Trumps Budget Could Hurt Manufacturing and Innovation

[applegrove]

CLARE FORAN at the Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/trump-budget-manufacturing-jobs-innovation/519816/

"SNIP...............


At the Department of Commerce, the proposed budget would discontinue federal funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a program that provides assistance to small and mid-sized manufacturers. The blueprint notes that “by ending federal funding, MEP centers would transition solely to non-federal revenue sources.” Hart said that the program would not be able to be sustained on a national basis, however, without federal funding. “These kind of cuts will undermine supply chains and regional clusters that are particularly important to sustained competitive advantage in advanced manufacturing,” he said.

According to science and technology experts, these components of Trump’s budget, as well as the budget’s overall funding cuts to federal agencies that support research and development, could hurt American innovation and manufacturing, and put future opportunities for job creation at risk.

“If these cuts were to be enacted, they would signal the end of the American century as a global innovation leader,” Joe Kennedy, another senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, wrote in a blog post responding to the budget release. “The reality is that if the United States is going to successfully manage its growing financial problems and improve living standards for all Americans, it needs to increase its investment in the primary drivers of innovation, productivity, and competitiveness. The Trump budget goes in the opposite direction,” the post reads.


The call to eliminate the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, for example, runs the risk of setting the country back in research and development. The budget blueprint argues that “the private sector is better positioned to finance disruptive energy research and development and to commercialize innovative technologies.”But that explanation glosses over the fact that government funding has historically played a critical role in the development and commercialization of new technology.

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[Wellstone ruled]

1. These slugs really want to crash the economy before

the four of July.

[applegrove]

2. The rich GOP are against the mid sized companies. They want them all to sell out to private equity.

That way the power and wealth is concentrated amongst themselves and people who have power and wealth are far removed from their humble roots. Do mid sized companies know that the rich GOP are out to get them with private equity and severe long recessions and anything else that will allow the big corporations to cannibalize the small to medium sized corporations?