Issue link: https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/1427549
11 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | NOVEMBER 15, 2021 James M. Hagerty Executive Vice President, Chief Lending Officer Julia Anne Slom Senior Vice President, Team Leader, Commercial Real Estate Anthony Botelho Senior Vice President, Team Leader Kevin Hanrahan Vice President, Commercial Real Estate Albert R. Clemente Vice President, Commercial Real Estate Thomas D. Pizzo Vice President and Market Leader, Commercial Banking Edward O. Handy III Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Visit washtrust.com or call 800-475-2265 Building businesses. Building relationships. Connecticut is full of opportunity and we are here to help. Our local teams have built relationships with Connecticut businesses for over 200 years. aerospace industry, that won't be permanent. So we need to continue to see our strength in both the renewable energy and aerospace manufacturing sectors. The aerospace manufacturing sector benefits from strong Buy American policies and we continue to make gains in enforcing existing Buy American policy and passing new policies. The bipartisan infrastructure bill has included in it my BuyAmerican. gov Act. That's a bill that sets up a clearinghouse so every manufacturer in the country sees when the federal government is trying to obtain a waiver to the Buy American law. That will help a lot of smaller manufacturers in Connecticut compete for federal contracts. Q: You've been a leading proponent of fixing our Buy American laws. What's wrong with them and how should we change them? A lot of the issue with Buy American is that multiple administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have not enforced the law. So, we are working with the Biden administration to try to get them to be more serious to require that defense work be done in the United States. We also need programs that keep small manufacturers in business, especially when they are the last maker of a particular good in the United States. We've been able to get funding recently in appropriations bills that would provide some grant funding to smaller companies that are the last maker of a particular important product for federal agencies. Q: We are having major supply chain issues in the U.S. Is there a solution out there to this problem? I think this is a complicated and temporary problem connected to a global economy that slowed down to a crawl and is very quickly ramping back up to a run. The United States isn't the only country experiencing a workforce shortage right now, so many goods are coming out very slowly because [other countries] are also having trouble getting people back to work. I think the supply chain crunch is temporary. Q: Do you think the supply chain issues experienced during the pandemic will lead to a reshoring trend among manufacturers, and what can Congress do to incentivize reshoring? I think we've seen the reshoring phenomenon at work for the last five years and as the price of making goods in China continues to increase and the cost of transportation becomes more volatile, it makes a lot more sense to make goods here at home. We also have finally come to the conclusion that it's a national security problem to have such an international supply chain, especially when it comes to medical equipment. I think Congress will be mandating we have a stronger domestic supply chain so we never again are stuck relying on surgical masks and syringes being made on the other side of the world. This is a good time to be going into manufacturing because there is a lot of reshoring happening for competitive and strategic reasons. We just passed in the Senate legislation that creates a new fund for semiconductors to be made in the United States. That is a landmark piece of legislation to protect the existing semiconductor industry and reshore jobs back to the U.S. Our infrastructure is a liability when it comes to reshoring. Part of the reason manufacturers are reluctant to bring back work to the United States is because they don't think they can get their goods to the international market as quickly as opposed to making things in China. So, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which invests money in not only roads and bridges but also port infrastructure, is a big part of our plan to encourage reshoring. Q: What other ways can we make Connecticut manufacturing more competitive to prevent work from going down south and overseas? We need to understand what role we are going to fill in the manufacturing economy. Connecticut is not always going to be the place that makes the cheapest goods. It's going to be the place that makes the more advanced products. Given the fact that our labor prices are higher, we also benefit from more technological input into manufacturing. A lot of people see machines as a threat to job creation but in Connecticut, as robotics start to take over manufacturing floors, that actually makes us more competitive with other parts of the country because that machine costs the same to install in Connecticut as it does in Florida, but in Connecticut our education system is better, our public safety is better. We need to make sure state policy incentivizes the purchase of manufacturing technology. ON THE RECORD | Q&A