00:00 Speaker A
How do we get the cost of making stuff here lower? I mean, I can’t we do that to where, hey, we’re more competitive with other countries, cuz you know the knock. The knock is often, I’ll hear it on this show.
00:10 Jay
Yeah.
00:10 Speaker A
No, it’s it’s too tough given our our labor costs.
00:13 Jay
Yeah, no. Uh, it’s not at all, actually. It’s a pretty easy formula. I’m actually very proud of the fact that we pay workers in the United States better than any other country in the world. I think it’s a good thing, right? I don’t I don’t want to ever shy away from that. But if we’re going to do that and we make that a hallmark of manufacturing in America, then you got to bring down other costs that you can control.
00:40 Speaker A
What what are those, Jay?
00:41 Jay
Taxes is number one, right? If we hadn’t renewed that tax bill, then manufacturers definitely would have made decisions that they could they had to invest that next dollar outside of the country. So we should all be we should all be trying to keep the tax burden on manufacturers lower. Regulatory modernization, not getting rid of regulations, but making them sensible, smarter, and less in terms of compliance costs. Small manufacturers today spend $50,000 per employee per year on compliance costs.
01:05 Speaker A
Wow.
01:06 Jay
That’s a lot of money, right? For for for a mom and pop manufacturing facility. Um, energy costs, big deal. Like we use one-third of the nation’s energy. So that that is a huge input cost to us, right? And then, uh, I would add the other the other component is of course trade and getting certainty around the tariff situation. I can tell you manufacturers don’t like tariffs, but the president does. We’re going to have them. So, our goal and our hope is that we have, uh, a plan that’s put in place, a finalized plan of whatever the president intends to do in that regard.
01:46 Speaker A
Speaking of the president, he has said, I’ll end here, Jay, um, Xi coming to the White House, I believe believe he said later this year. What would you like to see coming out of that meeting? What do you want to see discussed?
01:58 Jay
Wow. So, um, that’s that’s a great question. I actually would probably rather focus on the USMCA trade agreement where one of the improvements that I think the administration is going to want and I would like us to see is less transshipments from Canada through Mexico, sorry, less transshipments from China through Canada and Mexico. And if we’re truly going to have a strong North American manufacturing sector, then China needs to manufacture for other parts of the world, but not the North American market. And that’s part of our our concern. I I I would think that uh that a meeting with President Xi and President Trump would be more focused on national security issues and less on how much market share the Chinese could take from us because I really don’t want to see that.
02:49 Speaker A
Jay, so good to have you on the show today, especially on set. Thank you, sir.
02:51 Jay
Yeah, thank you. Appreciate being here.