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midco supports c-span as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. continues. host: a conversation now on the state of american manufacturing. back at our desk this morning, it is scott paul, president of the alliance for american manufacturing. how many manufacturers does your organization represent? when we say manufacturing, what kind of manufacturing are we talking about? guest: great question. thank you for having me on. i appreciate the opportunity to share thoughts with you any c-span listeners. it is a labor business partnership which is kind of rare in washington. usually, they are at odds over a lot of issues paid we have been in operation about 17 years. it is a collaboration between the steelworkers union, america's largest industrial union. they represent not only workers in steel,, tires, they make

gatorade, bottled for vodka, a lot of things like that. also, some of the manufacturers that the steelworkers have a bargaining relationship with. we are more a partnership of companies that have a collective bargaining relationship with the workers. host: how do you navigate that relationship at a time when we hear about battles between labor and management? guest: from the plant level on up, there will always be areas where there is collaboration and agreement and areas where there is not. we focus on the policy areas where there is joint interest in making progress of either stopping bad things from happening for help and good things to start happening. all of that is focused around the idea we want strong manufacturing in this country,

that it is the backbone of the middle class and important for innovation, national security, well-paying jobs. there is an array of policies on which there is surprising agreement between the companies and the union that we are able to have a focus on. host: is manufacturing strong post-pandemic for american manufacturing? guest: great question. the data tells slightly different stories. the first and most important thing is manufacturing jobs and output made more than a full bounceback after the pandemic-reduced recession -- pandemic-induced recession. that is the first time it has happened post-world war ii where it regained all the jobs lost during recession. that is number one. number two, we have seen over the last year or more than a

year we have seen manufacturing job growth has slowed quite a bit, in particular compared to all of the jobs numbers i know that you see every month that have been quite high. there are a couple of reasons. one is people have stop hoarding goods as they did during the pandemic and are doing services and things like that now, so they are spending dollars a little different. number two, the fed interest rate policy is having an impact because manufacturing is capital-intensive. you have to borrow to do that. borrowing costs are higher. that restrains some of the growth as well. third, and this is kind of the ironic reason, because the united states economy is so strong relative to the rest of the world our export markets are not what they used to be. all of these other countries, and secretary yellen was just in china talking about china's industrial capacity, all of

these other countries are trying to find a way to boost their economies by sending goods to the united states. that creates import competition. that limits the amount of manufacturing job growth we see. there is reason to be optimistic in the future because we also see a record amount of factory construction taking place in the united states in a variety of industries. that is something we also have not seen for a generation. host: i want to get to import competition. in general, how many manufacturing jobs are there in this country? are they all at companies with hundreds and thousands of employees? is there such a thing as a mom-and-pop manufacturer? guest: great question. there are about 13 million manufacturing jobs in the united states. it is less than 10% of employment right now. it used to be 40% or 50% post-world war ii. that has come down quite a bit but is still quite robust. the majority of manufacturers

are the small firms. maybe 10, 20, 50 people. there tends of thousands of these -- there are tens of thousands of these firms around the country. host: what is an example? guest: someone selling a part into the auto supply chain, a fastener or something. i will not know the brand name, but you probably utilize it every day in some respect. it is a part that goes into a washing team or complex vehicles. there are a couple of sectors that have an outsized influence on manufacturing in durable goods, things people will buy every once in a while but will last a long time. things like automobiles or airplanes which people do not buy but airlines do. they have massive value chains. thing of all of the parts inside your car or an airplane. those are all made by a lot of different companies around the united states and around the

globe. yes, we do have some factories that employ thousands of people like tesla in fremont or ford in detroit, or a bunch of other places. the majority of manufacturing are the smaller firms located in urban areas and in small towns that provide a good employment base there. host: there is a special line in this segment. if you work in manufacturing, we especially want to hear from you this morning with scott paul from the alliance for american manufacturing. 202-748-8003 is that number. otherwise, phone lines as usual for republicans, democrats, and independents. mr. paul is with us until the end of our program today. happy to take your phone calls. staying on jobs for a second.