OPINION:
President Trump is telling companies to “[c]ome make your product in America” (“Trump says companies will enjoy lower taxes if products made in U.S.,” Web, Jan. 23). This brings to mind the Commerce Department’s “Invest in the USA” program, which I directed. The program ran from 1970 to 1981.
The duties of the program staff (no more than three persons during the program’s life) were primarily the preparation of printed material containing substantial U.S. labor and economic data and the names of economic development directors of the 50 states and territories. The material was for foreign officials whose countries were considering building manufacturing plants in the United States. The documents and updates were placed in libraries of American embassies and consulates in the industrialized countries.
The program staged 22 seminars, 17 of them in Europe and five in Japan, between 1971 and 1981. Commercial officers of American embassies and consulates did most of the work of putting them together, and seminar speakers were mainly lawyers, accountants and other American-company employees living in the host countries. They spoke pro bono; the foreign companies’ attendees paid fees.
In addition to providing jobs for Americans making here that which had previously been imported, the program was a favor to Japanese and European companies that lacked the manpower to fulfill American and worldwide demand for their products. Japanese and European vehicle manufacturing in the U.S. brought fuel injection instead of carburetors, rack and steering boxes, the MacPherson strut design instead of old shock towers and leaf springs and independent suspension on all wheels rather than straight rear axles.
A private company survey indicated that American companies preferred that such production be here, on the same playing field, with no chance of foreign government support.
An official of IKEA attended the 1978 Invest in the USA seminar in Stockholm and visited me at my office at the Commerce Department for further information before opening its first U.S. store near Philadelphia and its second U.S. store in Woodbridge, Virginia.
THOMAS J. PIERPOINT
Lake Ridge, Virginia
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