U.S. Senator Brown visits valley to focus on advancements in manufacturing

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio - U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown visited the valley Monday to see the work underway to prepare the future workforce for the manufacturing sector.
Focusing on where inspiration and skills start, Brown toured the SMART girls summer inside the Oh Wow Children's Center, where the all girls class was learning how to build an digital clock.
The camp is geared to empower girls and to eliminate the gender gap in science and technology fields.
Through the week, the girls will be able to meet local manufacturers that are helping with the collaboration and the summer camp.
Brown spent much of the day learning about the key areas where federal funding will soon go to support advancements in this field, including the home of America Makes.
He says the bipartisan backed Endless Frontier Act, now known as the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, is aimed at ensuring china won't out compete the U.S.
While he believes America is ahead of the Chinese when it comes to technology and skilled workers, he says trade policies have to change.
"Trump did it, Obama did it, Clinton did it, Bush did it, it's a new day and we're going to start, we're going to start passing trade agreements and a tax policy that give incentives for people to stay here," Brown said.
Brown learned about how 3D printing and additive manufacturing could help fill voids in supply chains.
STATE OF MANUFACTURING IN OHIO
Post-pandemic, the outlook for the manufacturing industry in Ohio is strong.
Ohio is among the top three state for manufacturing, falling only behind California and Texas.
"Manufacturing has continued to grow in Ohio all along," Ryan Augsburger said, president of the Ohio Manufacturing Association. "We have record output today."
But the industry is facing a critical shortage-- workers. Augsburger says it's short 44,000 jobs compared to where it was before the pandemic started.
"We have a workforce shortage like we've never seen before," he said.
Supply chain disruptions and the fallout from the pandemic might create new windows of opportunity. Augsburger says manufacturing companies in the U.S. could step in to make more PPE, medical devices and items for defense.
"There's exciting manufacturing opportunities for additive manufacturing, but many other manufacturing technologies are growing," Augsburger said.
"We believe there's tremendous opportunities to reshore manufacturing to bring back manufacturing presently done in Asia and have it be done locally to supply manufacturers locally."