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In a towering act of sycophantry, the National Association of Manufacturers announced Friday that it will be giving Ivanka Trump the organization’s first ever Alexander Hamilton Award for “extraordinary support of manufacturing in America.” The organization made the outrageous claim that “no one” — no one! — has ever “provided singular leadership and shown an unwavering commitment to modern manufacturing in America” like she has.
the National Association of Manufacturers announced Friday that it will be giving Ivanka Trump the organization’s first ever Alexander Hamilton Award for “extraordinary support of manufacturing in America.
Better news would be someone giving the entire tRump clan the Benedict Arnold award for ‘extraordinary treasonous behavior.’
This story, and not just the absurd award, needs to be front page news. The reality needs to be out there for people to see (if they have eyes) without the clutter of scandal, lying and hypocrisy.
The crucial thing is that manufacturing jobs don’t even pay more than comparable jobs in other sectors. So it’s like trying to bring a resurgence to minimum-wage coal mining.
As the President runs for reelection, he is pointing to a strong economy as a “success” for American workers and touting what he says is a resurgence in blue collar jobs.
Yes, very very strong, the strongest ever…
So strong that my daughter who lost her business due to the shutdown needed, until recently, three jobs to partially cover the income she generated running a part-time business.
A 501 C ( 6 ) organization is tax speak for a business association such as a chamber of commerce. Although they’re organized to promote business, they don’t generate a profit and don’t pay shares or dividends. That qualifies them as non-profit organizations, exempt from paying income tax.
People ask:
What does the National Association of Manufacturers do?
I have spent my career in manufacturing, the last two decades in hard goods (metal products, automotive, auto components, refinery / oil equipment). When Trump came into office, I heard a lot about how he was going to really change our business. (I’m in Texas, so you can guess it’s all good). Well, he did. With the imposition of tariffs, suddenly our profitability dived, and we could not get materials in that we needed to meet orders. The company I was with used a grade of stainless steel and high carbon steel which could only be sourced offshore as no domestic mills made the product we needed. Not only did the cost of materials spike, but lead times went from 30 - 45 days up to six months or more. Absolutely destroyed us. Meantime, our customers didn’t want to reopen purchase orders and pay more, and we really had no leverage. End story, we had to lay off manufacturing and sales personnel until we could get materials in stock, then we had to incur lots of overtime to get product out the door.
But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Several of our competitors were importing completed assemblies from China, and since they weren’t covered under the metals tariffs, they could drastically undercut us. Sucked to be us, but at least the Donald created new manufacturing jobs – in China.
Thank you for this, Joe. Trump lies a lot, but his lies about the macroeconomy are among the most pernicious. And he gets away with it day in and day out.
Added:
I wish I could find that article from a union publication I linked to a couple years ago. A company in MA. that makes factory manufacturing equipment ( multi million dollar huge machines) said most orders were coming from outside of the US. They said once the factories get built around the machinery, more jobs will disappear in the US. The increase in orders was due to tariffs on raw materials here. The countries are going to manufacture the product themselves to avoid the tariffs on steel, Aluminum and etc. The owner of the company said those US jobs will be gone forever once those foreign factories open.
