Late last year I read a headline in the New York Times that asked, “Does America Need Manufacturing?”  For anyone who  grew up anywhere in the Southern Tier during the region’s manufacturing heyday – whose fathers and grandfathers made a decent living in those factories -- the answer to that question is heartfelt and immediate: you better believe it.

Which is why we’re seeing it from inside the White House.  We’re hearing it from presidential candidates crisscrossing the nation.  We’re reading it in best-selling books.  It strikes me that there’s a common refrain slowly but surely taking hold across America: let’s manufacture it, again, in the USA.  If it continues, and I hope (and believe) it will, it bodes well for New York State and, even more specifically, for our region as a whole.

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