Ahead of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, American manufacturers are thanking and praising the president as their “champion” in the White House.
“In his first 100 days, President Trump has kept his promise to manufacturers in the United States in historic ways,” National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) President and CEO Jay Timmons said in a statement Thursday. “That is why 93 percent of manufacturers surveyed by the NAM are positive in their outlook on the economy.” (RELATED: New Survey Shows How Optimistic Manufacturers Are Under Trump)
The NAM is running an ad campaign to thank the president that will run in print and online in major publications, as well as on social media platforms.
It appears that Trump has kept his attention on manufacturing since taking office. Along with Wall Street, manufacturers have “led the quest” for business access to the president, according to a Reuters report. The president met with NAM and a group of small and mid-sized manufacturers from around the country in late March before signing two executive orders meant to crack down on unfair trade practices.
Trump demanded a full report identifying foreign trading partners the U.S. had significant trade deficits with in 2016. Trump also signed an executive order that established enhanced collection and enforcement of anti-dumping and countervailing duties. Both orders have resonated with domestic manufacturers.
“This president has really focused his attention on creating manufacturing jobs right here in the United States,” Timmons said in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation in late February. “We also have a Congress that seems ready to act on these priorities.”
Many conservatives are uncomfortable with Trump’s relatively protectionist stance on trade, however, and have lobbed criticism of his policies from the right. Regarding Trump’s move to tax imported lumber from Canada, American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark Perry wrote: “Trump has just slapped stiff 20% tariffs (lumber taxes) on the American people, not Canada.”
He described tariffs as “price-raising, job-killing, prosperity-destroying trade policies that involve the government-sanctioned ‘legal plunder’ of Americans (home buyers and home builders in this case) by domestic producers (domestic lumber producers).”
The president credited his tough talk on trade as a major reason for his campaign victory. Trump railed against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as horrible deals for the American worker and manufacturers. During his first 100 days, Trump officially pulled the United States out of TPP negotiations. He also announced in a series of tweets Thursday that he would renegotiate NAFTA or leave the treaty altogether.
“He has paved the way to reduce the job-crushing regulatory burden in America unlike any previous president,” Timmons asserted Thursday. “And his bold actions to promote investment and create jobs are lifting more Americans up and restoring confidence to those who have felt left behind.”
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