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Meet Obama's new manufacturing Whiz, Ron Bloom.

Article Excerpt
President Obama has done what many in the domestic manufacturing community had hoped he would do since the day he entered office: appoint a top-notch person to his White House staff to promote the interests of American manufacturing.

Ron Bloom, Obama's new senior counselor for manufacturing policy, is not shy when it comes to expressing his views on the need for the U.S. government to foster a healthy industrial sector. In reading his speeches and talking to those who know him well (including his most recent former boss), it is apparent that President Obama has put a tough cookie on an economic team dominated by economists known to embrace outsourcing.

"Every other nation in the world has a specific and targeted strategy to preserve or expand its manufacturing base," Bloom wrote in 2006. "We, on the other hand, seem to think that empty platitudes will suffice."

Bloom, a graduate of Harvard Business School, worked for more than a decade as a special assistant to the president of the United Steelworkers, first for the recently deceased George Becker and then for current USW president Leo Gerard. Prior to that, he worked for Lazard Freres and then started his own investment firm specializing in restructuring North American manufacturing companies. He made money in the private sector, and then took a staff job with the Steelworkers union in Pittsburgh.

"He walked away from investment banking because of his values and his commitment to manufacturing," says Gerard. "There were no bonuses. He got paid just like any other staff person. He never asked for any special treatment. He really, really believes that you can't have a successful economy unless you have a strong manufacturing sector."

But not everyone in...

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