President Obama to Visit Pittsburgh, Announce Manufacturing Initiative

President Obama will be in Pittsburgh Friday to discuss American manufacturing.

President Obama is expected to tour Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Institute before announcing the launch of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership. This new initiative will bring together the federal government, industries and universities to invest in and increase the production of emerging technologies.

Carnegie Mellon will be one of the universities involved as will be locally based Allegheny Technologies. The initiative will be led by Andrew Liveris, the Chairman and President of Dow Chemical and Susan Hockfield, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This initiative came about a little over two years after the President formed an advisory group - the President's Advisory Council on Science and Technology. Eric Lander was co-chair of the council. He says the US serving as a leader in advanced manufacturing is critically important. "Advancing on manufacturing based on new technologies can provide high quality, good paying jobs for American workers. 2nd, manufacturing and innovation are intimately connected. Keeping manufacturing locally helps facilitate more innovation here in The United States. And third, investing in advanced manufacturing capabilities that use advanced technologies is absolutely vital to maintaining national security," he said.

The president’s plan will invest more than 500 million dollars to build domestic manufacturing capabilities in national security industries, increase energy efficiency in manufacturing processes and ultimately keep jobs in those fields in the US.