Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) was in North Syracuse this week promoting a new bill that will help banks and investors loan more money to manufacturing businesses. The bill is meant to help keep manufacturers in the U.S. and New York state.
JADAK is a company in North Syracuse that makes bar code scanners and machine vision cameras. They employ about 130 people in central New York where their headquarters and manufacturing facility are located. But JADAK has offices all over the world, and as they’re looking to grow, countries such as China and Germany, are tempting American businesses to move overseas with joint venture capital. Gillibrand said those governments are subsidizing manufacturing.
“What China then turns around and does is steal all of their plans and designs and intellectual property and then are better poised to do next generation innovation," Gillibrand said. "So we don’t want those jobs going overseas.”
Jeff Pine, a cofounder of JADAK, supports Gillibrand’s latest bill to counter that.
“The bill is a significant part to helping companies not have to fight the pressures of going offshore to get the funding that they need,” Pine said.
The bill adds $1 billion to the Small Business Administration’s guaranteed loan program, specifically for manufacturers, making it easier for banks and investors to lend more money to manufacturing businesses.
“We need that growth to happen here in New York and we need to connect businesses to capital so that when they do scale up and create more high skilled manufacturing jobs, they’re doing it right here,” Gillibrand said.
Gillibrand said she hopes to pass this bill as part of a package with other bipartisan, small business related bills.
