Turn a trickle into a trend by joining the Should Be Made in America campaign - Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Turn a trickle into a trend by joining the Should Be Made in America campaign.

Dear Friend,

On MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan Show last Thursday, I was asked if I thought manufacturing jobs might actually be coming back to America. I said that, yes, thankfully we're seeing some jobs come back.

However, I added that the real question is how to turn this "trickle" into a trend.

We know just how incredibly important manufacturing is to the health and vitality of the American economy. Manufacturing jobs can allow millions of Americans with the right skills the opportunity to seek the American dream. America needs these jobs. And we need to remain competitive in cutting-edge industries like solar panels and wind turbines so that we aren't merely replacing foreign oil with "Made in China" clean energy manufacturing.

Essentially, if we can't build it here, we'll be at a huge competitive disadvantage.

So, step one in making sure that "reshoring" is a real phenomenon will be to give our productive industries, like steel and auto parts, a fighting chance. We need to make sure that our companies and workers can compete against countries like China that continue to undervalue their currency while employing massive subsidies to dump product in the U.S.

With states and the federal government poised to invest tens of billions of dollars in urgently needed infrastructure repairs, we need you to act now. It's your turn to make sure that these projects aren't simply outsourced to China. We can't afford another fiasco like the Oakland Bay Bridge, which could have been built with American steel but instead racked up billions of dollars in cost overruns due to faulty Chinese components.

That's why we launched a “Should Be Made in America” campaign to make sure that taxpayer-financed federal, state, and local infrastructure projects are made in America by American workers.

Across the nation, people have joined our fight by signing up on www.ShouldBeMadeinAmerica.com, ‘LIKING’ the campaign on Facebook, and following us on Twitter. With your help, we can make sure that federal, state, and local officials rebuild our nation with American-made materials and products.

Will you join the 90 percent of Americans who believe now is the time to STOP sending taxpayer dollars overseas? Click HERE to join the Should Be Made in America campaign.

It’s time for our leaders to wake up. If we really want to start reshoring manufacturing jobs, we need to start with common sense solutions. And we need Washington to start listening.

Together we can Keep it Made in America.

Sincerely,

Scott Paul
Executive Director
Alliance for American Manufacturing