Reporter Presses Rubio On Bringing Manufacturing Jobs Back: 'You Haven't Really Given Us A Vision'

During a press briefing on Friday, Secretary Of State Marco Rubio was asked a question about bringing manufacturing jobs back from overseas.

Transcript

00:00Can I ask a step back question on the trade strategy?

00:02You've talked many times now about how decades of trade policy have led to the deindustrialization of the U.S.

00:08And so obviously you and other agents are trying to bring manufacturing or other industrial processes back to U.S.

00:15But you haven't really given us a vision of what exactly that entails.

00:18Like what kinds of jobs are supposed to be coming back to U.S.?

00:21Howard Letton, they talked about people screwing in tiny things into iPhones, which people mocked after you said that line.

00:27But so what about you, like what vision of industrialization do you see in the world?

00:31Well, there are certain capacities countries have to be able to have.

00:34So example, I'm just using these as examples, the ability to build a ship.

00:38Right now, you know, we go around the world and people say, well, you know, we bought 200 Boeing jets.

00:43Well, Boeing has to be able to make them.

00:45And frankly, we have huge backlogs on that.

00:48So you talk about pharmaceuticals as an example.

00:51Talk about national security.

00:52We've lost our ability to make pharmaceuticals in the United States

00:55and become heavily dependent on foreign supply chains for the active ingredients that are necessary for pharmaceuticals.

01:01So I can go on and on.

01:03But, I mean, the capability of making things has a national security component to it, not just a jobs component to it.

01:10They're both important.

01:11So I would look to those as examples of things that the U.S., because of certain decisions that were made by previous policymakers,

01:18we've seen some of these core industrial capabilities that are necessary not just for economic stability

01:25but for national security leave the United States.

01:28I would also argue that in addition to our domestic manufacturing capability,

01:33I think we and others should be deeply concerned about certain supply chain vulnerabilities

01:39and over-reliance on one part of the world versus anywhere else.

01:42I don't think it's healthy for the United States or for the global economy to be so heavily dependent, as an example,

01:48on China or any other country, for that matter, where all of the industrial or manufacturing capacity or supplies

01:55and the supply chain of a key element is all derived in one place.

01:59So as I'm sure you've seen the announcement yesterday where the Department of Defense has entered,

02:04has taken an equity stake in a company that will be able to process rare earths.

02:08One thing is to have access to raw material.

02:11The other thing is to be able to process that raw material into something that's usable

02:14for everything from high technology to anything that has a motor in it.

02:20So I think we, at a minimum, have to diversify supply chains and secure them.

02:24Some of that will be domestic.

02:26Others will be in allied nation states.

02:28But these are core components of the kinds of things we need to be focused on.

02:32And it's not just the deindustrialization of America.

02:35It's the loss of these key components and the concentration of those in one or two countries

02:43around the world that leave not just us but many countries vulnerable.

02:47That's just not a sustainable or acceptable situation to find ourselves in.

02:52Thank you, everybody.

02:53All right, guys.