FIRST ON FOX: One hundred and thirty-one manufacturing organizations penned a letter to the White House pleading with President Biden’s administration to curb the overwhelming amount of federal regulations costing manufacturing companies thousands at levels unseen from any prior administrations, the largest U.S. manufacturing association head told Fox News.
“We’ve never seen this level before in any administration,” President and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers Jay Timmons said. “We want to call attention to the barrage of regulations that manufacturers are facing right now.”
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The National Association of Manufacturers, representing small and large manufacturers in all 50 states, launched the Manufacturers for Sensible Regulations coalition on Thursday to address the “onslaught” of federal regulations negatively impacting the industry. Members of the coalition sent a letter to Biden’s Chief of Staff Jeff Zients to express their concerns, and request the White House designate a senior-level advisor to work with agencies and manufacturers to ensure achievable regulatory practices moving forward.
The onslaught of new federal regulations is “chilling manufacturing investment, curtailing manufacturers’ ability to hire new workers and suppressing wage growth, especially for the small and medium-sized manufacturers that are the backbone of the supply chain,” the letter read.
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“Regulations create tremendous uncertainty, which can stall or even prevent manufacturers from growing their workforce, purchasing equipment, conducting research and development and investing in their communities,” the letter read. “This puts manufacturers in the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage with countries such as China, threatening America’s global leadership.”
Timmons told Fox News NAM has been monitoring and engaging in the regulatory process across 30 agencies.
“It’s really the volume and the number that are challenging. We’re not saying don’t regulate,” Timmons said. “But sometimes we are seeing regulatory agencies kind of reaching for the stars and for something that may sound really great in a press release, but is simply not achievable.”
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Already, manufacturers are feeling the time and financial consequences of these overwhelming regulations. More than 63 percent of manufacturers reported spending over 2,000 hours per year complying with federal regulations, and more than 17 percent exceeded 10,000 hours, according to the National Association of Manufacturers’ Q2 2023 Manufacturers’ Outlook Survey released in June.
“It’s this type of a burden that puts a chill on investment,” Timmons said.
Business concerns also climbed to the highest level in six years, with 65 percent of manufacturers saying they would purchase more capital equipment if the regulatory burden decreased and 46.9 percent saying they would increase compensation, according to the June NAM survey. Additionally, 43.2 percent of manufacturers surveyed would hire more workers, 40.1 percent would invest more in research and 38.1 percent would expand their facilities.
“What we’re seeing is we’re seeing a lot of small manufacturers say, ‘we just can’t do this anymore, we can’t make this particular product that is so essential for the supply chain,'” he said. “Or in some cases we see them say ‘we’re going to just pack it up, or even we’re going to let others in China or other countries around the world make these products because we simply can’t do it anymore.'”
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Despite these challenges, Timmons praised some of the Biden administration’s legislation directed at growing the manufacturing industry, including the 2022 Chips and Science Act which boosted funding for semiconductor manufacturing and research. He also said Biden added key energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act and initial permitting reforms in the Fiscal Responsibility Act that helped the manufacturing industry.
“But even though that’s a great forward-looking agenda, a lot of the regulatory agencies are creating impediments to allowing that to happen,” Timmons said. “It’s never easy to deal with a regulatory regime.”
Some Republican lawmakers and other manufacturing industry groups have criticized federal regulations in recent months for increasing industry costs, among other concerns. And some of the more concerning federal regulations under consideration, according to Timmons, were the Environmental Protection Agency’s limit on ethylene oxide – a gas used for food safety and to sterilize medical devices – and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulation on Scope 3 emissions.
“Businesses need to be at the table when some of these decisions are being made, so we can simply provide pragmatic solutions,” he said. “If you had that kind of coordination, that would better help to bring the whole government together … for the same objectives.”
“I think this is a message that is coming across loudly and clearly,” to the Biden administration, Timmons said. “Keep doing the good things to advance manufacturing, but make sure that the entire government is focused on the same agenda.”
To watch Timmons’ full interview click here.
