Subcommittee Ranking Member Frost’s Opening Remarks at Hearing on American Manufacturing
Washington, D.C. (April 29, 2025). Below is Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost's opening statement, as prepared for delivery, at today's Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs hearing on Republicans' push to reverse the economic progress achieved by Democrats' successful Made in America agenda.
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Opening Statement
Ranking Member Maxwell Alejandro Frost
Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs
"Made in the USA: Igniting the Industrial Renaissance of the United States"
April 29, 2025
Thank you, Chairman Burlison, and thank you to the witnesses for being here this morning.
Since the 1980s, the United States has faced a decline in manufacturing jobs that has left many workers feeling forgotten and turned many once-thriving communities into ghost towns.
Democrats are united in wanting to bring more good, high-paying manufacturing jobs to these communities and making sure America is leading in the strategically significant manufacturing sectors of the future. But President Trump's disaster tariff plan, which is estimated to increase costs to American households by $4,900 per year, is not the solution.
During the Biden Administration, the Democrats' Made in America agenda resulted in legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act and the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act. And Democrats drafted this legislation with Republicans, in a bipartisan way, and with the vital input of manufacturing workers, employers, and impacted communities.
This legislation jumpstarted industry, helping to create more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and secure over $1 trillion in planned investments. Our country has not seen this much new factory construction in half a century.
This legislation and these investments created during the Biden Administration should continue to pay off, creating over 200,000 more jobs each year going forward, assuming no new policies stifle that growth.
There's still so much more to do to support domestic manufacturing and to create good-paying, safe jobs and affordable products here in America while protecting our environment. I'm here to work with anyone, regardless of political affiliation, to continue this work.
But I'm concerned that instead of advancing the progress we've made over the last several years, we are going to trend in the opposite direction due to Trump's irrational, blanket tariff policy.
While Democrats' legislative achievements in manufacturing have created more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs, Trump's chaotic tariffs are expected to eliminate 770,000 jobs in 2025 alone.
Tariffs are an important tool that, when used carefully and intelligently, can help American workers. But slashing services at the VA, "accidentally" encouraging our air traffic controllers to resign and firing the essential workers that maintain our nuclear weapons stockpile, deporting American citizens, and discussing sensitive military operations on Signal, "careful" and "intelligent" does not describe this administration, and that is the case with their tariff policy.
Investors are pulling back from doing business in America, which impacts critical industries and prevents companies from actually starting new businesses to make goods here in the United States. Hardworking Americans are seeing a tanking stock market and widespread firings and are concerned about what's to come.
I've heard from countless Central Floridians in my community who have fears: David, an Orlando retiree has lost 20% of his 401k in the last two months; Patricia, an Orlando resident, cannot make improvements to her home with the recent instability in the economy; and Delia, a Winter Park working person, says she won't be able to afford the tariff-driven increase in the cost of food, housing, medicine, and housing.
Democrats know there's a better way. The laws we led created the stability that manufacturers need to create jobs, and we worked to make sure that they were jobs that Americans want and deserve; safe jobs that offer financial security.
Democrats increased both worker safety protections and worker safety inspections while making good wages a key component to CHIPS and Science Awards.
The Democrat-led National Labor Relations Board cracked down on law breaking corporations and fortified workers' rights to organize.
In 2023, President Biden made history as the first sitting President to ever walk a picket line when he marched with striking United Auto Workers members in Michigan.
Trump worked aggressively to put corporate profits over workers' rights during his last term, and he's doing it again.
For starters, he attacked the National Labor Relations Board and its mission of defending workers' rights. He illegally fired one Democratic Board member, and, like his first term, wants to stuff the Board with anti-worker ideologues. Trump's sidekick Elon Musk has even called the NLRB unconstitutional while Trump has praised Musk for firing striking workers.
Trump is also looking at repealing sick leave, minimum wage, and overtime protections for some categories of workers.
While making working conditions worse, he is also making work less safe. During his first term, Trump had the fewest OSHA safety inspectors ever, and he has already fired two thirds of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health workforce since retaking office.
Trump's assault on workers' rights and safety does not stop at the factory gate. It follows workers home, affects the surrounding communities, and ultimately impacts all of us.
Trump has already stopped a plan to limit the amount of PFAS, known as cancer-causing "forever chemicals", that manufacturers can release into our drinking water.
Trump's agenda will also mean the air we breathe is more dangerous, increasing risks of childhood asthma, miscarriages in expectant mothers, and Alzheimer's for seniors. Trump wants to weaken rules at over 2,000 hazardous chemical facilities too. That alone will put 130 million Americans at risk.
I look forward to working with my colleagues from both parties, as well as with workers, their labor representatives, and private industry, to continue the manufacturing boom that Democrats started during the past four years, but this effort must never be at the expense of the safety, dignity, and prosperity of American workers.
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