Posts Tagged: "high tech manufacturing"

I don’t believe the federal government needs to coordinate a program or embark upon studies by some blue-ribbon panel. What the federal government needs is to institute a meaningful and coherent National Manufacturing Policy that offers tax incentives to manufacturers in the U.S. The federal government also needs to substantially lessen regulatory burdens. Through simple legislative reforms America could be made to be extremely competitive. Factor in that U.S. workers are dedicated and produce high-quality products, that the products don’t need to be shipped across the world to distribute and that civil unrest is extraordinarily unlikely in the U.S., and it is easy to envision a future where manufacturing returns to America to some appreciable degree.

Ray Niro is a nationally recognized trial attorney specializing in the enforcement of patent, trade secret and related intellectual property rights. The name Niro, however, is not like any other in the patent industry. It was as a consequence of a lawsuit one of his clients brought against Intel in 2001 that the term “patent troll” was coined. On March 12, 2012, Niro went on the record with me in an exclusive interview. We discussed many things, including the nearly constant attempts to erode patent rights, make it more difficult for patent owners to seek redress for infringement and what the America Invents Act will mean for patent litigation moving forward. We also discussed the undeniable reality that there are bad actors in the industry.

Small businesses are the backbone of the nation’s economy and those that are most likely to engage in job creation. Unfortunately, the small businesses surveyed tell a tale of little or no job creation over the next 1 to 3 years, and in fact suggest there will be more layoffs coming. The respondents see too much uncertainty in Washington, DC, too many regulations and a number of other matters (i.e., the deficit, debt, health care and taxes) as significant impediments to job creation. This on the heels of a disappointing jobs report for June 2010, downward revisions of the number of jobs created in April and May, and unemployment rising to 9.2%, this Chamber survey only piles on the continuing terrible news for the economy. With Congress bickering over the obvious — namely that we simply cannot spend money we don’t have and need to start spending less than we bring in to cut the deficit — it doesn’t seem there is likely to be any good news on the horizon.

Many people assume that there’s no way American manufacturers can compete with cheap Chinese labor. It’s just basic economics, right? Wrong. It’s the U.S. government’s myopic policy, not China’s lower payroll costs, that make our nation uncompetitive in the all-important solar and other high-tech manufacturing sectors. With manufacturing friendly tax policies and a permanent 20 percent R&D tax credit equal to what other nations offer China’s advantage drops to 1 to 2 percent, and that the U.S. can compete with.