E22: Harry Moser - Reshoring Initiative

Today we're honored to have the esteemed Harry Moser join us to talk about his worthy mission to balance America's goods trade deficit! Harry is the founder of Reshoring Initiative, after being the president of a machine tool maker GF Machining Solutions for about 22 years. His awards include Industrial Week and AME Manufacturing Halls of Fame, SPE’s Mold Designer of the Year, and Fab Shop Directors Manufacture of the Year. He's participated actively in President Obama's 2012 Insourcing Forum at the White House and is also a member of the Department of Commerce Investment Advisory Council. He's spoken at numerous conferences and events and has frequently been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, New York Times and seen on national TV and radio programs. In this episode, we dive into the societal problems and lack of industrial policy that has gotten us here, before taking a look at the impact of Trump and Biden's rule so far and what we've learned. The conversation then turns to two important ways Reshoring Initiative helps manufacturers buy smarter and sell smarter, as well as some great ways to help the consumer access and prioritize Made in America products! Harry also brings the data and tools to push a much-needed facelift from the 'dirty' stigma of manufacturing to the 5 S's: shiny, safe, spotless, surging, steady, and outlines the part that colleges (and social media) should play in this reinvigoration drive. We hope you can join us to hear his valuable insight on what leadership can do today inside their companies to push these crucial initiatives!

Transcript

EPISODE 22

[INTRODUCTION] 

[00:00:02]MH: You're listening to The Industrial Movement, where we discuss the people, the processes, and the equipment that drives American manufacturing. If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming. The Industrial Movement podcast is produced every week for your enjoyment, and the show notes can be found at our website at www.theindustrialmovement.com.

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Now, let's get on to the show.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:00:39] MH: Hi, folks. Welcome back to The Industrial Movement. I'm your show host, Morty Hodge. With me as always, my trusty sidekick, Greg Smith.

 [00:00:46] GS: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the show.

[00:00:48] MH: Today we're honored to have the Founder of Reshoring Initiative, Harry Moser. Harry is the founder of Reshoring Initiative after being the president of a machine tool maker GF Machining Solutions for about 22 years. His awards include Industrial Week and AME Manufacturing Halls of Fame, SPE’s Mold Designer of the Year, and Fab Shop Directors Manufacture of the Year. He's participated actively in President Obama's 2012 Insourcing Forum at the White House. He's also a member of the Department of Commerce Investment Advisory Council. That's a mouthful there. Harry’s spoken frequently at AME National and Regional Events for Shingo and Lean Frontiers. Harry's frequently been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, New York Times and seen on national TV and radio programs. Harry, welcome to The Industrial Movement.

[00:01:43] HM: It's great to be here, Morty and Greg. I look forward to a fun 40 minutes or whatever we're going to do.

[00:01:50] MH: Absolutely. Harry, tell us a little bit about yourself and what brought you to where you're at today.

[00:01:56] HM: Okay. I grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, which is right across the river from New York City. The biggest thing in town was the Singer sewing machine. That one time like 120 years ago, the factory there was the largest factory of any kind in the world. It was two and a half million square feet, 5,000 workers. It was a Goliath of its time, obviously, a major portion of the town. My grandfather was foreman and my dad ran a third of the factory. He was an engineer, and he ran different departments. I worked there summers, and I worked best 20 years ago, and everything's gone.

Nothing in Singer, as far as I can see, is made in the United States, it's all imported, and all those thousands of jobs, all that value was destroyed. During my career, I sold foundry equipment and CNC machine tools. Industry after industry, company after company that I wanted to sell something to, they go out of business and they were driven out of business by the imports. The import was cheaper, their costs were so much lower, they could actually create a better product cheaper, because they had the low-cost structure that left the margin to pay for the R&D, and just drove many great world-leading US companies out of business. So I said, somebody has to turn this around. So that's my job.

[00:03:17] GS: Explain to us the vision and mission of Reshoring Initiative.

[00:03:22] HM: The mission? Yeah, basically, to balance the goods trade deficit. So the goods trade deficit is about $1 trillion, as it was last year. It's gradually increasing. $1 trillion and balancing that will require, in other words, reducing our imports and producing the product here, exporting a little more, but mainly reducing our imports will require a 40% increase in US manufacturing, that's 5 million US manufacturing jobs. Then when you get that many manufacturing jobs, you get the multiplier effect jobs that add millions and millions more jobs. That's our mission to make that happen.

 [00:04:03] MH: How did we get in such a trade deficit?

[00:04:05] HM: Now, finally, the primary reason that companies source offshore is price. They didn't go there initially for quality, they didn't go for delivery, they didn't go for only availability. They went there because they could buy it for 30%, 40%, or 50% less than they can buy it or make it here in the United States, because the wage rates there, say in China 20, 30 years ago, were 50 cents an hour, and the people worked hard, the companies invested. They eventually made pretty good products, so they went for pricing. 

We've surveyed it. We asked companies, why do you source offshore? Overwhelmingly, the answer was price. A few say, because the product isn't available here, and why isn't available here? Because the low price competition drove the US suppliers out of business. So the price was too high, then the question is, why the price is so high here in the United States? Why does Germany have wages equal to ours, and yet have a trade surplus while we have a trade deficit?

Relative to Germany, its skilled workforce where they have this wonderful apprenticeship system and lots of engineers. We don't have anywhere near enough engineers being trained in the United States, because a lot of foreigners come in to take the courses. We don't produce a fifth as many manufacturing tool guide, precision machining, etc. Apprentices as we should.

In Switzerland and Germany, 60% of the high school kids go into apprenticeships. In the US, 5% and mostly into construction, so we don't have the pipeline bringing them in, and then we don't train them very well. Companies don't invest enough. In Germany, they invest more in machine tools. In South Korea and China, they invest more in robots than we do, even though their wages are a lot less, they invest more in automation than the United States does. So it's a societal problem and a company problem.

[00:06:10] MH: What part does the government play in that?

[00:06:13] HM: Well, what we need is an industrial policy. Industrial policy says, the country will decide its future in manufacturing, because manufacturing is so essential. Now, we have policy about agriculture, we have policy about all kinds of things like that. Music and Art and university education, there's all kinds of that, but in terms of industrial policy, the politicians, the economists have said no laissez faire, let the market do what it will. One famous economist said, it didn't matter if we made potato chips or computer chips at least people work here, I don’t care. That was certainly, obviously stupid.

If anything, a deindustrialization policy, because what could we do to make the US not price competitive? Let's say, we'll have the reserve currency and let the dollar be 20% or 30% higher than it would be just subject to normal market conditions, if we were not the reserve currency where every other country wants to store their money. We won't train our skilled workforce, we'll let everybody study music and history and art and fund them to do so, even if they never get a job to pay off the debt. 

We will have the highest corporate tax rates in the world, which we did until 2017, except for maybe Japan. A whole series of them will not have a value-added tax. When you ship something into almost every other country, they apply a 15% tax to what we ship in, and then they give a 15% credit to what they export. We don't do those things. So, that makes our product more expensive there and your product less expensive here. So we did everything we could do to destroy our industrial base and we need to turn those things around. When the government does that, I'll get my 5 million jobs, but I need help, so anybody in Washington who's listening, please act.

[00:08:12] MH: Let me ask you a question, how did President Trump do under his, during his time versus President Biden now?

[00:08:20] HM: Well, I voted for Trump. So I’m going to say some things that may sound negative, but I call them objective rather than negative. He wanted manufacturing to come back. He talked about bringing – he pounded on the table and demanded that companies keep the work here or bring it back, but he didn't level the playing field. He didn't do the things to make the US price competitive, such as reversing those anti-industrial policy things that I described. Finally, looking at the results, the trade deficit increased under his watch.

You say, if you ask your coach, was it a good government? Well, he didn’t have a winning season, Trump, in terms of trade, did not have a winning season. Now in terms of Biden – let me say, positive about Trump. He made the US aware of the importance of manufacturing, aware of the fact that we should be self-sufficient. He started the recognition of the risk of being dependent on China. He did a lot of things like that, that he deserves credit for. Finally, maybe there wasn't enough time with heavy – and he wasn't systematic and organized enough to fix the underlying conditions.

Now with Biden, he came in at a time after the pandemic when it was clear that the US is not self-sufficient on PPE, on medicines, on batteries, electric vehicle batteries, rare earth minerals, just all kinds of things that all of a sudden become crystal clear to everybody. So he has reacted and he's planning to spend tens of billions of dollars on the chip foundries. It has to be done, because we've fallen so far behind and we’ll be too dependent, but he's doesn’t – he’s going to spend some more on skilled work where there are some good things. But again, his administration does not seem to understand the basic problem, that we're not price competitive.

I fear, for example with the chip foundries that right now we're dependent on China and Taiwan for chips. Okay, that's not good, but they're going to build these chip foundries, tens of billions of dollars, and it's recognized that our costs will be higher than their costs, because our labor rates are higher, and building costs more and also, and so we're going to go from a condition of being dependent on them for chips to being dependent on them to buy our chips to make the infotainment systems and the servers and everything else that the chips are used in. We're going to sell our high-priced chips to them, and if we're in conflict with China, then they're not going to buy our chips. 

If you want the chip foundries to be successful and booming and making money, then you got to bring back the assembly of the electronic products that the chips go into. It's this whole – we need a rising tide that lifts all boats. So the government says, “We’ll spend 10 billion here and 100 million there and do this and do that.” That’s okay, but then if you don't raise the tide, most of those investments are going to fail, because eventually, they won't be price competitive in local business.

[00:11:36] MH: What about the tariffs that Trump instituted under his time? Did that help or hurt American manufacturing? We've heard it both ways. We've heard it helped. We heard it, it hurt. In your opinion, how did that end up?

[00:11:51] HM: Depends on where you sit, as to how you see what's happening. There’s really two tariffs. There was like the steel tariffs, steel aluminum tariffs, and then there was the China tariffs. Okay. Concerning the steel aluminum some people are avidly in favor. The problem is that by putting the tariffs on the imported steel, you raise the price of steel in the United States relative to the price offshore. Therefore, the people who use steel, probably your company, people who buy steel and make a product, when they have to compete with the imported product made of steel, that's 30% less expensive than your steel, now you're not competitive. There's more people using steel than there are making steel. So potentially, you've hurt more than you felt.

Now, if the tariffs had been applied to steel and anything made out of steel, then would it work better? Ideally, if we had a value-added tax, which put a 15% tax on everything that came in steel, things made out of steel, plastic things made out of plastic, then all these ability to hide goes away. On the China tariffs, they did help increase the flow of work out of China, but it was easy to move the work from China to Vietnam, or Cambodia, or Indonesia or somewhere else. Still, China Company, probably a lot of the components coming out of China, but the final shipment coming in from these other countries, thereby avoiding the tax.

Again, if we had 15% tariff on everything, then there would have been no place to hide. It's an all or nothing you needed on everything at a fairly high level, like 15% forever, and then wishes whatever the other countries have, and it would have been successful.

[00:13:43] GS: What was your motivation to start Reshoring Initiative?

[00:13:46] HM: Like I said, the Singer story, and I had an excellent career. I ran, it was called AgieCharmilles, now it’s GFMachining Solutions, EDM and High-Speed Milling Machines. When I took over AgieCharmilles in '85, the company was number seven in the industry in North America. Eight years later, we were number one. It was the kind of career that anybody would say, that was great. Unless, you're Lee Iacocca or somebody really great. So I've been blessed to have such success, great team, and great products.

When I retired in 2010, from doing that, I said, “Well, here's this problem, this issue that nobody else is working on. Somebody's got to do it.” I'm elected. It has been a lot of fun. People throughout industry appreciate it. I get contact, feeling good about what you do and having other people appreciate it. It should be enough just to know you're doing right, but somehow it warms you up a little bit, if other people like it too.

[00:14:52] GS: What are the positive trends you’re seeing?

[00:14:54] HM: The result. First, when we started in 2010, in that year, the total number of jobs announced to come back, combination of reshoring by US companies, I think General Motors, or FDI, Foreign Direct Investment by foreign companies like Toyota or Siemens. The total was 6,000, in that year. In 2021, in that year 250,000 jobs announced going back. Now, driven significantly by the chip foundries and all, but it's been a nightmare pretty steady like this going up. So it's clear that the society, the consumer, the retailer, the manufacturer, the bigger companies, the OEMs, recognize the problem. They recognize that it does not make sense to not be self-sufficient, and they're doing it.

Now, there's a limit. Right now, I assume your company, almost all manufacturing companies have a shortage of workforce, skilled workforce, even non-skilled workforce. It is true in all industries, not just manufacturing. Normally, it's just manufacturing. If I could bring back a million manufacturing jobs next week and there’s nobody doing the work. So we need society to get on board and have more apprentice programs and more vocational programs, if you use that term, in the community colleges. You need companies to have the apprentice programs. You need people to recognize that manufacturing is once again a great stable career.

[00:16:34] MH: My next question is kind of selfish. Full disclosure, I own Hodge Compressor. We do manufacture industrial equipment, even though it was designed and engineered here in Atlanta, Georgia. Some of our products are made here, some of our products are bought in, brought in from overseas. How can Reshoring Initiative help manufacturers that are listening to the show, and myself?

[00:16:56] HM: Two things. First, in terms of the product that you're now importing, you could use our TCO, Total Cost of Ownership estimator, which helps companies go away from deciding primarily on the basis of price. I can buy it or make it here for $10. I’m getting it from China or India or somewhere for seven, obviously go there. Instead, the TCO estimator helps you add in duty-free packaging, carrying cost of inventory, any special tariffs et cetera, et cetera. The risk of stocking out intellectual property loss, and then when you do that, I reviewed 189 cases where users had done that comparing China to the US, and based on price alone US won 8% of the time, based on total cost 32% of the time. If there was a Trump 15% tariff, then 46%.

What we can do? First, we can help you make better decisions about what you're sourcing now. If you're not – maybe you’re already doing that, that's fine. Then second, we can help you get more business. So, we have something called the Import Substitution Program. If you define the products that you're making, by their HS code, that's the international trade characterization of the product, there's a six digit or eight-digit code for your kind of compressors, we can tell you who the biggest importers are, of that class of compressor. 

There's company address, what tonnage or amount they're bringing in, whom they're buying them from offshores, some idea of what you're paying for them. Then we train your company to use the TCO estimator to go to those companies and say, “Hey, you're bringing this stuff in. We think you're paying maybe 20% less than we would charge.” But we've done the math using the credible TCO estimator, and we think you'll be five percentage points better off buying from us, and you'll be able to sleep at night, because you won't worry about the port shutting down, and all the problems in geopolitics, and so on. So, we can help you buy smarter and sell smarter.

[00:19:12] GS: What could companies do? I mean, how do we get them to look at this and make a change?

[00:19:18] HM: We document the trend. We are putting out articles, a couple articles a month. We’re getting interviewed very generously by you, we appreciate it. I give 60, 70 of these things like this in live conferences a year. So, we're getting the message out. We're available to help, companies that are thinking – if companies are ever going to be concerned about their foreign supply chain, today has to be the time. It’s just a matter, I think, of publicity, by documenting this 250,000 last year, we're saying it's possible. In a broad range of products, it's possible, it's feasible, so it's worth the company, putting in a couple of hours to do math on a couple of problems that are pain points, where they’re having quality or delivery issues. 

Take a couple of those and do the math, use our TCO estimator, and maybe you'll be surprised. Wow, that's going to be more profitable by doing that. So, all I can do is appeal to them, in their sort of national responsibility, their societal responsibility to do the math. Then they'll see they can act in their own corporate self-interest.

[00:20:27] MH: Where do we go from here? After all of this, how do we move forward?

[00:20:31] HM: I think, there used to be this view – I'm a conservative, but there's been a view in amongst economists and many politicians that we shouldn't – whatever the market does, it does. That’s why it ended optimizes, and we all come out happy. That's worked well for China, and Mexico, and has worked very well for the US for the last 40 to 50 years. So, I think I read enough from economists and politicians that they soften that rigid position, and they're more willing to consider things like getting the dollar down. There's methodology, something called the market access charge that would do that. 

There's still hard to get value-added tax, but obviously, it should be done. Problem is the Republicans hate every tax, and the Democrats fear the value-added tax, because it could raise prices if you don't do it right. The lower income will bear the burden more than the higher income. So the Democrats hate that, but every other country has done it, and it's obviously the right thing to do. 

The skilled workforce, I think, there’s been so much publicity about student debt, and students who, half of them drop out of college before they finish. Those who finish, at any point in time, about 30% of the people with a university degree are in jobs that don't require a university degree. They’re working at Starbucks. They’re working at a distribution center or doing something with a degree. I've got this great cartoon, and it shows a restaurant and there's a long hair, kind of pony-tailed kid washing dishes, and then three or four people sweeping and doing whatever, they're all smoking. One of the older guys says, “Kid, all of us have PhDs in English and history. Stop complaining.”

To me, skilled workforce is the number one issue. I have two ways the government could do much better. About eight years ago, the Department of Labor called me down to advise them on how to get the workforce ready for reshoring. When the Secretary of Labor's conference room, and I say, “Well, first, we have to get the department to stop being part of the problem and become part of the solution.” So, I just took them right on like this. They said, “Okay, what do you have?” I pulled up one of their charts, and I'm sure you've seen them, you have a bar chart like this, and it has income going up with number of degrees, starts with no high school, high school, it goes like that, and the headline is “Education pays.” 

I said, “I thought you were responsible for the apprentice program? So, I thought you're responsible for us of the workforce, we need to compete?” “Yeah, yeah we do.” “Well, why don't you have in here, the average income of people who are passing apprenticeship and show that, that's just as good as people with a bachelor's degree and when you actually do the ROI, and you don't have any tuition and you start working when you're 16, or 18, you're way ahead financially, why isn't that in that chart?”

They folded like this, and didn't get quite what I wanted, but they got close on the chart, but there are still dozens of charts on their website in the Department of Education saying, still it was [inaudible 00:23:40] sure thing saying million dollars more lifetime income by going to university. So that overwhelms the best job that you and I and the community colleges can do to try to help people get into manufacturing. We need the government to tell all the data. I don't want to misrepresent anything, but instead of telling just the data that it supports a university education, also provide the data that shows that there are other ways to win.

[00:24:06] MH: One of my favorite quotes, or memes on LinkedIn recently was, “Normalize sending kids to trade schools after high school without making them feel like they're less than four-year university kids.”

[00:24:19] HM: I met a fellow, I’ve talked to a fellow yesterday, I think, on the phone. Maybe it was Friday. He has a couple of small manufacturing companies, and he's starting a training center. I think, it was in Vermont, and where traditionally, a good apprentice program followed the German model and you start with a file. You do this until you can make a perfect part with the file. He's going to start them on five-axis programming and CNC machine. So, instead of starting with the basics and working your way up, okay, and the basic seem pretty boring, he's going to start with the most exciting the robots and the five-axis and everything up here at the top, and attract the really smart kids who want to do something exciting.

I thought, “Hey, I've never seen it done. I'll do everything I can to help you.” I hope he succeeds, because the biggest problem is recruitment. If every high school, every community college had a hundred kids lined up pounding on the door, saying “We want manufacturing training,” they give it to them, because they want to be responsive. So, if you can increase recruitment by making the training and the job sexier, then I'm sure the training will work and we'll have the kids we need, but it’s a mind shift for the country.

[00:25:34] MH: One of the things that I see is really trying to change the perception of manufacturing to the younger generation. I think one of the things that manufacturers could do and should be doing is focusing on social media to overcome that stigma of the dirty manufacturing environment, because you know, and I know a lot of these places are like hospitals. You can eat off the floor, they’re clean. Air condition, right lighting, and I think that's what where we need to start to change that idea in this younger generation of what is manufacturing. Like you just talked about, that's exciting. Get involved with robots, and there's a lot of cool jobs out there. They pay really well. The benefits are off the charts, and I really think social media is one of the things that manufacturers are missing the boat on.

[00:26:18] HM: Have you prepped me up for something I want to talk about, and somebody else – you alluded a little bit to what's called the three D’s, that manufacturing is dirty, dark, and dangerous. I added to that disappearing, because of offshoring, and dead-end. I've read articles and surveys. So five D’s, okay? I've come up with five S's that replace the five D’s and describe the reality. So, shiny, safe, spotless, surging, steady. All is five positive things and I'm about halfway through writing an article that will, for example, on safe, I checked the government data and manufacturing jobs on average or have 10% or 15% fewer injuries and fatalities than all jobs. So, it is safe. Manufacturing –

[00:27:18] MH: Really? That’s incredible. I would not have guessed that.

[00:27:20] HM: That's my job, to bring the data, okay? Manufacturing workers’ incomes increase steadily throughout their employment. The actual manufacturing employment today, ignoring the COVID dip, has increased steadily for 12 years and today is three million higher than one would have projected 15 years ago, because we've had so much more reshoring and so much less offshoring.

The data, the guidance counselors hopefully will read. Then I'm going to do one general article, like for industry week, and have a picture of bright and like shiny and spotless, like you were talking about. Then I'm going to offer it to each trade association or industry or state for them to put in the pictures of their best shops, and then have been handed out to their students and their guidance counselors and so on. So, we're going to create the fodder that will go into that social media campaign that you're describing. So I hope when it comes out that you'll help distribute it.

[00:28:29] GS: Yeah. Our generation growing up like, Made in America, like that's what you bought. Now, it's about, they'll buy American as long as price is competitive or similar. How do we change that consumer's focus on price, get back to the American?

[00:28:46] HM: Yeah. Most surveys and it's always hard to separate surveys from reality, from behavior, but most surveys show 60% or 70% of consumers would prefer to buy Made in America and they don't want to buy Made in China, and maybe 30% or 40% would pay 10% or 20% more for a Made in US product depending on what the product is. So from my viewpoint, the problem might be the consumer, but more so is the availability of the product.

If I go to the store, a woman's clothing store, when I buy something from my wife, and I've got to turn all the labels on 100, 500 garments to find one made in United States. After I do that for 10 minutes I give up and I find something that looks okay. So what I proposed for any kind of retailer is a big sign with a big flag on it that says, “They ask us about our Made in US products.” Okay. First, it shows they're committed to their society. That's good. Then when the customer comes up and says, “Yeah, tell me about that,” They hand them a printout and sell shirts, you know, IO4 shelf made. Yeah, you can find them in Mayorga. If enough people come up and ask for that, and enough of them buy things made in America, well though, stop worrying if it’s made in America  and then the whole thing gets easier.

At the brick-and-mortar, I think that would help. I think availability and being reminded about. If I want a pencil, most people want a pencil. I'm not going to expect me to drive all over town to find a pencil, but like when I want a car, I will only buy a car assembled in the United States. I will not buy cars assembled anywhere else. I do my best with the appliances and the other things where there's a choice. The more that consumers choose that, and the more that retailers and manufacturers make that, the whole thing can live up like this.

[00:30:43] MH: That's a great idea. I hope the Walton family and Bezos is listening, so we can have Made in America sections and advertised in the brick-and-mortar in Walmart and Amazon. Why don't we have those sections? We want to see those sections, because I think it's somewhat their responsibility too, to help advertise and give consumers an option. That's a great idea. So Mr. Bezos, please, I know you're listening to this show. Please make that change. We want to see on the homepage, an option for made in America products.

[00:31:14] HM: Yeah. You can find some information on those things, and it should be, I did some consulting for Walmart, on their Made in USA Program. Although I always kid them, it was for everyday low consulting fees. I was honored to tell them. Then they've done a great job of working to have more, Made in USA. But I've told them, the other habits of a woman – let’s say a woman, a buyer, can come into the store and say, let’s say she's planning to buy a baseball glove for her son. She comes in, and she goes to the computer, and they said, “No, we don't have any Made in USA baseball gloves.” “Well, what other sporting equipment do you have for a 16-year-old boy that is Made in United States?” Okay, nothing. “How about clothing?” So, something that helps her do her search, but always keeping the Made in USA as part of the priority to find the product.

I think there's a lot, especially online, that you could do to help with that. At least online, with every product to show the country of origin. Right now, you look at something and you don't know if it's Made in USA, you don't know where it's made. I would say it should be a law, that if you're advertising something online, the country of origin should be shown. If that motivates people to keep looking until they find something this made preferably in the US, but maybe at least in North America, or in Europe or somewhere instead of, for example, China, then we'd all be better off.

[00:32:46] MH: There are three baseball gloves made in America, Rawlings, Nocona, and Wilson. Nocona is made in Texas, fantastic. I'm a huge baseball fan. You brought up baseball gloves. I wanted to educate consumers listening that if you're looking for American-made baseball gloves, there you go.

[00:33:03] HM: There are a lot of websites that just carry Made in USA products. In fact, Tom, I think it's Brookner that who runs Made in USA or Made in America as he said, he had trade shows and events and they're starting a big website that intends to be the biggest website offering the most Made in USA products. So if you've decided you're going to buy Made in USA, then the question is can you find what you want there? If he succeeds, then that will be great.

[00:33:31] MH: Okay, shifting gears here a little bit. Focusing on the manufacturing leaders, so your plant managers, maintenance managers, just your typical leader in manufacturing who is most of this audience, what can they do inside their companies to push these initiatives?

[00:33:46] HM: Well, the same thing things I told you about. Convince the procurement people, the supply chain people to use total cost instead of looking at price. I've had cases where companies, let’s say a machine shop. They tell me, “Harry, I've been to so-and-so and I've tried to sell them my product. They say they can get it in China 30% cheaper.” Then the salesman says, “Well, I heard about the warranty issue shoot head and the quality issues.” You don't have any stock, because you can't get it and the procurement person says, “That's not my problem. That's somebody else's budget.” Okay? 

You got to go around those silos and convince the quality department, the inventory control people, the marketing people to lean on procurement, or convince the general manager to take the responsibility away from procurement and say, “You have to look at total cost in making your decision.” So, that's how I would project it upward. At the same time, encourage the company salesforce to use it when they're competing with imports, like I've suggested for you.

[00:34:53] GS: Give us a few resources that helped you in your career that you think would help manufacturing leaders listening to the show.

[00:35:01] HM: I’ve not been much of a business book reader, not since I graduated. I got an MBA from University of Chicago. So, I got enough of that stuff when I did that, and studied economics at MIT and so on so. I got a lot of good background. One concept that I read books on and apply consistently is return on investment. Looking at what's it going to cost me? What am I going to save because of it? Is the book worth the candle? So to speak. I think it helps me think I think logically about things in college I studied economics. I used Samuelson which was the book at the time, and eventually a Nobel Prize winner. I think that influenced my attitudes. 

I read a very nice little book called Give Your Speech, and it made very hard, it was very clear about, it isn’t make your speech, it's give your speech. So when you're talking to an audience, you're giving them something, and you should always make sure that the audience has what it takes to do something different, that something should change. If all they've done is listen, and they go and nothing happens, then it was a waste of everybody's time, but if you've given them the speech and you've given them tools, information, to go back and do things better in their own work, in their own life, then that's a great success and you've achieved your purpose.

[00:36:25] GS: Give us some thoughts on how to debunk a myth about manufacturing.

[00:36:29] HM: That was what I said before with the five D’s and the five S's. I think, people think of it as a dead end. Manufacturing for kids not getting like an engineering degree was for the losers or just for the kids that weren't smart enough to go to university. I think, increasingly, it's for the winners that they will – those who make that choice and get the training, and they can program robots and CNC machines and help design the automation of the factory. I was out at a NTMA, National Tooling and Machining Association conference last week in Costa Mesa, and several of the shop owners were talking about their workers who, with overtime, are making $100,000 or more a year. 

Yet, if you asked most guidance counselors about that – in fact, I did a study once. I had lifetime income of people who've gotten an English degree and the same for toolmakers practices. The toolmaker starts making money sooner, doesn't have any tuition expense and at the age of 40, difference in income, always making more money, pay half of the difference in taxes just to be conservative, and taking the remaining portion, investing at 7% a year at the age of 49, the toolmaker had a million dollars more net worth than the English major.

Now, how many guidance counselors are handing that out? Nobody, because they're graded and their high school is graded by how many of the students go on to university. Not how many, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, have a wonderful job.

[00:38:10] MH: Yeah. My personal story, my brother-in-law graduated from the University of Georgia with a finance degree. He struggled for the first year even finding a job. When he did, he actually made more money waiting tables at a restaurant that he would as his first year working for in the industry, which is crazy to me. Like you said, these kids coming out of trade schools which I am a product of a trade school, a four-year university was not for me. I chose to go the trade school route and was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

[00:38:40] HM: I've got a nice story about that. I was speaking up in Wisconsin, and I had a VP from Milwaukee Area Technical College. So big community college, lots of trainees, and he brags about the fact that that community college is the largest graduate, second largest graduate school in Wisconsin, because only Madison, the main campus for University of Wisconsin has more people who already have bachelor's degrees who at Milwaukee Area Technical College have come back to get a job where they can make enough money to pay off their student debt. So, there's a lot of people that unfortunately, too late conclude that the bachelor's degree was not the right solution and that they need to get an actual skill where they can actually make some money.

[00:39:30] MH: Awesome. Harry, one of our goals is to create a community of manufacturing leaders. How can some of these listeners contact or get in contact with you?

[00:39:39] HM: Well, the Reshoring Initiative. You can google. You'll find that it’’s www.reshorenow.org. I'm harry.moser@reshorenow.org, okay. So, you can email me, call me, ask for help. I hope you'll also report, companies will report their cases of reshoring, because if they do that, they can get the manufacturers’ cool T-shirt which we give to everybody who reports a case of reshoring we did not already know about, because only by getting those cases can we tell you there were 250,000 jobs last year. Report the jobs, the reshoring you’ve done, either an OEM, who typically makes a decision, or the supplier, who often is the one making the components for the OEM. 

Report the cases, and if you see opportunities either to prevent offshoring or to enable reshoring, but you can't quite put it together, then you come to us for help with the analysis to make it happen. Let us help you with the import substitution program to find opportunities to get additional business by convincing your customers to reshore.

[00:40:55] MH: Harry, I think our hearts and visions are definitely aligned. It was a true pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you for joining us on The Industrial Movement.

[00:41:04] HM: Thanks, Morty. Thanks, Greg. It was a lot of fun.

[00:41:06] GS: Yeah. Thank you so much.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:41:08] MH: Well, folks, that's it for this week's episode. Be sure to visit our website www.theindustrialmovement.com to view today's show notes and get more golden nuggets of value that we have collected from manufacturing and industrial professionals in our archived episodes.

On our website, you can also sign up for our newsletter and find links to join The Industrial Movement community on Facebook. The Industrial Movement podcast is where we discuss the people, the process, and the equipment that drives American manufacturing. I'm your host Morty Hodge, wishing you great success.

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