El escrito es una transcripción de párrafos (nada original, pero vigente y libre de pareceres improvisados) sobre la trascendencia de la manufactura de Alexander Hamilton, el Primer Secretario del Tesoro de los Estados Unidos, procurando atraer la conciencia sobre la necesidad de que la UTP retome la senda tecnológica que alguna vez se propuso su fundador, el Rector Roa, una senda en la que el conocimiento académico adelante el estado técnico y tecnológico de las empresas regionales y nacionales para marcarle caminos de desarrollo y competitividad. Propongo este tema en un momento en que la UTP quiere crear un programa de Ingeniería AgrOindustrial que también será bienvenido y será exitoso si se apoya en una "ingeniería de fabricación de bienes de producción" o "ingeniería de manufactura"
Una ingeniería de manufactura en la UTP sería una respuesta responsable a las necesidades de industrialización de Colombia.
Una ingeniería que funde las bases para la asimilación de un know-how de fabricación nacional. En la UTP tenemos una ingeniería electro-mecánica que ha servido para atender las necesidades de la región en mantenimiento de la operabilidad y ha aportado a la transferencia tecnológica, pero aún no ha servido para generar un crecimiento tecnológico apropiado. Las empresas nacionales mayormente importan las máquinas, los procesos, los procedimientos. Estos próximos 50 años de la UTP podrían marcar la diferencia: de la descripción y uso de la tecnología a la generación de tecnología propia, y para esto deberá haber planes académicos.
Si continúa la falta de visión hacia la Ingeniería de Manufactura, Colombia seguirá represada, su potencial continuará siendo desaprovechado y se continuará identificando como un pobre y subdesarrollado proveedor de materias primas.
Decía Alexander Hamilton, el Primer Secretario del Tesoro de los Estados Unidos, que “mode of reasoning is founded upon facts and principles” (los modos de razonamiento se basan en hechos y principios): Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation … ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of a national supply. These comprise the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing and defense. ” (No solo el bienestar, sino también la independencia y la seguridad de un país, están materialmente relacionados con la prosperidad de la industria manufacturera. Todo país … debe esforzarse en poseer dentro de su dominio todo los medios esenciales para su abastecimiento nacional. Estos comprenden los medios para la subsistencia, la vivienda, el vestido y la defensa.”
Ese principio básico de Hamilton es hoy bastante importante para nuestro país. India y Brasil lo han entendido así hace ratico.
Manufacturing is the key to national power. Not only does it pay more than service industries, the rates of productivity growth are higher and the potential of new industries arising is far greater. From radio came television, VCRs, and flat-panel screens. From adding machines came calculators and computers. From the electric typewriter came the word processors. Research and development follow manufacturing.
Alexander Hamilton, the architect of the U.S. economy, knew this. He had served in the Revolution as aide to Washington and lived through the British blockades. He had led the bayonet charge at Yorktown. And he had resolved that never again would his country’s survival depend upon French muskets or French ships.
Hoy la cosa está muy difícil, aún para los Estados Unidos, los adalides del libre comercio.
And for what? All that junk down at the mall? What do we have now that we did not have before we submitted to this cult of free trade?
The Loss of Independence
Consider the depths of the E.U. new dependency. Imports, 4 percent of GDP for the first 70 years of the 20th century, are near 15 percent now, and 30 percent of the manufactures we consume. Pat Choate, author of Agents of Influence, gives the following levels of U.S. dependency on foreign suppliers for critical goods:
Medicines and pharmaceuticals: 72 percent
Metalworking machinery: 51 percent
Engines and power equipment: 56 percent
Computer equipment: 70 percent
Communications equipment: 67 percent
Semiconductors and electronics: 64 percent
In July, the U.S. Business and Industrial Council reported that the Pentagon officials responsible for procuring U.S. weapons had joined with defense industries to oppose legislation requiring 65 percent U.S. content. U.S. missile defense and the Joint Strike Fighter would be imperiled if 65 percent of the components had to be made in the USA.
As Choate writes, Dell Computers of Austin has 4,500 suppliers. Its just-in-time supply line, which stretches across the Atlantic and Pacific, has an inventory of four days. A dock strike on either coast, and Dell begins to close down after 96 hours.
While Americans are sacrificing the future for the present, China is sacrificing the present for the future.
During the summer and fall of 1791, while Madison and Jefferson were building up the Republican resistance, Hamilton was hard at work in Philadelphia on a number of projects, the most absorbing of which was his Report on Manufactures. Considered his most innovative report, it provides detailed insight into Hamilton's vision for the United States and its future.
Hamilton's Report on Manufactures went further than any other report in projecting the future of the United States and its place in the world economy. Hamilton urged congress to promote manufacturing so that the United States could be "independent on foreign nations for military and other essential supplies." In addition to national independence, manufacturing would provide a path to equality in the global market. Currently, Hamilton observed, the United States was pretty much precluded from "foreign Commerce." The country "cannot exchange with Europe on equal terms; and the want of reciprocity would render them the victim of a system which should induce them to confine their views to Agriculture and refrain from Manufactures." Government subsidies to manufacturing in Europe rendered it difficult for American manufacturers to compete in the market. The situation could be remedied if the United States government followed the European lead.
Hamilton's special interest in promoting manufacturing has been held up as evidence that he disregarded the importance of agriculture; however, nothing could have been further from his intentions. His report is more concerned with the interdependence of the two economic systems than the ascendancy of one over the other. He agreed that agriculture "has intrinsically a strong claim to pre-eminence over every other kind of industry. But that is has a title to anything like an exclusive predilection . . . ought to be admitted with great caution." Hamilton foresaw mass immigration into the United States and a domestic population explosion, and understood that the diverse population of the future had the best chance of widespread prosperity through a diversification of labor.
The growth of manufacturing in the United States, in Hamilton's view, would parallel the growth of great population centers, thus creating more of a market for the produce of farms. Hamilton sees things not in simple terms of evils and goods, but in terms of relationships and dynamics. He did not advocate one economic system, but saw an opportunity for greater benefits through providing a variety of options. By dismissing manufacturing, the nation was limiting its potential, and neglecting to tap into its most valuable, yet dormant, resources.
He recommended specific policies to encourage manufactures; among them protective duties and prohibitions on rival imports, exemption of domestic manufactures from duties, and encouragement of "new inventions... particularly those, which relate to machinery."
To Hamilton the absence of substantial manufacturing in the United States was a gaping hole of opportunity that desperately needed to be filled. Congress was not as enthusiastic. The report was never put up to a vote.
As a sort of supplement to his plan for manufactures, Hamilton and his former Treasury Department assistant, William Duer, founded the "Society for the Establishment of Useful Manufactures." Supported by private investors, it was an eighteenth century industrial park to be built in Passaic, New Jersey, complete with a snappy acronym: S.U.M. Through the S.U.M., Hamilton hoped to demonstrate the ability of the United States to be successful in manufacturing, and make proper use of its plentiful raw materials and its people's special aptitude for technological pursuits. It would be a microcosm of the industrial America of the future.
Hamilton's economic plan aimed to make American manufacturers self-sufficient. The American economy had traditionally rested upon large-scale agricultural exports to pay for the import of British manufactured goods. Hamilton rightly thought that this dependence on expensive foreign goods kept the American economy at a limited level, especially when compared to the rapid growth of early industrialization in Great Britain.
Rather than accept this condition, Hamilton wanted the United States to adopt a mercantilist economic policy. This would protect American manufacturers through direct government subsidies (handouts to business) and tariffs (taxes on imported goods). This protectionist policy would help fledgling American producers to compete with inexpensive European imports.
Hamilton possessed a remarkably acute economic vision. His aggressive support for manufacturing, banks, and strong public credit all became central aspects of the modern capitalist economy that would develop in the United States in the century after his death. Nevertheless, his policies were deeply controversial in their day.
Carlos Alberto Romero
Profesor Escuela de Tecnología Mecánica
Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira