in fact, when i want to get something out to the press, i tell certain people and it is amazing, it gets out there. so far, i'm leaving it that way. i will see you later. thank you. see you on the plane. announcer: -- is back at the desk, president of alliance for american manufacturing. coming out the most recent child support, how many manufacturing jobs are there in the u.s. in which we are they trending? -- way are they trending? guest: they are just shy of 13

million manufacturing jobs in the u.s. the trend since the end of the great recession, dating back to the early days of the obama administration, has been incredibly positive. slow but steady. the trend over the last year has been a little less rosy. we have added only about 26,000 manufacturing jobs over the last 12 months. this is in a private sector economy that added about 2 million jobs in the same period. manufacturing has lagged far behind the rest of the economy. duringas a 1.5 year boom the trump administration, but that has dissipated. we have been losing manufacturing jobs. host: what do you .2 for that for that lag?to guest: there has been some uncertainty. it has come around as a result of the trade policy.

i think it has had some benefits but it is also adding uncertainty to some businesses. they are reluctant to invest and other things are not getting purchased. that has a spiral effect in manufacturing. gas,ave seen in oil and ironically when the prices go down a little bit, that means there is probably reduced employment in the refining and other sectors with reduced opportunity. what has happened with respect max hasg and the 737 had some impact in the aerospace supply chain. factors,combine those it contributed to a bit of weakness. you have overarching factors like the continued strength of the dollar. what does that have to do with manufacturing at all? if the dollar is overvalued,

it's a lot harder for us to sell our exports to other markets. they are artificially expensive. it makes imports coming into the market cheaper. it displaces domestic production as well. that has been a continued trend in manufacturing. there has been a drag on the ability to create manufacturing jobs. host: let me give up the phone numbers for questions for scott paul. (202) 748-8000 if you work in manufacturing. all others, (202) 748-8001. youolks are calling in mentioned 13 million manufacturing jobs. subsectors, the biggest subsectors in this broad category of manufacturing? guest: manufacturing is many things. a lot of people would have an image of a large auto factory. there are some of those. when you couple automobiles and auto parts together, that

accounts for about one in every nine manufacturing jobs. very extensive supply chain. manufacturing is things like the folks making craft beers. that is manufacturing. it is a small percentage of manufacturing employment but you will have shops like that all around the country doing that. the primary manufacturing categories are durable kids versus nondurable goods. durable goods are things like automobiles, airplanes, washing machines. someone will hang onto it for a long time. nondurable goods or things like processed foods. food that has some value added to it, that's a manufacturing process. that is considered a nondurable good. are subjectoods to this business uncertainty because people have to eat. people have to buy a lot of these consumer staples.

that appointment tends to be a little bit more steady. the durable goods is where it goes up and down and where it is wet blessed by international trade and exchange rates and a lot of things happening around the world. public health crisis, the coronavirus, that will have an impact. he see the durable goods sector probably more subject to any headwinds you will see in the global economy. host: you have been on the washington journal before. what do you do? guest: the alliance for american manufacturing has been around since 2007. we are a partnership between the end steelworkers union -- united steelworkers union, representing every thing from steel to making sponges and chemicals and paper and tires, and some of the steelworkers' employers. we have business partners in steel and other sectors.

people probably say, labor and business fight with each other all the time, about contracts and issues. there are disagreements at the table but we have found among the steelworkers and the business partners there is a lot of commonality on issues like the need to invest in infrastructure, to invest in skills and training. they need to have a trade policy looking out for our domestic concerns. the value of manufacturing overall to the economy and explaining that to people. we have been proud to do that work for 13 years. americanmanufacturing.org. keep it made in usa. the best part is when you come on you can chat with folks in the industries. michigan.f jackson, go ahead. caller: yes, sir. this economy was going to go from manufacturing to service

economy. this started in the 1950's under eisenhower. the 1960's -- they told us we are getting rid of the dirty and the repetitive jobs and going to a service economy and we would have more leisure time and more money. all we got was more leisure time. jump i will let scott paul in. what is your job? caller: i'm retired from the steel mill and worked there for 25 years. host: thank you for calling in. scott paul? guest: i think gene raises an important point. a lot of people look back on manufacturing at think the best days are behind it. 1950'sly in the manufacturing accounted for half of our economy. it was an extraordinary amount of employment and economic output.

manufacturing did produce some middle-class jobs, which allowed people to have disposable income and they bought things like services. they went to the movies. they took vacations and that strengthened the service economy. -- i thinko seen that is all good. that's a good evolution for the american economy. what has not been so good has been the fact that we have seen manufacturing get eroded in part by global competition where we have seen other countries that have tried to mimic the united states' manufacturing success, but they did that with a heavy hand. that has a road it our global market share of manufacturing -- eroded our global market share of manufacturing. that is part of manufacturing's decline as a percentage of our economy that has me troubled. 2019, last quarter of

manufacturing as a percentage of our gdp was 11%. that is the lowest it has been since early in the 1930's. it has never been lower than that. host: john, good morning. caller: thank you for your service. america's single greatest threat is china's rise to power where u.s. leadership in business basically facilitated by the democratic party, initially the republicans, but now the centrist democrats are for off shoring jobs. china'snton started rise to power in 1999 with the w to. -- wto. we have trillions of dollars of infrastructure, plus trillions of dollars of money that will be in the federal government coffers, plus trillions of dollars of money that will be in the middle class's pocket that is now in china. host: how did you feel about the trade deal that president trump

signed with china? caller: it is 180 degrees change from the last three presidents we had. bush andton, w. obama. the centrist democrats are the same as the pre-reform republicans. they are in the pocket of big business. the trade deal is a step in the right direction. it is the best the president could do considering the corruption that has been and our political infrastructure since bill clinton took office. host: what do you specifically like about it? caller: he is trying to attempt to of reverse the -- attempt to reverse the trade deficit. he decided patriotically to run for president as opposed to the countable life he would have had before because he saw the great need because of the massive trade deficit which was his number one motivation for running for president. that is the biggest single

threat to america, china's rise to power. i will say i agree with john on china's threat to our economy and to our security. i think it has been underestimated for far too long. i am a bit less partisan about assigning blame. steps backke many and look at richard nixon with the first steps to open with china, i think in the aftermath of the tiananmen square massacre, george herbert walker bush did not do enough to push back on china. i do agree with john on his assessment of clinton, of george w. bush and obama on china. i think they counted on dialogue and trying to bring china into the community of nations as a way to respond to that threat. i think it is abundantly clear that did not work. china was going to do what china

was going to do. while we are a country that tradees in rules-based and other mechanisms, it is not necessarily that way in china. we got it wrong for a long time. host: how involved with your group in the creation or negotiations, discussions the white house had leading up to this china trade deal? guest: from the early stages and during the campaigns we told all the candidates back in 2016, here is the challenges with china. here are possible ways to respond. we did find president trump and his team were very agreeable in terms of being aggressive to take action. we have seen that in a number of respects. the mechanisms they are using right now, the tariffs in the phase one china deal are a step in that process. i think our advantages to that. in some ways this phase when deal falls really short because less trickyh a few

issues designed to help businesses -- american businesses in china. it will help them. exportss some sales of if it is fully implement did. we have not seen any implementation so far. it should boost exports of agricultural products, energy products, maybe manufacturing products. that alone will undo some of the damage that was done because of china's retaliation against our initial tariffs against china. we are getting ourselves up to a point but what is not being addressed, and this is where i think the deal falls short, there is massive intervention by the chinese government in the economy. it's businesses receive hundreds of billions and subsidies. 3% of chinese gdp goes into

subsidizing it's businesses that are owned by the chinese government. they don't have the private sector equivalent of a boeing or -- it is all owned by the chinese government. the problem is as skilled as our workers may be, as ingenious as our entrepreneurs, deficient as business managers may be, if you can -- as efficient as business managers maybe, it's incredibly difficult to do that. that is what a lot of manufacturers have found. host: from alabama, this is michael. good morning. are you with us? i can hear you by your phone. one more time. caller: yes. host: go ahead. --ler: in response to the hello? in response to the other fellow on before, george herbert walker bush try to push the nafta but

could get it through a democratic congress. campaignlackluster guaranteeing clinton would win. from what i understand, this is where it worked out. his campaign manager had gone to arkansas and told bill clinton he would be the fair-haired golden boy provided he did not screw up. first thing clinton did was he pushed through the same bill george herbert walker bush could not get through. he pushed through nafta. host: let's go to nafta and the now the usmca. guest: i think for a long time both the establishment, i will call it -- i did think it was bipartisan. the establishment got it wrong. that included both democrats and republicans. nafta was hatched in the reagan administration. george herbert walker bush

largely negotiated. bill clinton added a few bells and whistles, and and submitted it for implementation to the congress. in 1983 andd enacted in 1994. we saw a massive amount of movement, particularly in the auto parts sector of production from the united states to mexico. what we did not see was nafta building up a mexican middle-class, which was the idea. like if we have more trade, their workers will get wealthy and will buy more of our products. it turned out to be a completely inadequate way to do that. i think donald trump was right to renegotiate the nafta and usmca, which is not entered into force. the united states but needs to be passed in canada to take effect.

it will not solve all the problems. it will, i think, make some progress. we were talking about rules with china. a lot of it depends on how the countries played by the rules laid out. my hope is at the end of the day it will stop the flood of jobs from leaving the united states to mexico based on low wages and it will level the playing field a little bit. i have heard the trump administration folks talk about this over the last few days. i don't think this will be a massive boost for gdp in the united states. it might have a modest positive effect but i don't think it will be any sort of a massive gdp boost. it makes modest improvements to the rules. i think it was worth passing. we supported it. call aothing i would permanent transformational fix

in trade policy. host: another one of the folks who worked in the manufacturing sector is yolanda out of newport news, virginia. caller: how are you doing today? can you hear me? host: go ahead. caller: i work in newport news for continental. we found out today our warehouse is shutting down, giving us three years and shipping to china. they will shut down the warehouse in south carolina. we are using a lot of jobs here. they are moving our buildings over to china. us in newport news. imagine me starting over again, trying to find another job. we have to do something to keep the jobs here. host: thank you for that call and sharing your story. guest: first of all, i'm very

sorry. having a plant closure like that is a devastating blow. there is no sugarcoating it. my hope is that the local officials will be doing everything possible to help with the adjustment. i will acknowledge it is incredibly difficult to do that successfully. what we have seen in manufacturing as the plants ofsed is that instead workers, particularly older workers in their 40's or 50's, and set of them getting that her jobs would often happen -- them getting better jobs would often have fewer benefits, for a many cases they are not employed ever again. there has been really good evidence emerging over the last few years that these kind of

plant closures have ripple effects that affect everybody in the community. they affect the public services. they have even affected the divorce rates unfortunately. fhey have led to a whole lot o really dire social consequences. that is why when i am talking to our policymakers in washington i always say, we want to avert these plant closures in any way possible. we should probably raise the costs of what it takes for a company to close a plant. there are a lot of costs that company does not have to bear that the rest of us do. trade policy does get a little bit of it by helping to level the playing field. we also have to impact corporate behavior the way in which we respond to these types of plant

also the layoffs, and types of skills, training opportunities we have in place for workers. economy but we have exceptionally low unemployment, that doesn't mean the jobs available are good ones are ones that will be the right fit for everybody.

well over 90% of our clothing and apparel is imported. internetto search the to find american-made products. for a couple of reasons. one is obviously that there were trade deals that made it possible to bring the imports in duty-free. that's what you see. is corporate behavior here. corporations figured out they the product for the same price but make it cheaper overseas and bring it in. no other consequences for it. they did it. unless you incentivize them ifions or punish they don't do the right thing, you'll continue to see that. theoretically all this trade opening did was bring in for themer prices american people. and again, there's scant evidence that that's been the case. you have a lot of options to buy

t-shirts but when you look at things like footwear and what have you, most of the cost of that is not the production, it's the branding. of nike's brand or any other iconic brand's that you're paying for. you're not paying for the physical product all that much. to unpack there but there's not an easy policy solution. take i think a thread of sophisticated policies notet it done and we're even talking about electronics. the phones that we use, no one has an american-made smartphone because they don't exist. >> before you joined us this spent an hour talking to our viewers about the former president obama and president trump about theshould get credit for economy. one of the things that president the reasonsd to as why he should get credit is that way down, isre

what he said. -- how have regulation and deregulation impacted the manufacturing semiconductor? >> it's a very good question. the answer is not every thelation is bad, deregulation is not necessarily good thing. because it provides certainty for a market. the trump administration has done is certainly they have slowed the flow of new regulations. that is something they have done. they undone a lot of regulations? they haven't. have undone some but it hasn't been anything as breathtaking as what the tosident would want you believe. regulatoryok at costs overall as a factor of inufacturing production,

some industries it's far more significant than others. the earlier to conversation that we had. the much bigger impact you see these days areg rates, are the level playing field where we have the same opportunity to sell abroad as folks do country,me into this the skills of the work force, how efficient we are, what to invest there are in the modernization of the also energy costs and our energy costs are pretty low in the united states compared to of our competitors overseas. when you add it up, we have some balance sheet that favor manufacturing. we have a few of the others that don't. regulations sometimes can tip the scale one way or the other in an don't want to go extreme either way. i don't think it's accurate for say that his

agenda has led to an unleashing of american manufacturing. >> care to weigh in on who deserves the credit for the economy? guest: political objectives don't account for other stuff going on. this is what's troubling to me. are you really going to assign obama blame for the great that he inherited? because if you do, it means that performance under obama was not great and they lost jobs. if you look at it from their and how to it manufacturing unfolded after that, it paints a much different at the and you look largest -- the longest expansion jobs forcturing probably three or four decades that occurred in the obama and trump had the good fortune to inherit that.

both presidents did some positive things to help manufacturing. back at the obama administration and the amount of on innovation,ut investing in advanced and starting the conversation about skills apprenticeships. i think that made an enormous rescuing theong auto industry which at first lost jobs because plants closed to rebound and no one thought it would be possible for the auto industry to look it did a couple of years ago. it looked like it was teetering bankruptcy. of the trump administration has also done i think positive things for manufacturing, as well, and i think leveling the beying field with china will a very good thing if they follow through on that. you can't account for public or otherergencies things going on in the world.

i think it's very difficult to do that it. i think both presidents deserve some credit for their performance in manufacturing. there are things they could have done better. host: does the alliance endorse presidential elections? guest: we do not. we have hosted presidential forums in the past but we are scrupulously nonpartisan and in bothticipated parties in the congress in developing manufacturing standards. host: good morning, you're on with scott paul. caller: top of the morning to you. have a few inconvenient facts. one is the corporate debt has increased by 50% since 2008 to $10 trillion, a record 47% of g.d.p. two, consumer debt is at $14 a record which is amount. owes $6,194american

16.88% interest rate. the national debt that we have had for this year in 2019 is one it'sion dollars and projected for 2020 to be over one trillion dollars. things that basically come up is the industrial theuction has dropped for third straight month and in my industry, the projection is for this year that 7.4 -- >> good afternoon, my name is seniormith and i'm a adviser on the afghanistan team i'm glad to welcome you all here for a timely discussion on ending the war in afghanistan. welcome those joining by live stream. you can engage with us e