MISUMI Americas: Can a New Bill Solve the US Skills Gap?

MISUMI Americas says that US manufacturing will be constrained by a skilled worker shortage despite significant foreign direct investment (FDI). 

Cumulative FDI in the sector has reached US$2.42tn and made up nearly 45% of all new foreign investment in 2024, it says. 

However, the Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte project that 3.8 million workers are needed by 2033 and only around half of these roles will be filled.  

"Nearly 2.8 million of those openings come from an experienced generation retiring and taking decades of hard-won knowledge with them," Dave Evans, President and CEO of MISUMI Americas, tells Manufacturing Digital. 

"For a company like ours, the challenge is less about raw headcount today and more about specialised skill: the people who can run advanced automation, program and maintain increasingly sophisticated equipment and bridge the gap between digital design and what actually gets built on the floor." 

In efforts to address this, MISUMI Americas is endorsing H.R. 9097, the American Manufacturing Revitalization Exchange Program Act, currently pending before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. 

This proposal would fund training in robotics, semiconductors and automation in US-allied countries, like Japan, Germany and South Korea, for selected US workers and students. 

It aims to import knowledge from these countries to help address the skills gap.

What is H.R. 9097?

Most international exchange programmes are for white-collar academics. 

The bill aims to send American manufacturing apprentices and students to allied nations to learn advanced techniques, bring that knowledge home and help combat the projected labour shortage in the US manufacturing sector.

If enacted, it would be run by the State Department alongside the Departments of Labor and Commerce, providing fully funded time abroad for US citizens currently in an apprenticeship, trade school or relevant degree programme. 

It targets sectors including robotics, semiconductors, aerospace, additive manufacturing, shipbuilding and more. 

In its current form, the bill ends two years after enactment with a small cohort size capped at 10 participants per year. 

When participants return, they are required to document and share what they learned with US employers and the Manufacturing USA network. 

Could small cohorts fix the skills gap?

If just 10 people per year were to learn these skills, it would take hundreds of thousands of years to close the country's gap.

Dave explains: "While 10 a year won't close a gap measured in millions, its value isn't headcount, it's knowledge transfer.

"Countries like Japan, Germany and South Korea have spent decades building the most effective advanced-manufacturing training systems in the world. H.R. 9097 is about bringing that expertise here, studying what works and adapting it to an American context."

In addition to mandatory requirements, the bill details additional considerations that look at the teaching experience of participants, such as programme leaders, instructors or higher-education faculty members. 

To prevent the programme from becoming a taxpayer-funded training mechanism for multinational corporations, the proposal also says that participants cannot be placed with a foreign subsidiary of a US company they are already affiliated with. For example, a Ford apprentice in Michigan could not be sent to train at a Ford facility in Germany using this funding.

The goal is to absorb new knowledge from foreign companies and bring it back to the US manufacturing ecosystem. 

Why should the government fund training?

With record foreign investment pouring into US manufacturing, it raises a question: why is federal policy needed if private corporations are already spending billions in the sector?

"The foreign direct investment flowing into US manufacturing increasingly comes with training and workforce commitments attached, because those investors need skilled people to run the facilities they're building here," Dave explains.

"But there's a structural reason a bill like this still matters. Individual companies invest to meet their own needs, and that's rational, but it tends to produce narrow, firm-specific training rather than the broad, transferable foundation the whole sector requires.

"No single company, foreign or domestic, has the incentive to build shared national infrastructure that benefits competitors too. That's precisely the gap public policy is meant to fill. Private investment builds the plants and trains for specific roles; smart policy builds the pipeline everyone draws from."

Who is backing H.R. 9097?

The bill was introduced in June 2026 and is led by US Representative Bill Huizenga, who represents Michigan's fourth congressional district as a member of the Republican Party. 

It has support from both sides of the aisle, with co-sponsors including Democratic Party members Johnny Olszewski, George Latimer and Sarah McBride, and Republican Party members Young Kim, Gus M. Bilirakis and Glenn Thompson. 

The bill is also backed by a range of organisations, including MISUMI Americas, BMW Group, the National Association of Manufacturers and United Steelworkers.