Making Value For America

Globalization, developments in technology, and new business models are transforming the way products and services are conceived, designed, made, and distributed in the U.S. and around the world. These forces present challenges - lower wages and fewer jobs for a growing fraction of middle-class workers - as well as opportunities for "makers" and aspiring entrepreneurs to create entirely new types of businesses and jobs. Making Value for America examines these challenges and opportunities and offers recommendations for collaborative actions between government, industry, and education institutions to help ensure that the U.S. thrives amid global economic changes and remains a leading environment for innovation. Filled with real-life examples, Making Value for America presents a roadmap to enhance the nation's capacity to pursue opportunities and adapt to transforming value chains by widespread adoption of best practices, a well-prepared and innovative workforce, local innovation networks to support startups and new products, improved flow of capital investments, and infrastructure upgrades.

A moving and eye-opening look at the story of manufacturing in America, whether it can ever successfully return to our shores, and why our nation depends on it, told through the experience of one young couple in Maine as they attempt to rebuild a lost industry, ethically. • From the best-selling author of Into the Raging Sea Meet Ben and Whitney Waxman, two tireless idealists attempting to do the impossible: produce an American-made, union-made, all American-sourced sweatshirt—an American hoodie. Ben spent a decade organizing workers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin, fighting for Americans at a time when national support for unions had sunk to an all-time low. Struggling with depression and a drug dependency, Ben lands back in his hometown of Portland, Maine, desperate to prove that ethical manufacturing is possible. There, he meets Whitney, a bartender wrestling with her own complicated past. In each other they see a better future, a version of the American dream they can build together. Making It in America is a deeply personal account of one couple's quest to change the world. As they navigate private struggles, international trade wars, and a global pandemic, their story carries us across the nation and across time, from the cotton fields of Mississippi to New York City’s hollowed-out garment district to a family-owned zipper company in Los Angeles to the enormous knit-and-dye factories in North Carolina. Throughout, we grapple with what "Made in the USA" really means to Americans in the twenty-first century. Making It in America also offers a unique look at global politics, economics, and labor through the story of textile manufacturing. It was the demand for cheap cloth that sparked the industrial revolution. It was the brutality of the textile industry that first drove workers to organize. Making It in America reveals how profoundly manufacturing shapes all of us. Each twist and turn of the Waxmans' quest tells us how we got here, where we are now, and where we're headed—through the people that produce the fabric of our lives.

Pot Luck Spokesman? The information void in the hours following the shooting of US President Ronald Reagan late Monday afternoon, March 30, 1981, spawned many false rumors and misinformation, which White House political adviser Lyn Nofziger understood threatened the credibility of the White House. He therefore took the podium before the 200 plus assembled press in Ross Hall to tell them that he would be bringing with him a credible physician to brief them once the president was out of surgery. However, he didn’t have many options to draw from for that credible physician. At the hospital, the surgeons tending the three shooting victims had first-hand information about the afternoon’s events, but each surgeon knew only about his own injured patient. White House physician Dan Ruge meanwhile had been at the president’s side throughout the afternoon and was a possible candidate, but his White House association made his credibility suspect according to White House aides. The job became the drafting of the most logical person to be spokesman. That would have been the seasoned physician CEO of the George Washington University Medical Center Ron Kaufman, but he was out of town. Next up was Dennis O’Leary, the physician dean for clinical affairs, as the preferred spokesman. To the White House, O’Leary was a total unknown, but a review of his credentials would hardly have been reassuring. He had originally been recruited to George Washington University as a blood specialist. Reticent by nature, he had minimal public-relations and public-speaking experience, save two years as a member of his hometown high school debate team. He had no surgical or trauma training or experience. But beggars can’t be choosers, as the saying goes. Kindly stated, O’Leary was probably the least bad choice to serve as White House/hospital spokesman to inform the world of the status of the wounded President Reagan, special agent Tim McCarthy, and press secretary Jim Brady. Yet, with a little bit of luck, it might all work out. And it did.

Understanding American Politics provides a unique introduction to the contemporary political landscape of the United States by using as its core organizing feature the idea of "American exceptionalism," a concept that is at least as old as Tocqueville's study of American democracy. The second edition of Understanding American Politics maintains the unique strengths of the first edition while offering improved coverage of political institutions. A single omnibus chapter on institutions has been reorganized and split into three separate chapters on Congress, the presidency, and the courts. A new chapter on public opinion has also been included, and the chapter on religion and politics has been completely rewritten with a deeper appreciation of religion's influential role. The book has been revised throughout, taking into account the dramatic changes that have emerged since the 2010 congressional elections and the 2012 presidential election. The text also pays close attention to what is seen as the irreversible decline in America's global influence. Visit www.utpamericanpolitics.com for additional resources.

The case for revolutionizing the U.S. economy, from a leading CEO America used to define itself by the things we built. We designed and produced the world's most important innovations, and in doing so, created a vibrant manufacturing sector that established the middle class. We manufactured our way to the top and became the undisputed economic leader of the world. But over the last several decades, and especially in the last ten years, the sector that was America's great pride has eroded, costing us millions of jobs and putting our long-term prosperity at risk. Now, as we struggle to recover from the worst recession in generations, our only chance to turn things around is to revive the American manufacturing sector—and to revolutionize it. In Make It in America: The Case for Reinventing the Economy, Andrew Liveris—Chairman and CEO of The Dow Chemical Company—offers a thoughtful and passionate argument that America's future economic growth and prosperity depends on the strength of its manufacturing sector. The book explains how a manufacturing sector creates economic value on a scale unmatched by any other, and how central the sector is to creating jobs both inside and outside the factory Explores how other nations are building their manufacturing sectors to stay competitive in the global economy, and describes how America has failed to keep up Provides an aggressive, practical, and comprehensive agenda that will put the U.S. back on track to lead the world It's time to stop accepting as inevitable the shuttering of factories and staggering job losses that have come to define manufacturing. It's time to acknowledge the cost of inaction. There is no better company to make the case for reviving U.S. manufacturing than The Dow Chemical Company, one of the world's largest manufacturers and most global corporations. And there's no better book to show why it needs to be done and how to do it than Make It in America.

Latin America is a region made up of multiple states with a diversity of races, ethnicities, and cultures. In 'Transnational Perspectives on Latin America', Luis Roniger argues that a regional perspective is significant for understanding this part of the Western hemisphere. He claims that geopolitical, sociological, and cultural trends molded a contiguity of influences, shaping a transnational arena of connected histories, cross-border interactions, and shared visions, complementing the process of separate nation-state formation.--

Includes articles on international business opportunities.