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Because the Northeast-Midwest region was once the industrial heart of the nation, manufacturing remains a key sector of its economy. Global competition has reduced the number of manufacturing jobs in the region, creating a legacy of environmental problems and brownfield sites, while challenging policy makers and manufacturers to focus on innovation and cluster development as a way to grow its manufacturing sector.
As other countries design strategies and pour money into the development of competitive manufacturing as a way to develop economically, policy makers face deliberate and successful attempts by other countries to take market share in strategic markets.
While some have written off the importance of manufacturing to the region’s future, manufacturing remains a key sector in terms of providing well-paying jobs and serving as an engine of growth. Cities such as Boston have thrived in part by creating a dynamic economy around the production of innovative new technologies and by encouraging cluster development. The region is home to a number of leading research institutions, such as MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and many others that can serve as an anchor for innovation, as well as supplying the highly trained individuals needed to support the birth of new firms and industries.
A National Academy of Sciences publication, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, underscored the challenges facing the nation: “This nation must prepare with great urgency to preserve its strategic and economic security. Because other nations have, and probably will continue to have the competitive advantage of low-wage structure, the United States must compete by optimizing its knowledge-based resources, particularly in science and technology, and by sustaining the most fertile environment for new and revitalized industries and the well-paying jobs they bring.”1 Another recent report noted, “recognizing that a capacity to innovate and commercialize new high-technology products is increasingly a part of the international competition for economic leadership, governments around the world have taken active steps to strengthen their national innovation systems.”2 New federal policies are needed to foster and accelerate the nation’s transition to a knowledge-based economy that can compete in an increasingly accelerating global competition.
The objective of the Manufacturing Program at the Northeast-Midwest Institute is to provide policy makers with information they need to make informed decisions about issues that affect manufacturing competitiveness.
The Northeast-Midwest Institute provides staff support to the Congressional and Senate Task Forces on Manufacturing, co-chaired by Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Representatives Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Steven LaTourette (R-OH). The Manufacturing Task Forces organize Capitol Hill and field hearings, prepare reports and policy recommendations, and promote legislation to assist the nation's manufacturing sector. With Capitol Hill briefings and letters to appropriators, Manufacturing Task Force members are leading Congressional efforts to promote existing manufacturing programs that are critical to helping maintain U.S. manufacturing competitiveness, such as the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) and the Technology Innovation Program within the Commerce Department’s National Institute on Standards and Technology, the Industrial Technologies Program within the Department of Energy, and the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program in the Commerce Department.
State Manufacturing Profiles
1 National Academy of Sciences/National Academy of Engineering/Institute of Medicine, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Future, (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2007).
2 National Research Council of the National Academies, Innovation Policies for the 21st Century, (National Academy of Sciences: Washington, DC, 2007), p. xiii.
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