Ideas Matter: Obama Adviser Makes the Case for Helping Manufacturing

Economist Christina Romer used to work for President Barack Obama, but in February she handed his opponents a big box of ammunition by coming out against one of his top legislative priorities—policies to boost manufacturing. In an op-ed article in the New York Times entitled “Do Manufacturers Need Special Treatment?”, the University of California-Berkeley professor answered, in a word, “no.” Wrote Romer, who was the first chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers: “American consumers value health care and haircuts as much as washing machines and hair dryers,” thus asserting the equal value of services and manufactured goods to the country.

The Obama administration could not let Romer’s critique go unchallenged, coming as it did from someone who had been a key member of the economic policy team. Ideas matter in Washington, if not quite as much as money and power. So on March 27, Obama economic adviser Gene Sperling gave a speech that eschewed politics—and never mentioned Romer by name—but carefully laid out a series of arguments for why manufacturing matters to the U.S., and why it really does need special treatment.