Here's this from the President's remarks in Ohio today:
"We see a future where we invest in American innovation and American ingenuity; where we export more goods so we create more jobs here at home; where we make it easier to start a business or patent an invention; where we build a homegrown, clean energy industry -- because I don’t want to see new solar panels or electric cars or advanced batteries manufactured in Europe or Asia. I want to see them made right here in the U.S. of A by American workers." (Emphasis ours)
Well, that's all fine and good, but look what his party has wrought in Congress, according to the front page of today's WaPo:
"WINCHESTER, VA. - The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s. What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.The resulting savings in energy and greenhouse-gas emissions are expected to be immense. But the move also had unintended consequences.
Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China."
The story, entitled, "Light bulb factory closes; End of era for U.S. means more jobs overseas" tells of the unintended consequences of federal policy. Expect to see more of this as the Administration exerts its not-so-invisible hand into the workings of businesses large and small. If Obama really wants to see all this stuff made in the "Good old U S of A," he'll need a dramatic shift in policy, one we don't foresee.