206,000 manufacturing jobs over all of the last 12 inmonths. And this is in a private sector economy that has added about 2 million jobs over the same period. So you see thats lagged far behind the rest of the economy. There is about a one and a half year boom during the Trump Administration, but that has dissipated. In over the past few months in particular we have been losing manufacturing jobs. What do you point to for that leg . Thats a great question and there seems to be a couple of trends. There has been some uncertainty that has come around as a result of the trade i policy. I think the trade policy has had some benefits but has also added some uncertainties to businesses. They are reluctant to invest and that means and other things are not getting purchasedur and it has a spiral effect in manufacturing. You have seen an oil and gas, ironically when the prices for oil and gas go down a little bit, that means there is probably reduced employment in the refining and other sectors which are reduced opportunities. Youve seen a bit of that as well. What has happened with respect to boeing and the 737 max, has had some impact in the aerospace supply chain. When you combine all those factors, it hasss contributed to a bit of weakness. Then you have overarching factors like the continued strength of the dollar. People probably say what does that have to do with manufacturing at all . If the dollar is what we call overvalued, its a lot harder. For us to sell our exports into other markets. They are artificially expensive and it makes imports coming into this market cheaper. So it displaces some Domestic Production as well. That is been a continued trend in manufacturing. There has been a drag on the ability to create manufacturing jobs. Appeals skip monomers out for the viewers to have questions or comments for scott paul. Special phone line and the segment 2,027,488,000. If you work in manufacturing we would love to hear from you. All others 202 7488001. As folks are calling and you mention 13 Million Manufacturing jobs in the u. S. What are the subsectors, the biggest subsectors and is very broad category of manufacturing . Thats a great question and anyha fracturing is many things a lot of people would have an image ofho a large auto factory. And certainly there are some of those and when you couple automobiles and auto parts together, that accounts for about one in every night manufacturing jobs. Its very expensive supply chain. That manufacturing is also things like the folks making craft beers. That is manufacturing you have seen that sector rise up its a small percentage of manufacturing employment. But you will have shops like that all around the country theyre doing that. The primary manufacturing categories are what are called durable goods versus nondurable goods. Durable goods are the things like automobiles, planes, washing machines, what someone buys or some company buys that you will hang onto for a long time. Nondurable goods are things like processed foods. Food that is had some value added to it, thats a manufacturing process. And so that is considered ae nondurable good. Nondurable goods arent as subject to this Business Uncertainty or what have you because people have to eat. People have to buy a lot of these consumer staples. That employment tends to be a little bit more steady. The durable goods is where you see it going up and downn words really whip by International Trade and Exchange Rates and a lot of things happening around the world. Public health crisis, the coronavirus that it will certainly have an impact. You see the durable goods sector probably more subject to any headwinds that you are going to see in the global economy. We noted you have been on the washington journal before, but for those that havent seen what is the alliance . Theha lines for American Manufacturing has been around since 2007. We are alw partnership between the United States work is union which is uniteds largest industrial unit and they represent workers in everything from steel to making sponges and chemicals, on paper, and tires, and some of the steelworkers employers. So we have Business Partners as wellin steel and other sectors. A lot of times people probably say wellla labor and business fight with each other all the time. Whether its about contracts and issues, and there are certainlybu disagreements at the table. But we have found that among the steelworkers in the Business Partners i theres a lot of commonality on issues like the need to invest in infrastructure, the need to invest in skills and training. The need to have a trade policy thats looking out for our domestic concerns. And then the value of manufacturing overall to the and explain that to people, we have been proud to do that work for 13 years now. And its america manufacturing. Org if you want to check them out online or on twitter. Keep it made in the usa. If you want to follow along in the best part is when you come on you get to chat with folks in the Manufacturing Industry. This is gene out of jackson, michigan in the Manufacturing Sector. This economy was going to go from the manufacturing to Service Economy. This started in the 50s under eisenhower. Then and the 60s, they told us they are getting rid of the dirty jobs and the repetitive jobs to go to a Service Economy where we would have more leisure time and more money. But all we got was more leisure time. Speedy one i will let scott paul jump in on that what is your job . Caller i retired from this deal mill and worked there 205 years. Host thanks for calling in scott paul . Guest i think jean raises an important point. I think a lot of people look back on manufacturing and think of the best days are behind it. Certainly in the 1950s manufacturing accounted for about half of our economy. It was an extraordinary amount of employment and of economic output. Manufacturing did protas the middleclass jobs which allowed people to have disposable income and then they bought things like services. They went to the movies, they took vacations, and that help strengthen the Service Economy. So its a bit of a virtuous cycle. We have also seen i think this is the important thing so i think thatsoo all good a good evolution for the american economy. I think whats not been so good has been the fact that we have seen manufacturing get eroded in part by the global competition. We have seen other countries that have tried to mimic the United States manufacturing success, except they have done that with a very heavy hand. That has certainly eroded our Global Market share of manufacturing and our ability to export. So thats the part of manufacturing that has declined as a percentage of our economy that has me trouble. And i would just note that in the last quarter of 2019, manufacturing, as a percentage of our gdp was 11 . Thats the lowest it has been since early in the 1930s. It has never been lower than that. Host Tampa Florida or heres john good morning. Caller thank you both fears service we really appreciate it. The single greatest threat is chinas rise to power where u. S. Ci leadership in business basically facilitated by the democratic party, initially the republicans. Centralist democrats are all for off shoring jobs. Bill clinton started to rise as rise to power signing off on nafta giving them the trading status to iw t0. We basically have trillions and 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 classes pocket that is now in china. Host so how do you feel about the trade deal that President Trump side with china . C caller it is certainly a hundred 80degree change from the last three president s that we had. Bill clinton, w bush, other republicans and obama. The centrist democrats of the same thing as a prereform republicans. They are in the pocket of big business and of course. The trade deal is a step in the right direction. It is the best the president could do considering the corruption thatt has been an hour very political infrastructure, if you will, since bill clinton took office. Host what you specifically like about it . Caller what i like about it is hes trying to attempt to reverse the trade deficit. Tethats the reason the president and now i understand patriotically decided to run for president as opposed to the comfortable life he wouldve had before. Because he saw the great need icbecause of the massive trade deficit was his number one motivation for running for president. That is the biggest single threat to america, chinas rise to power and the freetrade starting with bill clinton. Trish got your point john. Guest i will say i grew johns idea on chinas threat to our economy and our security. I think it has been underestimated for far too long. I am a bit less partisan about assigning blame. When you take many steps back, you look at Richard Nixon made 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 assessments 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 as way to respond to that threat. I think it is abundantly clear that did not work. That china was gonna do what china was gonna do. While we are a country that believes in rules based trade and other mechanisms, it is not necessarily that way in china. Weve got it wrong for a very long time. Host how involved is your group with the creation or negotiation, discussions the white house had leading up to this try to trade up . Guest from the early stages is an even during the campaign we told all of the candidates back in 2016, heres the challenges with china here are some possible ways to respond to t it. We did find that 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 and the phase one china deal, are a step in that process. I think there are some advantages to them, i also think this phase one deal falls really short. Because it deals with a few of the less tricky issues that are designed to help businesses american businesses who are doing business in china. It will help them a little bit. It boosts some sales of exports, if it is fully implemented and we have not seen any implementation whatsoever so far. If it is implemented it should export boosts of agricultural products, energy products, maybe manufacturing products. That alone will undo some of the damage that was done because of chinas retaliation against our additional tariffs against china. We are getting ourselves up to a point, but whats not being addressed and where i think the deal fell short, is that there are still massive intervention by the Chinese Government in thehe economy. Its businesses receive hundreds of billions of subsidies from the Chinese Government in fact about 3 of chinese gdp goes into subsidizing its businesses that are owned by these Chinese Government. They dont have the private sector equivalent of a boeing make us all owned by the Chinese Government. The problem is, as skilled as our workers may be, as ingenious as our entrepreneurs, as efficient as our businesses managers may be, even that, if you are competing against a lot of cash in another government, its incredibly difficult to do that. And that is what a lot of our manufacturers have found. Host from alabama this is michael. Good morning. My glory with this . I hear you by your phone michael doing overtime . Caller yes. Host go ahead. Caller hello in response to the other fellow that was on before, actually George Herbert walkerta bush tried to push through nafta but couldnt get it through a democraticic congress. He ranan a lackluster campaign guaranteeing clinton wouldei win. This is from what i understand kind of worked out. His Campaign Manager had gone to arkansas and told bill clinton that he was going to be the fairhaired golden boy provided he did not screw up. First thing clinton did was he pushed through the same bill that George Herbertld walker bush pushed through speedy one lets go to nafta now the usmc a. Guest again i think here we have a case that i think for a long time both the establishment, i will call it and i do think it was kinda bipartisan but its hisgo Foreign Policy establishment got it wrong. That included both democrats and republicans. The idea for a nafta was hatched in the reagan administration. George Herbert Walker bush, largely negotiated it. Bill clinton added a few bells and whistles, i will say and then submitted it for implementation to the congress. It was passed in 1993 enacted in 1994. What we saw was a massive amount of movement, particularly in the auto parts sector of production from the United States toxi mexico. What we didnt see was a nafta building up a mexican middleclass, which was the idea. Like if we have more trade, their workers will get wealthier and will buy more of our products. It turned out to be a completely an adequate way to do that. I will say again that i think donald trump was right to new renegotiate the nafta and the usmc a, which is not entered into force, it has been passed by the United States, weve done everything we need to do but it still needs tout be passed in canada to take effect. Its not going to solve all of the problems. It will, i think, make some progress. I think it will we were talking about rules with china before, i think a lot of it depends on how the countries played by the rules that are laid out. They can make some modest improvements. My hope is at the end of the day, it will actually stop the flood of jobs from leaving the United States to mexico based on low wages. And it will level out that Playing Field a little bit. I dont see it, i heard the Trump Administration folks talk about it over the last few days. I dont see this as being a massive boost for gdp in the United States. It might have a modest pot of positive effects, but i dont think it will be any sort of massive gdp boost to the United States. It makes modest improvements to theor rules, i think it was worth passing, we support it. Im glad it passed, but it is nothing i would call as being a permanent transformational fix in trade policy. Guest another one of thoseo folks worked in the manufactures yolanda out of newport news, virginia. You are almost got paul. Caller how are you doing today can hearr me . Host go ahead. Caller my thing is 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 the warehouse down in south carolina. We are losing a lot of jobs here. In they are moving our buildings over to china. Imagine 250 of us and newport news and this one warehouse. We are going to flood at employment. Imagine be starting over again trying to find anotherga. Job. We have to do something to keep these jobs here. Host yolanda thank. You for the call and sharing your story. Guest yolanda first of all, i am very sorry, having a plant closure like that is a devastating blow. There is no sugarcoating its. My hope is that the local officials will be doing everythinghi possible to help with readjustment. I will acknowledge that it is incredibly difficult to do that successfully. W what we have seen in manufacturing, as those plants closed, like yolanda was referring to, is that instead of workers particularly older workers, those in their 40s or 50s, instead of them Getting Better jobs, what often happens is they get jobs that pay far less, or have fewer benefits, i did many cases they are not employed ever again. There has been really good evidence that has emerged over the lastt few years that these kinds of plant closures have ripple effectser that affect everybody in the community. They affect the public services, they have even affected the divorce rates unfortunately, they have led to a whole lot of 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. Because there are a lots of costs that that company then does not have tohe bear that the rest of us do. Trade policy does get at a little bit of it by helping to level the Playing Field. But we also have to impacts corporate behavior, the way in which we respond to these types of plant closures, and layoffs, and also the types of skills, training opportunities that we have in place for workers. Because even in an economy where we have exceptionally low unemployment, that doesnt mean that the Jobs Available are good ones or ones that will be a right fit for everybody. We need to do a much better job at issues like that. Host to give a little more context to yolanda story, this is the Associated Press story on continentals closings and losses announced back in september. The germans auto supply said last year that up to 20000 jobs worldwide would be affected over the next decade by Restructur