Obama visits Master Lock to celebrate return of jobs
The sticker, strategically plastered on a crate stacked as a prop behind President Barack Obama, communicated nearly as much as the president did in an entire speech Wednesday.
"Made in the U.S.A."
Those four words, in full view of the television cameras, summed up the policy goals that Obama outlined to a throng inside the flagship factory of Master Lock Co., the 91-year-old Milwaukee manufacturer that moved about 100 jobs back from China over the past 18 months.
"This company has been making the most of a huge opportunity that exists right now to bring jobs and manufacturing back to the United States of America," Obama said. "Today, for the first time in 15 years, this plant is running at full capacity."
Make no mistake: the new jobs at Master Lock represent a fraction of the jobs that were annihilated over three decades in a city with a machine-shop economy. And they're negligible in a nation that lost a third of its factory employment in the decade that preceded the 2008-'09 recession.