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The Challenges of Buying American

The Challenges of Buying American

Naseem Malik
February 23, 2023

Hello TSTers!

Welcome back to another exciting issue of The Supply Times!

I’ve got some great stuff for you. This week, we’ll take a look at the pitfalls of Biden’s “Buy America” campaign, as well as some insights for workers planning their careers—from start to finish. Plus, I’ll share a roundup of all the great things I’ve been reading, watching, listening to, and thinking about that’s been grabbing my attention lately.

Are you ready?

Industry Highlights: America Sells Out

For the last 150 years, US Presidents have been incredible at crafting catchy campaign slogans. Starting in 1840 with William Henry Harrison’s “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” to Herbert Hoover’s “A Chicken in Every Pot and a Car in Every Garage,” all the way to Trump’s controversial yet memorable “Make America Great Again,” these phrases have become ways for commanders-in-chief to embed their messages into the national culture.

While some slogans are merely cute ways for politicians to drum up votes, others have some teeth behind them. And that’s what Biden’s “Buy America” initiative is targeting, backed by a $1 trillion infrastructure bill the President signed in 2021.

Under the initiative, federally funded construction projects are required to use American-made materials, including copper, drywall, and fiber-optic cables.

In theory, this is a great plan to bootstrap a flagging manufacturing industry that has lost business to foreign suppliers. The problem though, as a recent article in The Washington Post points out, is that many of these US materials simply don’t exist.

The Post report recounts that the Department of Transportation recently denied a request for several US ports to buy upgraded dock equipment. The problem? No domestic companies manufacture the cranes, trucks, and boat lifts that the ports need.

The reality is that US manufacturing output has only risen a little in the last 15 years, which means that the government can fabricate opportunities all it wants through legislation, but if the product isn’t there, attempts are futile.

While there has been talk of creating waivers for these types of overseas purchases, many critics of the initiative say the impact is far too small to be worth the headache.

“To be honest, the effects [of Buy America] are going to be at best marginal,” Economic Policy Institute research associate Rob Scott said. “Government—you think it’s big. But it’s really a small percentage of the overall total.”

American companies bought $1.2 trillion more in manufactured goods than they sold to foreign customers, according to an analysis of U.S. government data by economist Rob Scott, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning nonprofit organization.

Scott said in order to really move the needle, the US must look deeper at private sector purchases. And to do that, it’s going to require us taking a harder look across global supply chains. We can ill-afford to stymie legitimate waivers or ignore the reality that building back up on shore will take a lot longer than we think—campaign talk notwithstanding.

The Future of Work: The Career Jungle Gym

Climbing the career ladder just got a lot more complicated.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, Millennials and each subsequent generation of workers are now coming to grips with the fact that their careers are—and will continue to—look WAY different than their parents’.

What used to be a straight track—workers starting at an entry-level and climbing upward—now looks more like a game of “Frogger.” It’s more and more common for workers to make lateral and even backwards jumps in order to end up ahead.

A primary reason for this shift isn’t necessarily bad. People are statistically living longer, which is wonderful—but it ALSO means that in order to survive, they need to work longer. The 40-year career is dead, experts say. Now it’s more like 60. I hope they’re wrong and it’s more like 50.

Six decades is a long time to do anything, especially when you’re trying to avoid the soul-crushing burnout that has continued to creep into our lives. A McKinsey study found that nearly half of employees feel burnt out at their job, though the report points out that most burned-out employees may have already left the workforce and thus did not respond to the survey.

The problem, of course, is that companies are still structured using the 40-year-career model, and most firms haven’t quite figured out how to keep employees productive and engaged over long careers.

As a result, workers must take more ownership of their path and what some employment experts are calling “portfolio careers.”

Over any career, but especially a lengthy one, you need to cope with two ever-changing variables,” ff Venture Capital head of platform Charlotte Japp said. “First is the business world, where new companies and many new jobs will be constantly emerging. And personally we change over time—and so do our interests, needs, and curiosity.”

Japp says the bottom line is that workers need to start thinking about their careers in a much different way. Planning out a path start-to-finish used to be possible, but now, there are simply too many variables. Japp suggests finding jobs and work environments that are both enjoyable and challenging, following your gut and knowing what you are good at.

Companies may at some point learn to value long-term employees and give them incentives to stick around for more than half-a-century, but for the time being, the onus is on the worker to swing on the career jungle gym.

Here are some high-level points to keep in mind on this decades-long journey:

Lifelong learning—including breaks to return to school—will be essential
Seek flexibility to have a better work/life balance
Learn strategies for restarting a career after a break
Build an intergenerational network
Continue exploring possible new paths even when you’re enjoying your current career
Don’t try to plan it all out

The Supply Aside: What I’m Reading, Watching, Listening to, and Thinking About Re: Supply Chain, Work, and Beyond

📕 Read - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

I was recently talking to a friend, and she mentioned that she’d picked up Stephen Covey’s classic self-improvement book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and was fascinated with how relevant it was to our modern age. I was dubious, because how much can a 40-year-old advice book really apply? But as I flipped through it, I realized the principles within are a lot of the issues plaguing the attention-starved environment we find ourselves in, including the use of empathy, and combining employee strength through teamwork. Definitely worth a re-visit.

📺 Watch - Severance

Is it possible to be two different people—one at home, and one at work? That’s the theme I most enjoy about Severance, the Emmy-nominated Apple+ show starring Adam Scott and Zach Cherry. The gist is that a biotech company has figured out a way to wipe its employees’ minds to separate the consciousness between their lives at work and outside. Let’s face it, I’m sure many amongst us have wondered what it would be like to completely block out all thoughts of the workplace once we’re at home. On the flip side, it would be weird to not know anything about our personal lives once we’re at the office. Regardless, it’s a fascinating storyline and thought experiment. And the way they set the story up at the end of Season One will ensure you’re eagerly awaiting the next installment.

👂 Listen - The Leadership Tales Podcast with Colin Hunter

We all acknowledge leaders are critical to the way our society functions, but we don’t often think about how we CHOOSE them. Is there a right and a wrong way to do it? That’s the topic of a recent podcast episode I listened to from Colin Hunter, whose Leadership Tales podcast is always full of great nuggets. In this episode, his guest is Gautam Mukunda, a Harvard professor and author of the book Picking Presidents. A great listen that helps us understand how we end up with great—and not-so-great—number 1s. Also be on the lookout for yours truly appearing soon in an upcoming episode!

💡 Think - VC Funding

Over the last several newsletters, I’ve talked about the warbles in the economy—an impending recession, inflation, markets going up and down, crypto going up and down. But here’s another interesting aspect that I read about this week in The Wall Street Journal: VC funding started drying up in Q4 2022—noticeably so, compared to Q3. In fact, fundraising by VC firms has hit a nine-year low. The same broad economic pressures impacting tech startups seem to have infected the investors in the VC world as well. ’m wondering, is this a short term thing, or if it portends to something more worrisome across the investment sector? What does it mean for entrepreneurs? For someone like me who tracks (and invests in) procurement and HR tech, this is something worth watching.