The National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW) and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) issued comments about the White House’s 2025 budget proposal and President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.
Eric Hoplin, President and CEO of NAW, issued the following statement in response to the White House’s release of its fiscal year 2025 budget proposal:
At a time when hardworking Americans are grappling with soaring inflation and a mounting national debt crisis, President Joe Biden’s budget would only exacerbate their struggles by burdening them with trillions in additional taxes, all to further an anti-business agenda.
The proposed tax hikes in the President’s budget constitute a clear assault on Main Street businesses and the families they sustain. While President Biden claims he is closing loopholes and raising taxes only on those earning more than $400,000 per year, his budget contains several tax increases on small businesses including wholesaler-distributors across the country. This will threaten the ability of the industry, which already has tight profit margins, to continue adding jobs, expanding benefits to employees, or reinvesting in local communities.
The Biden administration’s proposed budget represents a staggering increase in borrowing and spending, with nearly $5 trillion in new taxes on American families, while simultaneously adding over $16 trillion to our public debt.
Meanwhile, following President Biden’s State of the Union address, National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) President and CEO Jay Timmons released the following statement:
Tonight, President Biden celebrated manufacturing’s accomplishments during his presidency, and rightly so. He signed into law some of the most consequential pro-manufacturing legislation in recent years—the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act and even key provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. What’s more, manufacturers have stood proudly with him in his efforts to champion democracy abroad, most notably in Ukraine, and to reach solutions to address our broken immigration system. These are urgent priorities on which Congress should heed his call and act swiftly.
But President Biden missed the mark tonight in several key areas when he laid out his plans going forward. If the cost of manufacturing in America is driven up by his agencies’ continued regulatory onslaught and a successful push to raise taxes, investment will be driven overseas and Americans will be driven out of work. If his campaign to ‘march-in’ to manufacturers and seize their intellectual property advances, it will rob Americans and the world of future cures and chill research into new breakthroughs across the manufacturing industry. And if President Biden continues to heap blame on pharmaceutical manufacturers, rather than reining in pharmacy benefit managers with cost-saving reforms, Americans and their employers will continue to endure rising health care costs.
President Biden and Congress have a choice to make: they can take bipartisan action on the priorities manufacturers have outlined in our ‘Competing to Win’ agenda, an agenda that will unquestionably lift the quality of life for all Americans, or they can retreat to partisan corners and put our future in jeopardy.
The president spoke passionately tonight about protecting democracy and our way of life at home and around the world. Manufacturers share a profound commitment to democracy and to the values that have made America exceptional and keep manufacturing strong—free enterprise, competitiveness, individual liberty and equal opportunity. And one of the surest ways to restore faith in democracy is for both parties to work together and prove that this experiment still works—by delivering smart policies for the American people and by bolstering the industry that is the backbone of our economy and improves lives for all.
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