Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
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President Barack Obama is planning a stop in Davenport next week to highlight the role of advanced manufacturing in American job creation and exports.
Alcoa, which operates an advanced manufacturing plant in Davenport, announced Thursday that President Obama would be visiting on Tuesday, June 28. The stop has not yet been officially placed on the White House schedule, which is currently blank for the entire week.
The president is expected to discuss American manufacturing in relation to the local, state, national and global economies and its importance to communities throughout the nation.
Alcoa’s Davenport Works produces fabricated aluminum products. Alcoa’s national website boasts, “Practically every airplane anywhere in the world has some type of Alcoa product on it. The Davenport facility has been operational since 1948 and is more than one mile long, housing 130 acres of manufacturing under a single roof.
“It is a true honor that President Obama has chosen to visit Alcoa in Davenport, a great example of the high technical capabilities an innovation that makes U.S. manufacturing strong,” said Klause Kleinfeld, Alcoa chairman and chief executive.
“We have more jobs in Davenport today than before the crisis as we capture growing global demand for innovative products. We welcome the opportunity to share with the President our American manufacturing success story,”
Despite the lack of an official trip announcement, the Republican National Committee has already issued a statement critical of the stop.
“Unfortunately for the president, speeches and factory tours do not reverse the damaging policies his administration has enacted on job creators,” said Ryan Mahoney, spokesman for the RNC. “This president’s anti-job, anti-manufacturing agenda has failed the citizens of Iowa and continues to leave millions of Americans scratching their heads wondering when this president will follow through on his promises to put our country back to work.”
The RNC is specifically pointing to an ongoing labor dispute between Boeing Co. and the National Labor Relations Board as evidence that the Obama administration has launched “an unprecedented intrusion into boardrooms.” While the case itself is currently in adjudication to determine if Boeing violated federal labor laws by retaliating against organized workers, the union representing Boeing workers in Washington state has filed an ethics complaint against U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican.
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