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Remarks by Gene Sperling before the Conference on the Renaissance of American Manufacturing

| Advanced Manufacturing, Manufacturing USA, National Network for Manufacturing Innovation

In the State of the Union, when the President outlined a blueprint for an economy built to last, he highlighted the importance of a competitive U.S. manufacturing sector to the vision of a U.S. economy that was innovative, competitive and the source of good jobs for American workers. Today, I want to lay out some of the economic underpinning that laid the foundation for the President and his economic team's focus on making manufacturing an economic priority. Let me begin by acknowledging upfront that this is an area where otherwise like-minded economists often disagree. Many economists raise the concern that any focus on manufacturing is distortionary industrial policy or misguided because they believe that manufacturing is in an inevitable and irreversible decline due to decades-long productivity and technology gains that will mean a continual loss of jobs. I want to take on those arguments because we believe they miss important economic realities about the state of manufacturing in America and the very real benefits that manufacturing brings to our economy and that we ought to preserve.