Michelle: What's new with Manufacturing Renaissance, what's coming up, what should manufacturers be doing, and what have you seen in your work lately?

David: So, I imagine that you notice that there are tariffs and lots of things happening out in the world. And much of my work is around advocacy for support for the industry at every level, primarily some of the foundational things like filling the skills gap and other supports that are a little less obvious for small to medium sized manufacturers, which is really our sweet spot. And frankly, they're the sweet spot of the United States of America. 90 % of the manufacturers are the smaller, hundred employees or less category, and they're very specific.

They produce a certain thing and often they produce it for specialized parts for the bigger entities, the Boeings and the car manufacturers and so on and so forth. Right now there just seems to be a bit of limbo. Manufacturers are a little concerned about spending money to upgrade, to automate, and there's a call to reshore. So, the bigger entities that are kind of exploring that, that process takes anywhere from three to six years to actually move a plant from, let's say Mexico, to the United States and have remained productive and increased productivity. A lot of money has to be spent. It's a long process, very expensive.

So, manufacturers are sort of scratching their heads right now. They're not sure what to do, even though there's a call to do this reshoring. And at the same time, I'm having trouble following the logic of cutting things like the manufacturing exchange project, which provided government educational consultants and even in some cases financial support for specific needs of manufacturers. That program got gutted from what I understand. So, most of the manufacturers that we work with, they don't have a lot of time to do incumbent training, or they don't have the funds to do that sort of thing, to do the kind of really serious apprenticeships that we all talk about. Those are expensive and they take some time. So, the industry feels a little bit uncertain about which way to go on a lot of these things. Yet the skills gap remains.

Illinois alone, according to the University of Illinois study, and Illinois Manufacturers Association also has similar numbers that about 58,000 jobs remain vacant in Illinois alone, and then millions across the country. And I think you've probably spoken with manufacturers and they're all saying the same thing primarily. It's like, we still need skilled talent. So, what does that mean? That means that there needs to be a real effort to undergird and support the educational and vocational career technical training system from high school all the way through city colleges or community colleges, I guess is the general term. And that support's been spotty. And in Chicago in particular, we always advocate to local government and to the state government to provide support for these things. But budgets are tight. In lot of cases, budgets are in the red.

So, they have to make certain priorities. And unfortunately, what I'm seeing is manufacturing and the support system for manufacturing somehow hasn't risen to the level of priority when the state legislator gets together and kind of figures out how they're gonna carve a small pie into various pieces. The pieces tend not to get to the manufacturers fully. So, our work at Manufacturing Renaissance is to continue that advocacy. We have two things that are kind of hot right now. through Congresswoman Jan Trakowski, and with support, think sponsorship from Congressman Danny Davis, and a variety of other elected officials have signed on to a bill called the American Manufacturing Renaissance Act.

And what that bill calls for is $12 billion in support to fund ground up, which would include manufacturers and community folk and educators and the research community and so on. You know, we create these councils that essentially would help make use of that money for the very critical needs that are in a specific area. And this is obviously a national bill.