This week’s video podcast of “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” looks at energy and the encouragement of manufacturing, with two guests from Capitol Hill. Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) talks about his plan to extend tax credits to encourage alternative energy sources such as wind and solar. Rep. Joe Knollenberg makes the case for funding of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program (MEP); the almost 20-year-old MEP program offers small and medium manufacturers the expertise they need to become more competitive and create jobs, he says.

Below you’ll see the full program for “America’s Business,” a radio program the keeps listeners abreast of policies, politics and the practices of manufacturing in the United States.

From Dana Perino’s White House press gaggle on board Air Force I, 11:40 a.m.

Then on Tuesday the President will travel to Cleveland, Ohio, to participate in a tour of Lincoln Electric Holdings, Incorporated. He will make remarks on energy and the economy there. And then he will also participate in another one of these Congressional Trust 2008 receptions, and that will be in Gates Mills, Ohio.

The NAM always appreciates the President’s visits to manufacturers, in this case, an NAM member, too.

Later in the week, the President also puts in a word for coal.

Then on Thursday he will have a photo opportunity with the Scouts in Action — I’m sorry, with the recipients of the Scouts in Action Commendation on the North Portico for still photographers. And then at 10:25 a.m. he will make remarks at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the West Virginia Coal Association; that’s in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

The Manufacturing Extension Partnership program has helped small and medium-sized manufacturers stay competitive and create jobs for almost 20 years. Despite its benefits, MEP supporters often have to scramble to get federal funds.

Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-MI), a guest on this week’s edition of “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” radio program, explains how he and other program supporters recently pushed to get the program funding.

“We did it by having individuals with the MEP talk to people in their district, wherever it might be, whatever state it might be in,” he says. “And that drummed up a lot of support because those members of Congress living in those states did not want to lose out.”

Higher energy prices are putting a financial pinch on manufacturers and made more Americans eager to embrace alternative energy sources. Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) will discuss his plan to extend tax credits that encourage development of alternative fuels such as solar and wind.

High energy prices also make shipping more expensive. CIBC World Markets Chief Economist Jeff Rubin will talk about his recent report on how energy costs affect global trade flow.

Canada is one of our nation’s closest allies. Canadian Ambassador to the United States Michael Wilson will join Mike to discuss the trade and other economic ties that bind the United States to its neighbor to the north.

In our regular segments, Renee Giachino of American Justice Partnership gives us the latest on tort reform and commentator Hank Cox recalls “The Way It Was.” This week “America’s Business” is launching a new regular segment featuring NAM Executive Vice President Jay Timmons. Jay, who has been intimately involved in politics for years, will give us his take on 2008 political races that manufacturers should watch.

And our program will close with “The Last Word” from the National Association of Manufacturers President Gov. John Engler will close the program with “The Last Word.”

For more about “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” and to listen to the program online, please click here. And for video highlights and more, check out www.americasbusiness.org.

From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, “Industry, government need to invest in job training“:

In a building that once housed the boiler and machine shops of a Duquesne steel mill shut down a quarter century ago, U.S. Steel Corp. is training workers for a career in a modern mill.

“The training is much more extensive and more high-tech, and there is a lot more done (training) before a person ever steps onto the plant floor,” said Lisa Roudabush, general manager of U.S. Steel’s Mon Valley Works, which includes the Edgar Thomson Plant in Braddock, Irvin Plant in West Mifflin and the Clairton Coke Works.

Others interviewed are Debra Brinney, training manager; Dave Nickle of Uniontown, a maintenance worker and mechanic; Lee Taddonio, president of the SMC Business Councils in Churchill; and Daniel A. Krinock, president of Pace Industries Inc. Airo Division.

More updates on yesterday’s 26-17 vote by the House Education and Labor Committee to report out H.R. 1338, the Fair Pay Act, which seeks to mandate equal pay based on gender. If employers fail to meet the law’s standards, lawyers are standing by to sue, encouraged by the bill’s lifting of all caps on damages. Expect the bill on the House floor toward the middle of next week.

News release from Chairman George Miller (D-CA), ”House Labor Committee Passes Bill to Help Close Gender Wage Gap“: “This is a historic day in the fight for equal rights for women. If we are serious about closing the gender pay gap, we must get serious about punishing those who would otherwise scoff at the weak sanctions under current law,” said Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the committee. “Any wage gap based on gender is unacceptable, especially during these tough economic times. By allowing wage discrimination to continue, we hold down women and their families while harming the American economy as a whole.”

News release from Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), Ranking Member, “Democrats Favor Trial Lawyers Over Working Families“: “This bill isn’t about paycheck fairness.  It’s already against federal law to discriminate, in pay or other employment practices, on the basis of sex.  And rightfully so,” said Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), the senior Republican on the committee.  “This bill is about making it easier for trial lawyers to cash in under the Equal Pay Act, and making it more difficult for employers to make legitimate employment decisions based on factors other than sex.”

Update from the Washington Labor & Employment Wire from Akin Gump, “Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 1338) Passes Out of House Committee.

News release from the ACLU, “ACLU Supports the Paycheck Fairness Act“: “There should be no doubt that improvements to the Equal Pay Act are necessary,” said ACLU Washington Legislative Office Director Caroline Fredrickson. “More than four decades after the enactment of the Equal Pay Act, women still make only 77 cents for every dollar made by their male counterparts, a wage disparity that cannot be explained by differences in qualifications, education, skills, training, responsibility or life choices. Rather, in many cases, the pay disparity has resulted from unlawful sex discrimination.”

Good thing for the ACLU that inflammatory falsehoods are constitutionally protected. All of the above assertions are demonstrably incorrect. We point you to the diligently documented testimony of the Hudson Institute’s Diana Furchtgott-Roth, an economist, as well as to her op-ed from the New York Sun, “Who’s the Better Feminist?”

Finally, from Secretary of Labor Chao’s letter to the committee: “H.R. 1338 would unjustifiably amend the Equal Pay Act (EPA) to allow for, among other things, unlimited compensatory and punitive damages, even when a disparity in pay was unintentional. It would also require the Department to replace its successful approach to detecting pay discrimination with a failed methodology that was abandoned because it had a 93 percent false positive rate. For these reasons and those outlined blow, if H.R 1338 were presented to the President, I would recommend that he veto the bill.”

From today’s Washington Post, an editorial, “No Drilling, No Vote“:

WHY NOT have a vote on offshore drilling? There’s a serious debate to be had over whether Congress should lift the ban on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf that has been in place since 1981. Unfortunately, you won’t be hearing it in the House of Representatives — certainly, you won’t find lawmakers voting on it — anytime soon.

The editorial chides Speaker Pelosi for blocking votes, quoting a very confused rationale that fails to justify the political machinations in the House.

The Post also makes an obvious observation that still triggered a thought: “There are legitimate concerns about the environmental impact of such drilling — environmental concerns that, we would note, exist in other regions whose oil Americans are perfectly happy to consume. But have technological improvements made such drilling less risky? Why not have that debate?”

Here’s a piece of a map from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate.

Of course, unlike the Americans, the Norwegians don’t care about protecting their coastal beauty.

Well, there is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that they are really engaged in meaningful discussions and negotiations at WTO Headquarters, having broken into smaller groups that can actually talk about swapping concessions. The bad news is that the divides have not been bridged. As this is the NAM, I focus on industrial trade, but the situation in agriculture is not much better. French Prime Minister Sarkozy today said there is no way France will agree to what’s on the table, for example. That’s a pretty blunt and serious statement. At the same time, Brazil and India say the United States still needs to reach more deeply into its agricultural pockets and give them more. In the Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) discussions, things are pretty heated. Three key issues are in contention: the “flexibilities” (amount of imports that developing nations can exclude from making any tariff cut at all), sectoral agreements, and the anti-concentration clause (limiting the ability of developing countries essentially to exclude entire industries from tariff cuts, and compelling them to spread their “flexibilities” around.

In all three case, the United States and the European Union are very much shoulder-to-shoulder and U.S. and European industries have basically the same goals and the same concerns. But in all three cases, the three primary big emerging manufacturers (BEMs) — Brazil, China, and India — so far are intransigent. It is “eyeball-to-eyeball,” and went on well through last night and into this morning. They are at it again this evening in Geneva.

On the anti-concentration clause, vigorously opposed by India, their Trade Mininster Kamal Nath made the most amazing - and incomprehensible statement. He chided “high-cost” U.S. and European businesses for trying to prevent developing nations from shielding entire manufacturing industries from tariff cuts, and is reported to have said, “is at the heart of globalization, if you’re non-competitive you can’t seek refuge under an agreement of the WTO …The future is that cars are not going to be made in Stuttgart or Detroit — they’re going to be made in Asia.”

Huh? Excuse me, but I think he got it exactly backward. Our auto industry is so efficient that we are down to 22 hours or so of labor in a car, charge only a 2.5% import duty on cars, and export $45 billion of our cars around the world - 2.5 million cars. How many of those cars went to India? Last year exactly 417 cars, worth a little over $3 million. Why so few? For starters, how about India’s 100% import duty? And then there are those non-tariff barriers.

You want to talk about being non-competitive and seeking refuge under a WTO agreement - you’re talking India. Mr. Nath, we will compete with you any day - if you will come out from hiding behind your huge tariff wall you are trying to keep.

Really very little more that I can add from Geneva today. Had more good meetings with key U.S. negotiators. Also met with European industry groups and Japan’s Keidanren - all of whom are pressing their negotiators for market access.

One area hasn’t been talked about much - non-tariff barriers. There really is little controversy here between industrial and emerging nations, and seems to be something that can be put into the negotiation stream with little difficulty at this point. Of course the actual negotiations could be difficult.

And behind the closed doors of the negotiating rooms at the WTO headquarters, they keep going at it, with U.S. and European negotiators pressing for market access, and the BEMS pressing for protection. Ambassador Schwab, Dan Price, Peter Allegeir, John Veroneau and the whole U.S. government team are just fantastic. They are getting by on a couple of hours of sleep a night, and are trying everything possible to get other countries to get with the program and truly negotiate. They deserve a real hand.

That’s about it for this evening . It could still go either way. The negotiations could come to an inconclusive halt tomorrow, or they could go on perhaps into next week and perhaps with real results. Stranger things have happened, right?

Frank Vargo
NAM’s Man in Geneva

On a partyline vote House Education and Labor this afternoon reported out H.R. 1338, the Paycheck Fairness Act, the gender disparity pay bill, or as Ranking Member Buck McKeon (R-CA) dubbed it, the “Trial Lawyer Paycheck Expansion Act.”  Republicans offered numerous amendments, including one by Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, who sought to cap trial lawyer fees at $2,000 an hour. Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ) led Democratic opposition to the amendment, saying they did not want to “clog the judicial system” or “punish” lawyers who settle cases quickly. Rep. McKeon did the math: An annual salary of $4 million a year. 

Expect the bill on the House floor next week to prompt a partisanship-heavy debate on that old favorite, comparable worth, and its many anti-business manifestations. (How old? Here’s the 1997 version of the bill.)

UPDATE (4:30 p.m. - CW): Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao sent the committee a letter detailing the agency’s opposition to the bill and saying she would recommend a veto.

Berlin, North Dakota, that is.

Population 35 in the 2000 Census. Nice day, today. High in the low ’80s, chance of thunderstorm.

That’s the headline on a great survey of the energy scene today at the Heritage Foundation’s Foundry blog.

The economy is by far the No. 1 issue on most Americans’ minds. Gas prices are a close second. The two issues are intimately related. But the spike in oil prices this year is just the tip of the iceberg. Due to similar developments in supply and demand, electricity prices are set to skyrocket next year.

While American oil consumption has grown only 15% since 1973, electricity use has shot up 115%. Right now the U.S. has 760 gigawatts of power to meet consumption. We will need 135 gigawatts of new capacity over the next decade to keep the lights on, but right now only 57 gigawatts of power are planned. No matter what Barack Obama and Al Gore tell you, alternative energy sources cannot meet demand. Solar is still only one-tenth as efficient as the cheapest fossil fuels. Today 97% of our electricity comes from fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro power. Wind provides 1% and solar .01%.

The rest of the world knows that green sources of energy are inadequate to keep their people out of poverty. That is why around the world, from Europe to South America to Asia, countries are building coal and nuclear power plants at a dizzying pace while also drilling for oil wherever they can find it. Meanwhile, the United States, crippled by an out-of-control environmental movement, is refusing to develop needed energy sources.

A run-down follows on oil, coal, nuclear power. Very good bit of bracing reality.