Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator. I would add that a major manufacturer that leaves from Minneapolis or leaves from Cleveland or from North Dakota is a company that has the resources to do that, and that company has a multitude of component manufacturers in its supply chain and that large company that leaves may be its biggest customer. Perhaps it is a big assembly plant that leaves to go to China. The component manufacturer that sells to that auto assembly plant has all of a sudden lost its biggest customer. It is not big enough to move to China, so it loses 30 percent of its customer base. So it is not just the company that moves and what that does to American workers and companies and communities, it is also those multitude of component manufacturers. In the auto industry, for instance, there are way more people working in the supply chain than there are in the actual assembly plant. So in the wake of a major company moving overseas, we see devastation in the entire supply chain of component manufacturing. I am sure you saw that with Huffy bicycle. There is the manufacturer that made the steel, that stamped the fenders, that made the tires and the spokes that were taken to Huffy--I think to Celina, OH, in those days--to assemble. So all of them lose. In smaller communities, as the Senator knows, a manufacturing plant oftentimes has a husband and wife both working at the same plant, making $12 to $15 an hour.…”