NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND — Over the past three years, the Biden administration has been working to bring back domestic manufacturing under the Investing in America agenda.
Legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have drawn companies, both foreign and domestic, to invest in the U.S. Companies have announced $877 billion in manufacturing projects since President Biden took office.
The Department of Commerce is at the center of billions of dollars in federal funding offered through these laws. Recently, the agency hosted its 10th annual SelectUSA Investment Summit, the federal government's program to attract foreign direct investment. During the June event outside Washington, D.C. companies including NorSun, JSW Steel, Westrafo and Enso announced new manufacturing projects.
Manufacturing Dive caught up with Deputy Sec. Don Graves at the event to discuss the Commerce Department’s role in growing the U.S. manufacturing industry.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MFG Dive: What should Americans know about today's modern manufacturing and why it's important to the future of our economy?
GRAVES: We're going through what I think most would say is this fourth industrial revolution, where industries the world over are being changed in ways that we had no idea about 20 years ago.
The president and vice president have asked us to focus on making sure that this country is ready to lay claim to those industries that are developing now and that will come as a result of all of these changes that we're seeing, critical and emerging technologies like semiconductors, like AI, like clean tech. We want to make sure that the U.S. is at the forefront of all of these new technologies.
That's why we've been so focused on implementing the major pieces of legislation that the president was able to get passed, from the American Rescue Plan to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. There's a theme to getting those passed, it was getting our economy stable and back producing again, building the type of infrastructure that we need to be able to bring more manufacturing back to the United States.
One of the CHIPS Act's workforce requirements for semiconductor makers pursuing $150 million in funding or more is a childcare plan for manufacturing and construction workers. How is that going and will the Department of Commerce expand the subsidy?
The thing that CEOs have said consistently is their biggest concern is about having the trained, capable workforce that we have in so many industries in this country, but having it for the semiconductor industry. And one of the biggest issues for getting workers to these facilities is access to affordable, high-quality childcare.
That will allow us to get millions [of workers] if we do this right, particularly women if they want to get into the workforce. This gives them that opportunity to get into the workforce in the type of job that consistently had gone to men.
Other than legislation like the IRA and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, what else is the Biden administration doing to help small- and medium-sized manufacturers that work outside clean energy and semiconductor-related fields?
So the great thing about the Commerce Department is that we're the center of this administration's efforts on a whole range of ways of building and rebuilding our economy so that it can compete with the rest of the world. We have fantastic components of the Department of Commerce, including our International Trade Administration, which has our Commercial Foreign Service.
We have commercial staff from the Commerce Department located in embassies all across the world, which advocate for and are effective at sharing opportunities with U.S. businesses, particularly small and mid-sized businesses that don't have global enterprises so they don't necessarily have teams that understand how to navigate markets across the world.
“There's a theme to getting those [laws] passed, it was getting our economy stable and back producing again, building the type of infrastructure that we need to be able to bring more manufacturing back to the United States.”
Don Graves
Deputy Secretary, Department of Commerce
We also have our U.S. Export Assistance Centers, which work closely with our Minority Business Development Agency, which work with our Economic Development Administration’s local and regional offices, which work with the Small Business Administration.
So these local components of commerce are basically the local arms. They connect people with resources. They connect people to opportunities. We advocate, as I said, across the globe, so it provides a one-stop shop, if you will, for companies.
What we're really trying to do is better leverage the tools that we have, including our great partnerships with the Export-Import Bank, the Trade and Development Agency and the like.
Small and mid-sized companies in most industries don't realize that we have dedicated folks here at Commerce and across the government who will help solve issues for them, identify the barriers that they have entering the market and that's what we're paid to do on a daily basis.
