Senators Ask Treasury to Consider Manufacturing Sector in Its Business Tax Reform Efforts

We agree with the President's call to reform business taxation in order to make America the best place to do business. We believe that we should also make America the leading manufacturing economy in the world. As the President stated in a February 2011 speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, "We need an economy that's based not on what we consume and borrow from other nations, but what we make and what we sell around the world." The right tax reform will achieve these goals.

As you know, U.S. manufacturing supports an estimated 18.6 million jobs in the U.S. -- about one in six private sector jobs -- and nearly 12 million Americans are employed directly in manufacturing. The manufacturing sector also continues to help drive the economic recovery and has expanded in every month but one since June 2009. In fact, U.S. manufacturing produces $1.6 trillion of value each year, or 11.2 percent of U.S. GDP.

We support efforts to simplify the tax code and make the U.S. a more competitive place for investment. We can meet this goal while ensuring that any tax reform proposal also maintains and strengthens our U.S. manufacturing base. Therefore, we urge you to support a pro-manufacturing tax reform proposal that promotes manufacturing and job creation here in the U.S.

We are concerned about reports that business tax reform could severely disadvantage the manufacturing sector. Efforts to reform the tax code to make it more fair and to incentivize job creation should be consistent with, and not adverse to, the ongoing efforts of Congress and the Administration to strengthen the American manufacturing sector.

We look forward to working with you on this important issue.