A Bloom for Manufacturing

Ron Bloom, an investment banker and onetime adviser to the United Steelworkers union who most recently helped President Obama find a path out of the auto-industry mess, is getting a new job. He'll become senior adviser for manufacturing policy, a tricky position considering the continuing erosion of manufacturing jobs n the country.

Obama is set to introduce Bloom today at an AFL-CIO event in Cincinnati. According to the White House, Bloom's job will be to work with National Economic Council to find a strategy to revitalize the manufacturing sector.

A story last month in the Detroit News, which correctly predicted Bloom's appointment, noted that "Bloom will have his work cut out for him." It rattled off a number of sobering statistics, including the fact that in 1979, manufacturing represented 30 percent of U.S. jobs, but this summer that percentage dipped to less than 9 percent. Here's another telling number: Since the recession began in December, 2007, 2 million manufacturing jobs have been lost.

Bloom, a Harvard Business School graduate, has been praised for his negotiating skills, albeit ones with a fondness for profanities. According to a Wall Street Journal blog post when Bloom got tapped to be part of Obama's auto-industry task force, some United Steelworkers members worried that Bloom was "too cozy with the moneymen" during the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Corp. takeover battle.

The USW helped block Brazilian steel giant CSN’s attempt to merge with Wheeling-Pitt by finding a more union-friendly bidder in Esmark—a Chicago upstart that got bought by Russia’s OAO Severstal in 2008. In the Wheeling-Pitt case, Mr. Bloom dealt with entrepreneurs who run Esmark as well as with Franklin Mutual Advisers LLC, a big mutual-fund firm that owned 70 percent of Esmark’s shares. In return for Esmark’s no-layoff promise, the USW agreed not to oppose its wish to import steel slabs to Wheeling-Pitt mills. The union customarily opposes such imports.

Obama is convinced that Bloom "has the knowledge and experience necessary to lead the way in creating the good-paying manufacturing jobs of the future,” the president said in a statement. “We must do more to harness the power of American ingenuity and productivity so that we can put people back to work and unleash our full economic potential.”