Jay Timmons
is the president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, NAM. On March 26, Mr. Timmons briefed members of the press on the responses of America’s manufacturers to the COVID-19 crisis. Today’s quote was taken from that briefing. Here is the setting for the two sentences highlighted above. Mr. Timmons:
It has been said that this is like a war. And in World War II, we were the arsenal of democracy. Today, manufacturers are called to arm our healthcare workers in the battle with this deadly virus
But it goes beyond the front lines at the hospital. Our grocery stores must be stocked. Our electricity must keep running. Our devices must keep us connected. Our lives may be socially distant, but life goes on.
And that means manufacturers must keep daily life possible.
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The first virus related stimulus bill hadn’t quite made it to the President’s desk when Mr. Timmons gave this briefing to the press on March 26. Known as the
CARES ACT (the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act),
it had passed the Senate, 96 to 0, the day before, March 25. The next day, March 27, it passed the House by a voice vote and was signed by the president. It is now Public Law No: 116-136. Understandably, Mr. Timmons spent a few minutes highlighting elements of the bill that are especially important to NAM, including the law’s incentives “for small manufacturers to retain employees during this crisis.”
“With 90 percent of our members being small businesses, I think this is one of the most critical parts of the legislation,” he said.
Doubtless the CARES ACT is going to get both a lot of use and a lot of scrutiny in the coming weeks. We’ll end this with a single example of the kinds of efforts that manufacturers big and small are making. As Mr. Timmons explained to the reporters who called in:
Marlin Steel
in Baltimore [is] a wire products manufacturer. Last Friday [March 20] they received an emergency order to make
wire racks for test tubes for COVID-19 testing
. They hadn’t made test-tube racks before but volunteered to work all weekend to get it done, and they shipped out [those racks] by Sunday afternoon. That’s the kind of story we’re hearing over and over across the country, on a large and small scale.
