Manufacturing in the United States is in crisis. Nowhere is this crisis more acute than in the manufacture of advanced lithium batteries and their supply chain components. The loss of manufacturing in the United States has hollowed-out communities, eliminated good jobs and reduced the tax base. The loss of manufacturing is a root cause of the ballooning federal deficit.
But the loss of manufacturing itself is not the crisis. The crisis is the loss of investment in manufacturing infrastructure. Manufacturing lithium batteries, like any other product, cannot be established and sustained in the United States unless investors can see a path to profitable investment in the sector.
Over the past decade, Congress has taken steps to make that path more evident to investors in advanced battery manufacturing. Investors have responded by investing billions of dollars in new manufacturing infrastructure and creating thousands of jobs. Advanced lithium batteries are a core, strategic technology of the 21st Century. They are a ubiquitous technological tool that power and improve the performance of thousands of products large and small.
Reducing tax incentives for investors in advanced battery manufacturing would be a costly and counterproductive mistake. Reducing incentives would not only stymie investment in the short term, but would by withdrawing retrospectively incentives on which investors have already relied compromise the long-term appeal of investing in manufacturing in the United States.
NAATBatt and its 380-member businesses applaud efforts to bring fiscal responsibility to the federal budget. Everyone who runs a business knows the importance of fiscal responsibility. But NAATBatt is gravely concerned that short-term budget math not compromise the long-term goal of rebuilding the U.S. manufacturing base. If it does, the deficit will grow larger, not smaller, and become increasingly difficult to address.
NAATBatt urges Congress to make American manufacturing great again by retaining for investors the tax incentives necessary to build and sustain new advanced battery manufacturing capacity in the United States.