More than 100 companies and business groups, including the National Association of Manufacturers, recently banded together to call upon congressional leaders to pass the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill (MTB), a piece of manufacturing legislation intended to boost and cultivate manufacturing jobs in the United States. The ultimate goal of the package of tax cuts is to make U.S.-based companies more competitive in a global market that typically favors foreign manufacturers by preventing the expiration of current duty suspensions on more than 600 products, while still observing the strict manufacturing compliance requirements that companies based in some other countries do not have to abide by.

"Passing the MTB will reduce the cost of manufacturing in the United States and help manufacturers grow their businesses and improve their competitiveness in an increasingly challenging global marketplace," said Linda Dempsey, NAM Vice President for International Economic Affairs, in a recent statement.

Dempsey went on to point out that manufacturing in the U.S. is currently 20 percent more expensive than it is for trading partners based elsewhere in the world, and the failed passage of the MTB will only exacerbate this inequality.

"Congress has the opportunity to pass a bipartisan bill that will support and create jobs and level the playing field globally for manufacturers in the United States," she added.

In a recent piece for the manufacturing blog Shopfloor, NAM's director of international trade policy, Jessica Lemos, laid out some of the consequences of the MTB not being renewed. These include:

- increased costs for job creators within the sector
- a competitive disadvantage for the U.S. in an adverse global economy
- U.S. manufacturing jobs being threatened

"We simply can't afford not to act on this bill," she wrote.

NAM report addresses separate industry threat
NAM also recently released a study that analyzed the cumulative cost of a threat to the industry that is much closer to home—namely, new major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules pertaining to the nation's power sector, which could cost manufacturers billions and result in significant job loss, Energy Biz reports. The package of rules include the Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) Rule, the Boiler MACT Rule, the Coal Ash Rule, the Coal Combustion Residuals Rule and the Cooling Water Intake Structures Rule.