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defense-related job losses would amount to 1,010,000 in the private sector, including 130,000 manufacturing positions, by 2014, if sequestration kicks in under the Budget Control Act, according to a newly issued report by the National Association of Manufacturers. “This job loss will increase the unemployment rate by 0.7 percent and decrease GDP by almost 1 percent by 2014,” states NAM’s June 21 release on the report, which came out that same day. “This report makes it clear that these cuts will punish the businesses that create the cutting-edge products keeping us safe at home and abroad, creating a negative effect on the supply chain between large and small manufacturers,” stated NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons. The largest losses would be in large non-durables and transport equipment, including the aerospace industry that would lose 3.4 percent of its jobs, according to the release. The ships and boats industry would lose 3.3 percent of its jobs and the search and navigation equipment industry would lose 9.3 percent of its jobs, states the release. (NAM report; caution, large-sized file.) (See also The Cost of Losing Business and The Outside View.)
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…