Last month, another manufacturer announced that it was closing in my home state of Ohio, the 82nd in the past 12 months. This time it was Johnson Rubber, a 113-year-old maker of floor mats and rubber boots for steering columns.
Today's Ohio Democratic primary has given these plant closings national attention, and both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have laid out plans for reviving manufacturing. But critics dismiss these efforts (as a Feb. 24 Post article noted) as pandering and ineffective.
Neither critique is fair. Yes, the manufacturing sector has been hammered with the loss of 3.7 million jobs over the past seven years. But manufacturing remains vital to our nation's economy. One-tenth of all U.S. jobs are in the manufacturing sector -- good jobs that pay 20 percent more than the national average. Manufacturing accounts for 12 percent of gross domestic product and over half of our national spending on research and development.
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