Jobs Trump brings back will pay better and be high skilled, US manufacturing chief says
Though the glory days of U.S. manufacturing are over, President Trump's campaign promise to create manufacturing jobs in the United States will have ample benefits for the economy, Scott Paul, the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, said on Friday.
"The manufacturing jobs that should be coming back will be working with complex machines," Paul told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." "They'll need a high skill set. They should be well paying. And, look, it is possible to do this."
Trump's main focuses on his first full day as president have been jobs and trade, with the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, among the first items on his agenda.
The president has vowed to renegotiate both trade agreements and argue for fair trade on the part of the U.S. in an effort to try and boost the country's advantage against fierce trade competitors like China.
"I think, if done properly, we can boost the prospects for manufacturing jobs, keeping in mind that we have industries that suffer devastating consequences from unfair trade practices and those that benefit from exports," Paul said.
That doesn't mean trade war, just a tougher position for the United States on trade with countries the administration believes have taken advantage of our free trade practices, Paul said.
"It's going to be much more aggressive. We're going to bargain much more heavily for manufacturing when that sector, in many ways, has been left behind in past negotiations at the expense of financial services and retail," the manufacturing alliance president said.