Manufacturing – it’s what the UK’s still good at and we’re going to get even stronger.

The Cleveland Indians, the Cleveland Browns, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Buckeyes.  That’s just a few of the things associated with Cleveland in Northeast Ohio, home of my in-laws. But manufacturing has also traditionally been a part of Cleveland and Ohio’s landscape too.  I was in Cleveland on 31 October and 1 November where, amongst other things, I visited TATA Steel’s Thomas Steel Strip Corp plant, just an hour’s drive away in Warren. Founded in the 1920s, and owned by the UK’s Corus, before Corus itself was bought out by India’s TATA in 2007, the plant employs about 300 people and is one of the most innovative companies in the field of electroplated cold-rolled strip.

I hear a lot in the media and blogosphere about the death of manufacturing in the US, just like the nay-sayers who tout that the UK doesn’t make any thing anymore. I find the former hard to believe when the US remains the world’s largest manufacturer, with an output some 45% higher than China’s.  The University of Michigan’s Professor Mark J Perry wrote an informative piece about this in the Wall Street Journal back in February . And I don’t buy the latter either. Because if that were true, how would the UK be the tenth largest manufacturer in the world, with the second largest global share of the aerospace market, and a highly competitive autos sector, attracting investment even this year from Indian-owned Jaguar Land Rover, Japanese-owned Nissan and German-owned BMW? 55% of the UK’s exports are manufactured goods, and we’re the sixth largest exporter in the world. So that’s a lot of manufactured goods.

I made some of these points when I had the pleasure and opportunity of addressing the British American Chamber of Commerce of Ohio. Naturally, I also spoke about the strong commercial links between the UK and Ohio. (We’re the second largest investor in the State, supporting 36,500 jobs. And we’re Ohio’s second largest export destination in Europe with $1.3bn-worth of transport equipment, machinery, chemicals, and other goods finding their way straight to the UK in 2010. That sounds like quite a lot of manufactured goods too.)

I made a particular point of stressing how the UK’s Plan for Growth is aimed at proving a competitive environment in which UK manufacturing can once more become the heart of the UK’s economy, providing jobs across so many more communities. Not just the obvious things like cutting corporate tax rate and regulations and investing in infrastructure. But ideas like more apprenticeships, work placements, and technical colleges which will all help fill the skills gap and give industry the next generation of expert technicians and engineers. Or Technology Innovation Centres that bridge the gap between universities and business, turning inventions into products .

These are the things that will play a big part in the UK’s economic recovery and boost our trade and manufacturing. And why Britain should be seen as Open for Business.”