Talking American Manufacturing at Iowa State University

Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack make remarks on American manufacturing and innovation at Iowa State University, Des Moines, Iowa, March 1, 2012. (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)

Last Friday, Vice President traveled to Ames, Iowa to talk about the importance of strengthening the American manufacturing sector at Iowa State University’s College of Engineering.  Speaking to hundreds of students and faculty, the Vice President argued that manufacturing jobs are coming back to the United States and talked about the reasons that manufacturing matters—not just to people who might one day work in manufacturing like the engineering students at Iowa State, but to the entire U.S. economy and to the American middle class. 

The Vice President described how between America’s unique economic advantages and the rising costs of doing business in countries like China, more and more companies are choosing to bring jobs back to the America. 

He also emphasized that our skilled workers and engineers—like those trained at Iowa State and other leading American universities—are one of our greatest economic assets. The unique environment at America’s research universities equips students not only with strong technical skills, but with an unmatched capacity for innovation.  

“Here at Iowa State and every university in America,” the Vice President said, “you understand that change only comes through challenging orthodoxy, challenging the established norm, challenging the system that you’re working on ...  And that’s the environment where the next generation of great ideas is going to come from.” 

The Vice President also noted how a strong manufacturing sector can impact entire communities—providing decent jobs for everyone from the construction workers who build a factory to the advertisers and salespeople who sell the products. Above all, the manufacturing sector helps support the basic middle-class aspirations of millions of workers, which is why the President and the Vice President are proposing to fix our tax code so it rewards manufacturers for bringing jobs back to America instead of giving them tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas.  To learn more about our proposals to create more manufacturing jobs here in America, check out the Blueprint for an America Built to Last. 

Tobin Marcus is Vice President Biden’s Economic Policy Advisor