Strategic Industrial Base
Ron Ault
President
Metal Trades Department, AFL-CIO
This week I was up on Capital Hill as part of a panel discussion sponsored by the Foundation for Nuclear Studies and the American Nuclear Society, titled “Is the U.S. Workforce Ready for the Nuclear Renaissance?” My question was-: “What Nuclear Renaissance?” The industry now projects building just eight new nuclear power plants with peak employment of maybe 4,000 skilled trades per plant…That’s hardly what I would term a “Nuclear Renaissance.”
But I digress. Part of the discussion was the lack of a U.S. manufacturing base, a critical element to support new nuclear construction. For now the U.S. nuclear industry will have to get in line to buy foreign components behind those who are already at work throughout the rest of the world constructing new nuclear power plants.
This so-called “renaissance” brings the sorry state of our basic strategic industrial base sharply into focus. How can our nation be sustained should we ever go to war? Suppose our foreign sources for basic goods get cut off or withheld. Get out the white flags, folks! If Mexico decides to invade us we are toast!
The U.S. manufacturing sector is in shambles, at best…. Disaster would be a better description. Name something strategic to the defense of our nation—anything: Computer software for our national satellites? Yep, so-called “friendly” nations overseas are programming billions of lines of code for us on subcontracts….You know they would never include some hidden “backdoor” or “Trojan horse” in those billions of lines of code to enable a third party to get access, and take control, would they? Naw, you would have to be paranoid to think that. If we wanted to check, just to make sure, we could assign a software scientist for the two or three years it would take to read through those billions of lines of code, and we might have a decent chance of finding a back door or Trojan horse if one were there.
How about computer chips for our anti-submarine sonar buoys that detect enemy submarines?…Yep, they’re made in China.…What difference to national security could that make? Ask our ally Georgia about trusting their national security to someone else.…The cold war was a dim memory until Russian bombers dropped the first bombs in Georgia.
OK, let’s look at our main battle tank….By the way, it is no longer being manufactured. U.S. war planners tell us: “no more tanks.” They claim future wars will be fought without tanks, so why have them? How about the next generation of Army Helicopter? Nope—the Comanche Stealth helicopter was shut down, too.…Don’t need it. The Pentagon plans to just use unmanned drones and unmanned helicopters. How about the next generation of Navy stealth destroyers, the Zumwalt class, with smaller crews and an awesome array of ten new technologies? Congress is in the process of killing that, too.
But killing the Zumwalt has forced us to focus on another strategic manufacturing problem….the network shipbuilding supplier and component manufacturers is disappearing as many companies are going out of business. Congress is trying to keep or bring back the DDG 51 Arleigh Burke class destroyers into production, but they have discovered the manufacturer of who supplies the reduction gear for the DDG 51 no longer makes those parts….The Zumwalt uses new electric drive technology that eliminates the need for reduction gears.
Our employers have sold off the U.S. manufacturing base. The U.S. based corporations that sent these manufacturing plants overseas (and got a tax break from the federal government to do so) promised as a condition of moving the plants, to keep the research and development here in the USA…remember? That didn’t happen. The R&D has to be physically close to the manufacturing, so China, India, Indonesia, Korea and Japan are now in charge of our strategic industrial manufacturing research and development.
In less than a decade, America has fallen from the most powerful nation on earth to a “has been” world power like France, Spain and England after their world domination heydays of the 1700’s. The “money changers” have sold off the profitable parts of America for their own personal wealth. America is the world largest debtor nation, owing so much foreign debt, it is impossible for us to ever repay. We have been reduced to a “service industry” nation where we sell each other advice and “consult” about how to invest the devalued dollar in the stock market. The largest private employer in America today is Wal-Mart, a multi-national corporation that teaches its U.S. “associates” how to qualify to get public assistance and state coverage for health insurance. In lieu of the American dream of owning a home, having two kids and retiring with dignity. Today’s average U.S. workers are “wage slaves” living from paycheck to paycheck struggling just to survive. The “money changers” stole the American Dream.
Metal Trades Department, AFL-CiO • 815 16th Street, NW •Washington, DC 20006
Phone: 202-508-3705 • Fax: 202-508-3706 • email: metaltradesweb@gmail.com
