There will be many lessons to be learned from America’s coronavirus pandemic experience once the country gets past it, and manufacturing will be one of those according to Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL), the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee.
During an interview with Huntsville, AL radio’s WVNN, Palmer explained there was much for which to hold China responsible. However, he added the United States was “unbelievably dumb” and “stupid” to have allowed China to dominate America’s manufacturing supply chain.
“China is the enemy,” Palmer said. “And I’ve said that before on your show and other venues — China’s objective is not to be a good neighbor. It is to be the dominant superpower in the world. Now, if you’re asking, do I think this was a conspiracy to spread this disease worldwide? I don’t think so. This is not the first time we’ve had this. We had it with SARS. We had it with other flu-type viruses coming out of China. I think it is part and parcel of their culture, and particularly with these wet markets.”
“Now, there may be other issues involved with the Chinese facility near the wet market in Wuhan. The bottom line is I hold China responsible, and I also hold us responsible and business in America responsible because we allowed ourselves to be in this position because we’ve made China the single-source supply chain for so many of our products, including certain compounds for pharmaceutical drugs. There are other things that we no longer manufacture, that’s only manufactured for us in China. That’s unbelievably dumb, and I think if nothing else — if there is anything positive that we can say about the virus is that it has fully exposed the stupidity of having a single country for a supply chain.”
When asked if he thought it was possible to change the status quo and bring the supply chain back to the United States, the Alabama Republican argued it could be done, and that he was working on the structure of an incentive program.
“I think so,” he replied. “How we do so remains to be seen. The most important thing we can do is to move our supply chain back here. And I started working on this months ago — to come up with some incentives to move their supply chain back, or if not move it the United States, relocate it to other countries that are allies and preferably in the Western Hemisphere. Right now, I think that’s one of the most important things we can do in dealing with China, is just reduce the amount of business we do with them.”
“We incentivized a lot of companies to move their manufacturing back to the U.S. with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” Palmer continued. “Billions of dollars came back in capital came back to the U.S., and hundreds of thousands of jobs. So we do know that business reacts to incentives. There are some things we talk about that I think make sense that we can do to incentivize companies to bring it back. I don’t think we should pay for everything to come back because it’s still a business decision, and part of that decisionmaking right now includes the probability that China could have another outbreak of virus and shut them down again. I think the calculations are different now than they were three or four months ago.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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