HeyJaredThe Manufacturing Report
Manufacturing is having a moment. But what will it actually take to create more blue-collar jobs and strengthen our industrial base? Alliance for American Manufacturing President Scott Paul chats with policymakers, manufacturing experts and factory workers to find out.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 6
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- Sep 21, 2026
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- Jul 13, 2026
Latest episodes
Hundreds of Major Leaguers Wear This Belt Made in Small-Town Texas (opens the original)
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Hundreds of pro ballplayers are wearing belts made in a Texas town of 3,000 people. Matt Hadden is the third-generation president to run Pioneer Fit, a company his grandfather started in 1979 selling sports gear out of the back of his trunk in Nebraska. He joins AAM President Scott Paul today and shares how the business grew by taking on the custom work no other manufacturer wanted, and how one question from an employee — "Why don't we make baseball belts?" — opened that market in two seasons. H
Union Workers on What Their Jobs Built and What They Stand to Lose (opens the original)
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At the height of a Washington, D.C., summer heat wave, members of the United Steelworkers came to town for the union's Rapid Response Legislative and Policy Conference — four days of talking legislation with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. AAM Media Relations Director Cat Adams grabbed a mic and went down to hear from the people who actually build things. Tire builders, welders, assemblers and machine operators talk about the first day they walked onto a factory floor, what their first paycheck bough
This Detroit Apparel Factory Stitches Its Own U.S. Supply Chain (opens the original)
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He bought a $5 bill’s worth of beanies, sold them, bought more, and, eight years later, he’s manufacturing American-made knitwear in Detroit for brands you’ve heard of. Josh York, founder of Soft Goods, joins AAM President Scott Paul to talk about building a cut-and-sew factory in Corktown from scratch, teaching himself to sew off YouTube, and ruining roughly 100 T-shirts before one came out right. Josh also gets candid about the things most founders won’t say out loud: that sourcing domesticall
He Sold Everything to Make a Banjo in America (opens the original)
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What does it take to build a musical instrument company in America — with no woodworking background and a fear of power tools? Zack Munsell went from a sales job with “no passion” to founding Friendly Banjos, maker of a color-coded, easy-to-play banjo built for kids and beginners. Today, he joins AAM President Scott Paul, and shares his winding, cross-country journey learning from America’s artisan banjo makers, the painting that reshaped his entire mission, and why he was determined to build an
How One Viral Video Brought 600 Orders a Day — and This Utah Maker Wasn’t Ready (opens the original)
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Russ Warner just wanted an extra $400 a month for a car payment and to hang with his kids. Instead, a single TikTok from an Ohio teenager racked up 50 million views, buried his made-to-order skateboard business under 600 orders a day, and turned a Utah garage operation into a real American factory. AAM President Scott Paul talks with Russ Warner, founder of Ghost Boards, the maker of custom transparent acrylic longboards handcrafted in Utah. Russ shares how he and partner Brent Johnson went from
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