies, the overregulation, and the failure to support the small businesses and the manufacturers. The subsidies have gone to agriculture. And there was not one investment or change for our manufacturers, albeit, the several great pieces of legislation that we have passed out of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee.

Many of my colleagues are paying attention to this. Many of them are working on this, but we need the legislation to come to the floor. We need it to be voted on in the Senate, and we need to usher in a new manufacturing agenda.

The world is demanding our electric vehicles. It is demanding our technology. It is demanding our manufacturing.

Let's revive the great ability to sell our products.

Let's revive the great ability to advocate on behalf of our labor force, our 21st century labor movement.

Let's reconcile the reality of today's economy and policies that have been 19th or 20th century proposed solutions to 21st century problems, and let's get smart about how to win and compete again. It is a new era that begets a new trade orientation for us.

Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss in this Special Order hour, of which I am reeling with passion for our manufacturing economy and have profound excitement and only want to see it succeed through an economic agenda that I believe this House majority can usher in, that I believe that this Congresswoman from Michigan's 11th Congressional District can champion the great requests, but I would be remiss to leave out, in these remarks, another moment and marker in time as we will close out session tomorrow and resume our in-district work activity, recognizing that we will be hitting 1 year since this 116th Congress was elected-- and how magnificent this year has been.

With so much energy and gusto, we made our way to freshman orientation shortly after that election--less than a week after-- meeting our colleagues, meeting our deliberators, meeting those, the small, collective composite of us, the 435 of us in this House Chamber who are charged with making this Federal Government work for the American people.

Let me say, by the way, that this manufacturing agenda has tremendous return on investment should we so choose to embrace it as a nation. We know our House majority is ushering it in. We know we are balancing the equities and advocating for all components of a good trade deal, inspired by the Buy American content, pushing for the enforcement standards, embracing the need for certainty to come to our small and midsized manufacturers, the manufacturers in Michigan's 11th Congressional District, the people who are wondering: How will my taxpayer dollars work for me?

It has been an incredible moment in time to be a part of this 116th Congress. And while we will not be together as a body on both sides of the aisle to look at each other and to recognize what has happened in a year since what sometimes feels like dramatic action with elections, we can reflect on some of the moments that oftentimes don't even make it into news headlines or Twitter feeds or proclamations from Members of Congress, but ways in which we have embraced this new orientation of government in the Democratic House majority of our For the People agenda: bringing up issues for the labor movement, whether you belong to a union or not, for our middle class; the long overdue passage of Butch Lewis, the Butch Lewis Act, bringing the pensions of many to solvency, a classic example of doing nothing is greater than the cost of doing something; solving people's problems, making their taxpayer dollars work, not forcing small businesses to feel a pinch, not looking job layoffs in the face but saying, ``We are investing in you.''

We are championing legislation and policy that embraces and puts people at the forefront, those who are not armed with the biggest lobbyists or the fanciest offices but who are counting on those who hold the stewardship of trust to deliver for them.

We will also recognize, in this 1-year anniversary mark--without being in one another's presence--that we still have a lot of work to do.

The bipartisan elixir, in my humble opinion, is our manufacturing economy. It is our ability to make things. It is our ability to help the people whom I have spoken to directly, whose factory floors I have walked on, whose office rooms I have sat in looking at that pathway to growth, not disinvestment.

Too many have told me: We have had to invest elsewhere, we have had to remove ourselves from deals. We need to be competing effectively as a continent with the rest of the world. We need to take Asia by storm because we know they want our goods. We know they want our innovations. And it is that ability to do original research, the ``if not but for the Federal Government'' approach to basic research investment that catalyzes and proliferates new technologies of scale.

I am looking forward, Mr. Speaker, to continuing to learn and to grow and to advocate fiercely on behalf of my economy in Michigan's 11th Congressional District for the betterment and the semblance of our future.

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