I always enjoy myself at events where a guy wearing a kilt plays the bagpipes. The recent United States Cutting Tool Institute spring meeting was no exception.

But it wasn’t just the plaid-bedecked bagpiper who made things enjoyable.

The meeting, held April 19-22 in Washington, D.C., was a satisfying mix of education, history, fellowship and just plain fun. (A big shout-out to the USCTI program-planning committee for a job well done.)

NAM President John Engler (left) is greeted by USCTI’s president, Gene Baldino. (Photo courtesy Phil Samuels of Keo Cutter.)

One highlight was the talk delivered by the president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, John Engler. The former Michigan governor weighed in on a range of topics during his talk at the Capitol Hill Club:

• Energy. “We have a global-climate bill … that is premised on the idea that the country is going to build 150 nuclear power plants. I think we ought to build 150 nuclear power plants. But before that can happen, we’ve got a huge supplier base that needs to come back in the nuclear energy industry. If we tried to build a plant today, we’d be calling all over the world trying to line up components. And, we no longer have a workforce capable of building such a plant.”

• R&D tax credit. NAM expects the credit, which expired for the 13th time at the end of 2007, to be renewed. “We have strong bipartisan support. But if our nation’s policy is to let this credit lapse 13 times, it’s not exactly sending a strong signal that innovation is important to us. It’s shabby treatment for something that ought to be a rock-solid part of U.S. innovation policy.”

• Protecting U.S. intellectual property from offshore competitors. “We need to make cases and prosecute foreign companies that steal our intellectual property.”

• Education. Collectively, U.S. schools need to adopt a “best practices” approach to educating children. “Every education problem we have has been solved somewhere in America. What we need to do is replicate those solutions in every school in America. If we adopted a best-practices approach in our schools, the quality of education would—overnight—improve dramatically.”

• Loss of manufacturing jobs. “U.S. manufacturing is like U.S. agriculture was at one point in our history. Ag-sector productivity and efficiency improvements led to declines in farm employment. A mixed blessing in this has been the ability of manufacturing to deploy technology and to do so fairly quickly,” allowing the country to remain a dominant force in the world. “Annual dollar output for the U.S.-based manufacturing is $1.6 trillion to $1.7 trillion. If you stand it up all by itself, U.S. manufacturing is the eighth largest economy in the world. We’re still a lot bigger than anybody else.”

A bagpiper hits a high note for the crowd attending the USCTI’s 20th anniversary dinner. (Photo courtesy Phil Samuels of Keo Cutter.)

The other speakers during the spring meeting were former Rep. Michael G. Oxley (R-Ohio), a co-sponsor of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002; lobbyist/consultant Jeanne Campbell; NAM’s associate director of high-technology trade policy, Catherine Robinson; and Jamie P. Estrada, deputy assistant secretary for manufacturing, U.S. Commerce Department.

The audience asked Estrada some tough questions about free-trade agreements, health care costs, taxation, tariffs, China and the government’s lack of responsiveness to the needs of small- to mid-size manufacturing companies. (“You are among friends,” one member of the group assured Estrada, adding good-naturedly, “angry friends.”)

Estrada’s answers satisfied few. But I gave him points for showing up at 9 o’clock on a Sunday morning to face the “friendly fire.”

Other highlights of the 4-day meeting included a reception held at the Woodrow Wilson House, where the 28th president lived after retiring from office, a tour of the Capitol and a formal dinner celebrating the Institute’s 20th anniversary.

Seven former USCTI presidents attended the dinner and were introduced by the current president, Gene Baldino of Jasco Tools Inc.

The USCTI’s next meeting is scheduled for Oct. 18 in Coronado, Calif.