What Happens After the CHIPS Act w/ the Printed Circuit Board Association of America

We're back after a bit of a break! In this episode, we're excited to welcome David Shield from the Printed Circuit Board Associated of America (PCBAA) to talk about how their work is influencing the US Congress to bring electronics manufacturing back to America. 

The Printed Circuit Board Association of America is the sole association of U.S. domestic printed circuit board manufacturers and suppliers. PCBAA was established in 2021 by PCB manufacturers and other industry stakeholders amid rising geopolitical challenges.

PCBAA seeks to promote an environment in which U.S.-based printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturers can thrive.

The PCBAA was formed to respond to the misunderstandings in the Chips Act. David explains to us what exactly the CHIPS Act is, what sort of impact might the efforts of the PCBAA have on people within the United States hiring a company like Worthington to order their circuit boards, and more.

Links:
Learn more about PCBAA's core mission and activities in Washington

pickplacepodcast.com

Transcript

Chris: 0:08

Welcome to the Pick Place podcast, a show where we talk about electronics, manufacturing and everything related to getting a circuit board into the world. This is Chris Denny with Worthington.

Melissa: 0:18

And this is Melissa Hough with CircuitHub.

Chris: 0:21

Welcome back, Melissa.

Melissa: 0:22

Welcome back Chris.

Chris: 0:24

I mean, we just saw each other just recorded what couple days ago, right?

Melissa: 0:28

Yeah, something like that. Couple days, couple months.

Chris: 0:31

We are.

Melissa: 0:32

thing. Right?

Chris: 0:33

Despite the rumors we are alive, , those of you who have been emailing me already know this, but those of you who normally don't email me and just listen to the show yeah, you might have thought something tragic had happened to Melissa and or myself, but no rest assured we're here

Melissa: 0:48

Quite the opposite. Just very busy. Chris has been very busy manufacturing and I've also been busy manufacturing, but something a little bit different than circuit boards.

Chris: 0:59

far more important than circuit boards. I, so it's funny, I I thought to myself, boy, once, once we kind of get the team set up with, with our new pick and place equipment, it'll be good. We'll be able to get back on schedule and then what do I do? I go, you know what? I think I'm gonna sign myself up for like a dozen more things. Just as complicated as the pick and place machines and yeah, that shouldn't be a problem. Right? Should, should be able to handle

Melissa: 1:23

Yeah, we know how that goes.

Chris: 1:25

Yeah. But we just, there's just so much going on. But it's, it's all great stuff. It's all super great stuff. We've got we nearly doubled our space recently, which was super cool. We had a tenant move out of our building. We were able to move into that space, which is super exciting. But that means just so much stuff related to that floor layout stuff and networking stuff and power and contractors and e s D and you name it. It's just, it gets so complicated with all these kinds of things. And then we've got new selective soldering equipment coming. We got new x-ray parts counting coming. We got new stencil wash coming. We got new magazine board handlers coming. We got, we just got a lot going on.

Melissa: 2:01

Wow. So, yeah, I think it's safe to say you're not gonna get any less busy

Chris: 2:06

No ? No, I don't think so. I'll tell you what we, the, the, the, what we've got going in our favor though is we've, we've also been training a bunch of new people. We made a lot of new hires in 22, and they're really starting to come into their own. It takes a while to get up to speed in this

Melissa: 2:21

Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Chris: 2:22

know, you just, there requires so much handholding initially. And not that I'm holding everybody's hand, I'm not, not saying that at all, but you know, everybody else who's been training them now, they're able to be freed up to do other things because those new people we've hired are just killing it and they're doing a great job. It's, it's, it's exciting times.

Melissa: 2:38

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially with the way that Worthington works specifically, you know?

Chris: 2:44

yes, exactly. And CircuitHub has been hiring, which is good. Locally, locally here in Deerfield, which is good. We've been, been making some good hires there and it's all exciting., we're happy for it. But that means that something has to give an unfortunately, dear listeners, that means you, you, dear listeners. We have we have neglected you, but we're, we're not doing it on purpose, I promise. It's just, yeah. You get the idea. What, we're not going anywhere. We, we, we have plans, big plans for the show. Actually. Melissa and I are trying to meet each week now to try to plan ahead and make sure we're prepared with something so that we can continue to record things and get back on a somewhat reasonable schedule again.

Melissa: 3:24

Yeah, I'm excited.

Chris: 3:26

I'm excited too. I'm excited. This is one of my favorite things we do, truly is, it's one of my favorite things that I get to do at Worthington is, is this show. And it's ridiculous that it's like the last thing I do. You know what I think it is? Do you have, I don't know. I don't know if you have this, Melissa, but I have this like perfectionism, you know what I mean? It's like if I can't just absolutely kill it, then I don't want to do it at all.

Melissa: 3:49

Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. I used to be like that with the editing too. And then I realized that I was not gonna be able to do anything else at all.

Chris: 3:59

Exactly. It's like if I un, unless I can be like fully prepared and do a great job on the show you know, it's like, oh gosh, I, I, I just can't even spend time on it cuz I know how much effort it's gonna take and, and I may as well just not do anything rather than do it wrong or, you know, and it, that's not good either. So, but instead of instead of trying to do things wrong, we just, we just invite guests on the show and make them do all the work.

Melissa: 4:21

Yeah, exactly.

Chris: 4:23

that's the secret to success. And speaking of guests, so we, we had we had somebody reach out to us recently. There's all kinds of interesting things going. In the United States right now is as regards electronics which we're gonna get into more in depth, but we have something called the CHIPS Act and, and that's gonna have a significant impact on how electronics get made in the United States. And recently we got an email from an organization called the pc, B a a. And they've, they've been publishing some really interesting articles and they've been, they've been doing some great work. I've listened to some podcasts they've been on, and they're, they're, well, you know what, rather than try to put it in my own words, I'll just, I'll put it in their words cuz I just went to their about page and completely just ripped off exactly what they said. So I'll just , I'll just read it word for word. So, from their about page, they say they're established in 2021 and the full name is the Printed Circuit Board Association of America. And they're the sole association of US domestic printed circuit board manufacturers and suppliers. and the P C B A was established in 2021 by PCB manufacturers and other industry stakeholders amid rising geopolitical challenges. And we'll get into that and what that means because we understand you know, not all of our listeners, actually, a really significant percentage of our listeners are not in the United States, so it'll be interesting to see what sort of impact that has on you. And then their goal, the P C B A A seeks to promote an environment in which US based printed circuit board manufacturers can thrive. our consortium believes in market fairness and a level playing field on which US P c b manufacturers can compete against competitors subsidized by foreign governments. And, you know, we're not, we're not trying to be shy about this thing. We understand that every government has they, they have to mind their own economies and, and secure themselves. And so of course they're gonna subsidize the things that are important to make sure that they can continue to have what they need. Right. That, and the United States is gonna be no different. So that's a brief introduction before we well, and that I should say, now we can introduce our guest, our star, our star of the show, Mr. David Shield. Welcome to the show.

David: 6:29

Great to be here. Thanks Chris. And thanks Melissa.

Chris: 6:32

And now, David if I understand correctly, you are the executive director at the pcb

David: 6:36

Yes. I'm fortunate to, to have that role and to lead our nearly 29 corporate and individual members.

Chris: 6:42

Very cool. Very cool. So, executive director, that means we got, we got the big kahuna, Melissa.

David: 6:47

Oh, well, don't let my board hear you say that, but Yes, sure.

Chris: 6:52

got the big . All right, so before, before we get more into the P C B A, it really does sound super, super interesting and we, we would love to learn more about it selfishly as manufacturers here in the United States, but also I think our listeners would love to hear what sort of an impact that may have on them if they're in Europe or they're in Africa or South America. I mean, we have people from all over the world doing business with us. So it'll be interesting to see if what sort of impact that may have on them. But how about yourself, David? What's your background where, you know, kind of, did you go to, did you go to college for this industry? You know, were you like majoring in underwater basket weaving and realize there was no money in it? Or

David: 7:26

Well, first it's intimidating to be talking with anybody in a, in a technical occupation, right? Because I am an old school, sort of liberal arts major, right? They put my degree in the Smithsonian when I finished and moved everyone over to STEM as they should. But no, I, you know, my background's really in public policy and advocacy. So I was fortunate to spend some time early in my career with some great companies, t R w, which no longer exists, companies like United Technologies and most recently Raytheon. And you know, with those firms I was doing a lot of storytelling, a lot of advocacy, a lot of public policy work around, you know, the kind of major electronics kind of major aerospace and defense programs that people are familiar

Chris: 8:03

What, what timeframe are we talking

David: 8:05

Well, basically you know, since around 2001 until basically about 2021.

Chris: 8:10

Okay. So almost 20 years you've been,

David: 8:12

Yeah. About about two decades in the aerospace and defense industry. Right. Which is a small and increasingly consolidated space as you know. I,

Chris: 8:20

Very

David: 8:20

I left, I left Raytheon or left, I left United Technologies to go work for Raytheon, and eight years later, Raytheon bought utc.

Chris: 8:26

I like to think

David: 8:27

the other way around, I should say UTC bought Raytheon.

Chris: 8:30

I like to think of Raytheon, sort of like, do you remember the old Terminator two movie where the, the, the the new Terminator, he was like a liquid. Sort of. Right. And what would happen is they would, they would get 'em, they'd finally destroy him, right? And he would splinter it at a thousand pieces and then he'd all slurp back into one. That's Raytheon. They just keep absorbing all the defense contractors.

David: 8:50

Well, I, yeah. Comparisons to Evil

Chris: 8:53

No, I didn't mean, I didn't mean that.

David: 8:54

it was a great place to work.

Chris: 8:56

didn't mean that

David: 8:56

to

Chris: 8:56

evil. I wasn't trying to imply

David: 8:58

As you know, in the northeast doing a lot of incredible manufacturing work. But, you know, as a non-engineer guy, a lot of my work was focused on sort of educating public policy makers about just how complicated it is to build a missile defense radar. Just how complicated it is to, make a submarine and silent underwater, all of the things that, the people at these companies are doing. You know, and I stand on the shoulders of really brilliant engineers and scientists who achieve things, and it's my job to explain it to the people we elect.

Chris: 9:24

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, I wasn't trying to imply the evil

David: 9:27

No, I'm just, you know, as, as a current shareholder and friend of a lot of current employees, I gotta be careful.

Chris: 9:32

No, but like, you know, it's just, it is funny how there's a lot of cons. I think lately, especially the past 10 years or so, I've seen a lot of consolidation in the defense industry. Yeah. And that's just been happening. But that I think that's, that's happening everywhere. You see, like Facebook buying everybody you see at and t like at and t there's a classic example of somebody getting completely blown up and now reforming , because that's exactly what at and t did decades ago. They got broken up, I think by the US government back in the sixties or something like that, or seventies maybe. And now they're, it's all just at and t again, unless you're Verizon, it's basically just at and t

David: 10:06

sure. And, and you know, from time to time, the government steps in, you've seen it lately with Rocket Motors as a specific subsidiary technology where the government has raised some antitrust concerns and said, Hey, we're not gonna allow certain mergers and acquisitions to occur if a sole source, you know, a sole supplier is in the mix. But for the most part, I think a lot of this consultation just, you know, creates these enormous organizations. But they're capable of achieving some really incredible

Chris: 10:27

really like,

David: 10:28

to talk about who, who can build the next generation stealth bomber, who can build the next generation laser communication network for satellites. I mean, these are really hard engineering challenges and whether it's a big company or a, or a small company, I mean, people are being asked to solve really, really incredible technical challenges. So,

Chris: 10:44

fun That would be work. Work on some really interesting

David: 10:47

One of the things that I, I said, and I, it's not a talking point, I really believed it when I was, when, you know, in the aerospace industry was the stuff that people are doing is stuff that you can just inherently sort of be proud of and tied to, right? I mean, there was a time where I was affiliated distantly with, the space shuttle program and going to a space spatial launch is hands down one of the coolest things I've ever done. And it's very hard not to feel just an, a deep sense of pride, right? As to what, you know, you think about the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people that are at work, putting those seven astronauts in that shuttle, putting that platform into orbit. I mean, it's just, for many people it's a culmination of their life's work, but it's what I like about. Is that it's it's technical achievement that you can see, that you can watch that seems to have a real impact on the world. And that's why I think it's, you know, I, I spent two decades in that industry cuz I was constantly just amazed by the things I would see walking into warehouses and production facilities and labs and going, , we really built this. It's incredible.

Chris: 11:45

I remember I visited UTC bought a company in Connecticut called at the time they were called Hamilton Standard. And they had, there, there was a group of people there that worked on the suit that the astronauts would wear. And, and I don't know if they did the whole suit or if they just, I know specifically they did the oxygen pack that they wore on the backs. I'm not sure how much more they did besides that, but to just go in there and be like, oh my goodness, this is the building where, where people made this in Desi. Like it was, it was surreal. It was an unbelievable experience to see that in person. Yeah. So I get it. I totally get it. Well that's cool. All right. So, so I appreciate you going off on a tangent. That won't be the last one, I promise. We, this is, this is an hour of tangents with Chris and Melissa is what this real, the real title of the show is An Hour of Tangents with Chris and Melissa, mostly just Chris, let's be

Melissa: 12:34

Yeah, mostly Chris.

Chris: 12:37

Melissa's like, all right, back to the topic. So, alright. So that this leads us to, then you said you've been doing this for a couple decades now, and now you got involved in the pc b a a. Can you tell us a little bit about I mean, I read it from your about page, obviously. Tell us a little bit more about the P C B A, why it was formed and how you landed there, why you felt it was important that this is something you wanted to work on.

David: 13:00

So a few years ago a number of. Very recognizable companies in the micro electronic space. Companies like ttm Sanmina, Calle McDermott Alpha you know, Isola intra right names that I think we're all pretty familiar with in this space. I think they realized that there were a number of ongoing concerns in Washington and specifically on Capitol Hill, right. There emerged in the course of funding the Defense Department in the course of sort of working on economic policy and national security policy an awareness. The government really wasn't dealing with the entire micro electronics stack, the entire ecosystem. And I'm sure we're gonna talk about the CHIPS Act and all the work that's been done really over the last two to three years to bring home a certain amount of semiconductor manufacturing. But the folks that support semiconductors and I mean support quite literally, right through advanced packaging, through boards, et cetera, they realized that, there wasn't enough recognition on Capitol Hill. There wasn't enough recognition in the Pentagon. There wasn't enough recognition at the White House. And so the PC B a A was formed and it emerged out of a, a specific concern related to the Pentagon and, and securing its supply chains, but has since expanded to really take on a number of different public policy issues and in the way that our friends in the semiconductor industry, Intel, T S M C, global foundries, have done a tremendous job of, I think educating the general public, educating the media, educating policy makers about, Hey, These little chips sort of make modern life possible. Our follow on message to that is chips don't float. It's simply not possible to build anything that's really a part of modern life that relies on my electronics without this three-part stack. Right? Semiconductors, advanced packaging and printed circuit boards, and they're ubiquitous, but they're not well known. And so I have the same challenge in my job that I think the semiconductor guys had over the last two years, which is Remind Americans and those we elect to represent us. PCVs are everywhere, and they've largely moved offshore in terms of manufacturing. The global supply chain, in our opinion, has become very unbalanced. And so,

Chris: 15:04

do you have a feel for, like, when you say unbalanced, what is that? You don't have to have hard and fast numbers, but is there like some idea of

David: 15:11

Fortunately I do. Because, it's nice to have some real numbers behind this. But you know, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Defense have looked at this and in 2000 the US made roughly 30% of PCBs used around the world. Over a 23 year period, that number slipped from 30% to 4%.

Melissa: 15:27

Hello? Hello, hello.

Chris: 15:29

Okay.

David: 15:30

real terms,

Chris: 15:31

you're talking, now when you, when you 4% of, does that mean assembled circuit boards? Are we talking

David: 15:36

that means boards produced in America. There's still some, obviously we still do some assembly in the United States, but, you know, in real terms, in the year 2000, we had about 2200 companies making PCBs, and today we have about a hundred and. So it's a really steep contraction in terms of the number of companies making boards. Yes. There's been some consolidation, right, which accounts for some of that

Chris: 15:57

there's gotta be some

David: 15:57

But largely it's, it's the move offshore with this technology. And we think that in light of what happened during the pandemic in lay of the supply chain challenges that we saw with micro electronics generally is a problem that needs to be addressed. It's not a view that we hold by ourselves. I think if you look at the academic community, there's any number of studies that show this.. If you look at policy makers in Washington, there's any number of people who, for any number of reasons, right? National security reasons, economic security reasons competitiveness reasons, say, well, boy, this is a really, really steep contraction. And again, I represent PCB manufacturers. I represent assemblers critical material suppliers, right? The folks who bring you copper mesh, laminate, woven glass, et cetera, right? All the raw materials that, that go into making a board. And as your listeners know, I mean, there's a real continuum of boards that are extremely simple, and I don't wanna call them low tech, but, fairly static pieces of technology, right, that go into applications like garage door openers or dishwashers. And then of course, as we were just talking about you know, F 35 s are full of printed circuit boards, right? Everything we launch into space is full of printed circuit boards. You know, most of our advanced electric vehicles that are rolling off the production line now full of printed circuit

Chris: 17:05

Lots of circuit boards

David: 17:06

it, it's. You know, I tell a story where we talk about, you know, you're not gonna get up and get through your day without relying on some PCBs. And, and you, you might think, oh, you know, Intel's inside, right? When you crack open your you know, brand name laptop. But the reality is that, you know, your alarm clock woke you up. There was a PCB at the heart of that. You turn on the lights. If they were LEDs,

Chris: 17:27

David, I'm sorry. If you still have an alarm clock, you are definitely living in the past

David: 17:31

I mean, I, I'm gonna hold up my phone and say, yeah, I've still, I've got an alarm clock, right? That's got a gigantic PCB inside it, my coffee maker, you know, again, every 15 minutes you're, you're leaning on this critical piece of technology. And that's why our industry felt it was pretty important to come together and say, Hey, we're leaning on it, but we're really, really over levered in terms of a dependence on foreign production.

Chris: 17:51

And largely I guess you know, let, let's see how it got to the point where, boy, 30%, I'll be honest, I was surprised it was as high as 30% in the United States. But United States, I think for listeners who, who live here, they may not realize this. I bet you people outside of the United States realize this United States actually makes a lot of stuff. Like a lot of stuff. It is a huge manufacturing industry in the United States. But I think the, the interesting thing and the specific thing about electronics is they're very small, they're very lightweight, and it's very easy to ship very, very high volumes and high value electronics all around the world. Versus if you're making railroad cars, You're probably gonna make those where you're gonna use 'em. You know what I mean? Like even I remember I used to, I used to work for a company that made reflow ovens and they were selling a ton of reflow ovens to Foxconn, right? Foxconn was just buying loads of these things it, for their, for their plants in China. And they were made in New Hampshire. And so going, Hey, look, one out of every 10 of these is getting sold in North America. The other nine are getting sold in Asia, and they move the manufacturing of the reflow oven to Asia because that's where they're selling them. Now why are they selling them there? It's because the lightweight, cheap electronics, or not cheap, excuse me lightweight, cheap to ship electronics is being made. In, in China at the time, and they were saying, okay, well it has this knock on effect of here's this US manufacturer re reflow ovens has to open a factory in China because they can't ship a giant 6,000 pound reflow oven competitively across the world to their customer. So it, it is interesting how it has this, you say Chips don't float, right? You need circuit boards to put those chips on. You need assemblers who can put those chips on those circuit boards? And, but at the same time, it has these downstream impacts. You know, the reflow of, and I wanna buy at the run I'm particularly interested in right now. It's not, it's made in, it's made in China. That's where it's being manufactured. And if I was to buy it, it would have to be shipped to Massachusetts . It's really fascinating, even though it's from a US man, like a US company.

Melissa: 20:06

Mm-hmm.

David: 20:07

And, and this act, look, this happened across all sectors of the economy. Micro electronics is not unique. Right. For a long time, I think driven by a lot of market forces and I would argue a lack of government policy really, you know, kind of a step back, laissez-faire attitude. When we other governments weren't doing that, right. The contrast is one of the things that I hit

Chris: 20:24

That's what I was gonna ask you

David: 20:25

Any number of countries decided we want to own this space or this manufacturing vertical. And as a result, they made land available, they made construction costs inexpensive. Labor is certainly a part of it as well. And there's a regulatory environment we can talk about, but a lot of factors went into play. We are very open about the fact that this is a condition. Occurred because everybody was involved in making business decisions. But it got to an extreme, and we saw this with semiconductors where there were real world impacts for consumers. I mean, certainly during the pandemic you have trucks sitting in, in lots and they, they can't be sold and they can't be driven in American can't get cars because we're waiting on what, right. Fairly common semiconductor technology. And I think that was, you know, shortages have a way of sort of sharpening the mind, right? And all of a sudden people said, well, wait a minute. Why, why is this the

Chris: 21:15

Why don't we

David: 21:16

you know, I thought, I thought globalization was gonna solve all my problems. And it's like, well, yeah, but this isn't, you know, a truly global and balanced ecosystem, right? This is dependency on one part of the world. And that led to a number of sort of unanticipated problems. And I think it focused public policy makers. I think it focused the media. All of a sudden, everybody goes, well, why can't I get my truck?

Chris: 21:35

Mm-hmm.. Mm-hmm.

David: 21:37

here's the answer. Right? And it's a complicated one. So, you know, that's when I think the government started to pay attention and decided that, we should be in the industrial policy business.

Chris: 21:45

So this leads me to the CHIPS Act Now, if again, For of course, David, I know everything about the CHIPS Act. You don't have to explain it to me.

David: 21:53

That's why I'm

Chris: 21:54

up to speed to it. And certainly I'm not asking for myself. I'm asking for a friend

David: 22:00

Of course.

Chris: 22:01

Can you, can you help us to understand what the CHIPS act, this was, this was something that happened in the United States, and it's related to policy, but what is, what does it actually look like? What does it mean? Like I understand Congress approved this thing I believe it was signed by the president in is it like 2020? 2021?

David: 22:17

it was actually last fall.

Chris: 22:19

well, it was that recent 2022.

David: 22:20

Yeah. It was a, it was a, most people don't realize that the CHIPS Act was really almost a three year journey from the

Chris: 22:25

I was gonna say, I've been hearing about it for a

David: 22:26

Yeah, it was signed in September. It was signed in September by President Biden, and now we are just starting to see the implementation. The Department of Commerce secretary Gina Ramos federal agency is the group that's sort of charged with implementing it. I think it was just two weeks ago, we saw what's, what we call the nofo, the notice of funding, and that was the first 75 page document that really spelled out if you want to apply for some of the 52 billion that was allocated in the CHIPS Act. And it, again, it's allocated into segments, right? There's some direct grants, there's money for research and development, there's money for workforce. This money comes with a lot of requirements, right? You've probably seen some of the more prominent mentions in the press about, you know, you, you must put up matching funds for this. This work has to be done in America, for example. You know, a a fairly common sense rule would be, you know, if we're gonna give you a hundred million or 10 billion, don't let us catch you building a factory in Mexico, Canada, or China. Right. Because this is for American manufacturing,

Chris: 23:21

money has to be used towards a plant in the United

David: 23:24

Correct. And you've already seen announcements by companies like Intel and T S M C that they are going to be building in places like New York. Columbus, Ohio has gotten a lot of attention. Arizona has gotten a lot of attention. You know, there's a, a certain mix of, of politics and public policy going on here in terms of site location and, and where these things are being constructed. But I think it's a, it's a win for American manufacturing. Certainly. It's a win in the sense that people are paying more attention to micro electronics. And I like the fact that now you have people at the cabinet level saying, we need to make more things in America. We need to make more high tech things in America. And there are real consequences. You know, if we do not, it's being recognized as part of a broader sort of geopolitical competition.

Chris: 24:05

So the CHIPS Act though, was mostly focused on, I, again, I, I was being silly before, I really know very little about the CHIPS Act. I should know more about it, obviously, but it was mostly focused on. The bear silicon, for lack of a better term. In, in other words, is there any sort of funding for putting that bear silicon into a plastic BGA package? or, or is it like how I'm, I'm curious how they even define how far this gets, you know what I mean?

David: 24:34

So that is, you know, the devil is in the details as they say. And so the CHIPS Act is designed to, I think, reshore or bring back semiconductor manufacturing. But there is an understanding I at the highest level that that's not the end of the story. And so this first notice of funding does say that, you know, we want to build technology nodes around you know, wafer fabrication facilities. And there is not a reference to print circuit boards. This is something we're watching very

Chris: 25:01

At all.

David: 25:01

There none. There is no reference to PCBs in the CHIPS act.

Chris: 25:04

That's insane.

David: 25:05

well, you know, I would say, I would say now it's up to Congress to sort of finish the job. That's what the president said at the state union. Let's finish the job. And we couldn't agree more.

Chris: 25:13

I just can't, it's like, it's like we're gonna pass all these bills to build roads and then somebody's like, what are we, what are we gonna put on the roads? Maybe we should invent something with four wheels that rides on the road. Like how do you not, I don't know. Sorry, this just

David: 25:27

you're, you're, you're, you're, you are addressing something that I think many Americans probably don't realize, which is you know, the, the light and the heat of, of public policy, you know, goes where the noise goes, where the sort of, the, the churn is. And I think you had a number of critical factors happen during the pandemic. You know, first you had some overarching geopolitical concerns about, you know, which countries are making which technologies. Right. And semiconductors fell into that. You have shortages and then you have a very well organized, well fund. Aggressive, complete, robust, let me use all the adjectives here effort by the semiconductor industry, and these are our friends. We have nothing but respect for the folk, the work that these folks have done, but let's not kid ourselves. Right. They really had a full court press going for almost 24 months, saying to the government, Hey, look, if you want us to build this stuff here in America, there, there have to be incentives to do it because the market has pushed us

Chris: 26:16

That's right. Yeah. Because it, the truth is it is just cheaper to make it in other countries, in many other countries. Yeah. It's just how it's worked out. Economics or economics. Sometimes they really don't care about people's feelings.

David: 26:28

But as, as the president said, you know, we invented this technology in America and we've, we, there are any number of bad outcomes to imbalance, there are any number of bad outcomes to dependency. Right. I don't think you need to be talking about a specific flag here in order to say, well, wait a minute, if all of this has to get on a. Travel across the Pacific or the Atlantic. If all of this has to be made in a facility that might be shut down tomorrow that I might not have total control over, that I might not be able to depend on how soon before it hits the consumer, how soon before it hits industry generally. Right? So, you know, I talk about 96% of boards being made overseas, 4% of boards being made here. The semiconductor folks hit the panic button at 13% because there was a point in America where we made 20% of semiconductors. It was as high as 25 depending on how you do the math. But when they shrunk to 13%, you can believe that that was the drum that they were beating. Hey, our share market made here in America has shrunk to an unacceptable level and there's a lot of downstream impacts and we need to, we need to address that. I mean, we are at, you know, obviously, you know, 30% of that number we're, you know, we're down at 4%. So we have the same argument. And these are our customers and these are our suppliers and these are our sort of competitive mates and business partners. Right?

Chris: 27:40

Mates, that's a

David: 27:41

I, well, it's the, it's the reality, right? I mean,

Chris: 27:43

and it's

David: 27:44

in the, everybody in this, in, in incredible ecosystem understands that you know, it's a long journey from a grain of sand to, you know, an Echo dot sitting on your desk and Alexa talking to you, right? There's a long journey between those two you know, elements. And a lot of different companies and a lot of different players have to be involved. So, we wanna make sure that our part of the ecosystem, our part of the stack is addressed, right? I don't think it makes a lot of sense to produce the highest tech chips that you can make anywhere in the world here in the United States and ship them necessarily overseas for advanced packaging and for meeting up with boards at least not 100% of the time

Chris: 28:19

right. So, I forgive my ignorance, but I, I'm coming back to this question I asked earlier because I really don't know. I really don't know when, when they make the bare. Okay. So silicon, or excuse me. Oh, boy. All right. Intel. Their, their core I five silicon. Right. They, I know when I buy an intel chip, it comes in a fancy little plastic box, you know, a cardboard box, and it has a plastic carrier inside of it. And then there's this kind of metallic BGA package. It doesn't actually have the balls on it, but it just has these sort of round lands, and then you put that in a socket. If, if they're making the silicon, are they in the same facility putting that silicon in? That metallic thing? That metallic package that I'm, for lack of a better term, I'm calling it bga, or are they literally like sealing up the wafers and then shipping them somewhere to be put into the bj? Is that happening? I guess ignorantly, I've always assumed it's all being done in the same process, like, through the assembly line.

David: 29:19

Yeah. And I wanna be careful not to, you know, again, get into the realm of speculation about what individual, you know, semiconductor manufacturers are doing. We know. No, no, no. Yeah. No. I think you know, we know that, for example, 99% of advanced packaging is done.

Chris: 29:33

Wow.

David: 29:33

Right, and, and people, people smarter than me. True. You know, electrical engineers, two computer scientists could sort of walk you through this, this package. But what I would say is that you know, we understand, you know, chips don't go directly on bear boards. There's a packaging layer in between. If you think that maybe the simplest way to think of this is a, is as a three layer stack., right? Chips, advanced packaging and PCBs, printed circuit boards. Right now we have only addressed one third of that sandwich,

Chris: 29:59

right.

David: 29:59

right? We've got the top piece of bread. We don't have the meat in the middle or the bottom piece either, right? And so from an industrial policy perspective, it's a little shortsighted to say, we've solved the problem with the CHIPS act. We're gonna move semiconductor manufacturing back to the United States. Okay? To your point, where are those chips gonna go? Well, they're gonna go overseas for advanced packaging. Okay. Where is that? Where is that? You know, pairing gonna go, well, it's probably gonna go to a foreign board manufacturer. And then it is similar. So, you know, it's about rebalancing. It's about saying, okay, maybe we're not gonna get back to 30% of market share, but 4%, 2200 companies to 150 companies. we're very close to, and this is something I think people don't understand, Chris and your audience will get it. When you move the factory, you don't just move the factory, you move the intellectual property, and you move the innovation. Where is the innovation happening? Where's the next generation of packaging? Where's the next generation of boards gonna get invented? It's gonna be co-located with production. So when we move production overseas, we move innovation, we move basically the invention of what's coming next. And our guys would tell you right now that we're, we've moved the, the most high tech right, the, the, the smallest nanometer boards have been moved, you know, back to America through the CHIPS Act, or at least the promises they will move. These are three to five year projects to build these factories and have them start producing as we know.

Chris: 31:20

manufacturing takes a long time

David: 31:21

a long time, right? It's, it's, it's, it's really bleeding edge technology. So our guys would say, look, really, really advanced chips are gonna be really, really advanced boards , and we can invent that here in America. We can produce it here in America, or we can be dependent on foreign sourcing for that innovation. So there's a real argument not just to own a percentage of market share for economic health and national security reasons. There's a really good argument that a certain amount of innovation is gonna be lost. We're gonna stop inventing stuff if we stop making stuff here.

Chris: 31:51

Yep. And, and I'll give you, I'll give you a very concrete example of something that I have experienced through what you're talking about here in, in in the stencil printing process. We're gonna get super specific here, but it, I, it does illustrate the point well, in my opinion and the stencil printing process. You need to have really good support underneath that board in order to properly get the solder paste onto the board the, the way you need it. You need really nice, strong support underneath that. Well, for a long time, the way that this was done is you'd either machine, like CNC machine tool that was the exact same negative shape. of your board so that it nested in there and then gave it really good support. But a lot of times, think about it, CNC machines very expensive. It's gonna take a lot of time to get that done. So then a lot of manufacturers would have these magnetic pins and so you'd, you, you'd have a base of steel and then you'd have these magnets that, you know, these pins are a couple inches tall and you'd set these magnets down and they push up on the bottom of the board to hold that board nice and flat when it was getting stencil printed. Well, the trouble with these pins is you've got stuff all over the bottom of the board and you can accidentally crush a a component on the bottom of the board with these stiff metal pins. So, not far, somewhere here in New England, I'm not sure exactly where this guy was working. He was doing this and he was so frustrated by it, how long it took him to do these magnetic pins. He's like, you know what, I betcha I can come up with a better ways. Pretty smart engineer. and he came up with this concept of sort of these spring loaded pins that would come up all at once and there's super high density. And these springs would push up on the bottom of the board, but with very little force. And because it was so, such high density, it was sort of like you've ever seen the, the thing like where you see the people sleeping on a bed of nails, it's like, how? Well, how do they sleep on a bed of nails? They don't hurt themselves. Well, you have enough d. that it's not gonna hurt you. Same concepts. He basically built this bed of nails to support the bottom of the circuit board. And then and then he has the using pneumatics. He locks these pins together. So now they're very, very stiff. Once they've conformed to the bottom of the circuit board, then he locks 'em together and they become very, very stiff. Well, he's built himself a nice company with, with employees and he's shipping thousands of these things all over the world. And, and why, why was it invented and why is it a US company? It's because he worked for a US manufacturer. You have these sort of, this, this is the innovation you're talking about Now, somebody would've invented that. There's brilliant engineers in China. There's brilliant engineers in Indonesia and Vietnam and all over the world. They could have invented that there as., but selfishly, you know, Americans want to be able to invent these things themselves, , right? And so this is, this is why, you know, the, these sorts of things become popular because it's like, hey, you know, we wanna keep this innovation for ourselves and continue to grow the US economy. So, I get it. I totally get it. A hundred percent.

David: 34:40

And I think if you, if you, you know, if you were to go to Phoenix or you were to go to Columbus or some of these, you know, major cities right now, and you go to the universities and see that, all of a sudden they are sort of reigniting, you know, certain, you know, curriculums and majors because right down the road there's going to be opportunities for thousands of people to do the kind of work that you're talking about. Right? So there are just all of these great collateral effects that happen when you say, we're gonna build a factory and we're gonna make things here., right? It becomes a real career journey for, a lot of people. And there are a lot of industries that benefit on the side. And we see that, right? I mean, if you, when I walk through one of our facilities, it's sort of this incredible mix of, I don't wanna call it low tech, but legacy and modern manufacturing, right? We use a lot of chemicals to produce PCBs, and so you have what feels like a very industrial process you know, to action, to plate and to do things of this nature. And then on the other side, you have machines, drilling, you know, incredibly tiny holes, times thousands of, applications, so that these boards can actually be, made it up and, and function. And, simple boards are, a few layers and really complex boards or maybe dozens or, or hundreds of layers. But it's really, it's neat to walk through these facilities

Chris: 35:43

It's so neat. It's so neat. I'm sorry if you've never been on a tour of a PCB fab or an assembly listeners. You have got to, you've gotta make a pilgrimage. You've gotta find one nearby. It is so cool to see how these things are made. I'd prefer if you came to South Deerfield and saw ours, but, you know, I digress. All right, so, you know what I'm, I'm, I'm genuinely curious about though, and I mean this as. I, you know, we often, we often hear when I hear 58 billion or whatever is going towards the CHIP act. Like what does that mean for a little business like Worthington Assembly or, or let's say, let's say the P C B A A is totally successful. They get a bill into congress. Congress passes it, president signs it, and, and, and frees up 20 billion or whatever, you know, you guys are working on what, what does that mean for, for a small business like Worthington Assembly, what, what sort of impact does that have on, on Chris Denny, the owners of Worthington? The owners of CircuitHub? Like what, what does that mean? Do, do we just like pick up the phone and call our congressman and be like, yeah, can we have a billion of that? Can we have some of that please, ? Like, like, and what do we do with it? You know what I mean?

David: 36:51

That's a great question. We have really three big legislative pushes, all of which I think affect American PCB manufacturers. Right. And I can sort of walk through 'em. The first is you know, there's not just money out there and incentives, which I'll get to, but there's also sort of regulatory and you know, purchasing guidance that I think creates a market or at least affirms up a market. So let's start with defense applications, right? In certain defense and aerospace applications, the government has already said we must buy

Chris: 37:16

Yeah. Clearly, obviously. And that's been that way a long time. Yeah.

David: 37:19

And so we, we pursue language in the National Defense Authorization Act that directs the Department of Defense, for example, to secure its micro electronic supply chains and make sure that it's sourcing here in America, we work with the White House, we're working with the White House to invoke the Defense Production Act, a bill that basically allows you to drop a lot of government red tape when you wanna buy things. We did it during the pandemic so that the government could buy ventilators much faster. It's an old law, goes back to the 1940s. Well, the dpa, title III Defense Production Act would allow the Pentagon to buy American micro electronics all through the chain much more quickly. And so we've got bipartisan support. We've got Congresswoman Anna U from California who's a Democrat. We've got Congressman Blake Moore from Utah, who's a Republican who have jointly been sort of lobbying the Pentagon to say, look, you should use the DPA for micro electronics. You should absolutely drop a lot of this red tape and a lot of the rules that are in place and let the government. By PCBs, advanced packaging semiconductors faster without a lot of the normal headaches that we have. Okay, great rule. That's sort of our second big push. And the third one is a standalone bill, and I don't wanna call it our version of the chip sack cuz there are some important differences, but it is our bill to direct government policy to buttress to shore up American printed circuit board manufacturing. And there's really two components of our bill in the last Congress, it was called HR 76 77, the supporting American Printed Circuit Boards Act. It's gonna be reintroduced this year, probably any day now. It's gonna have a new name and a new number. But the bottom line is that it really has two major components to incentivize you as production. The first is a pot of money, right? We anticipate would be administered by the Department of Commerce, like CHIPS funding that would allow you to build a facility, hire and train workers, do research and development. And that's important,

Chris: 39:02

And we, and a company would apply for that money. Like they, there would

David: 39:05

The, the, we are, so we are really in the learning as you go stage right now with American Micro Electronics Policy. And I say that because. The Department of Commerce is starting to administer this 52 billion, which is broken up into various segments, but they're gonna issue at least two more, again, what we call'em, no fus notice of fundings. And, you know, these are the rules of the road. It's a 75 page document, right. That you've gotta go through and, you know, these are the criteria you have to meet. Maybe these are the matching funds, this is the progress you have to demonstrate the government is looking out for the taxpayer. And, and we understand that, right? But it's not as though Intel goes to an atm, pulls out 10 billion and goes to put it to work in, in Ohio or Arizona. Right? That's, it's, it's more complicated than that, as you might imagine. We believe that. The money that we're gonna seek for American PCB manufacturers will be administered the same way. So there's the pot of money. That's the first part. I actually think the game changing part is the second part of our bill, and that is a tax credit, a 25% tax credit on the purchase of American boards. Because what we need to do, and the reason that we have this imbalance now, is that the cost differences are just very, very extreme. And a 25% tax credit on the purchase of American boards would mean that, you know, if you're buying a hundred million worth of boards, you get a 25 million tax credit if those boards are made in America, and it creates a demand signal. We think that that as important as direct funding of manufacturers is a demand signal because right now, The aerospace and defense business simply isn't enough to justify expansion, right? It doesn't create the investment thesis for our members to say, build a new factory. Hire dozens or hundreds of new workers, make the investment. But on the commercial side, if you were to bring prices more into parody, then you would see, I think, an emerging demand signal because people would wanna say, Hey, I'm trying to diversify my sourcing. I'm trying to shorten my supply chain for certain things. If you're telling me that this comes now from Utah, California, Texas, Arizona, instead of having to cross an ocean or a border of any kind, maybe it makes sense for me to rebalance that portfolio and and sort of shorten that supply chain. Yeah. It's only gonna happen if the cost is competitive.

Chris: 41:12

Yep. Yep. And now is this the kind of thing where it's when the government buys those things or is it,

David: 41:19

It'd be anybody.

Chris: 41:20

it'd be anybody

David: 41:21

It'd be anybody. So I would say to anybody making boards right now, you know, yes, there's direct funding, right? But more important to you is to be able to say to your customers, right, whether they're the biggest companies in the world or you know, small regional players, you can take a tax credit for buying my boards cuz they're made here in

Chris: 41:37

So, so then that leads me to my next question cuz we, you know, we've got customers in France and we've got customers in, you know, all Africa, all over the world, you know, Australia. If they're buying, if, if, let's, let's the theoretical world, this all works out, yada, yada, yada. There's 25% credit. Do the, do, does my customer in Australia get that credit too? Or is it just a US company that would get that

David: 41:57

Well, again, you have to be filing your taxes with the federal government,

Chris: 42:01

Oh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nevermind

David: 42:03

no, I don't, you know, you know, maybe it moves, maybe it moves your market, right? And, and maybe it moves your pricing so that you can say something different to a, to a, you know, a foreign customer. But no, I, the idea would be that you know, if you want to tell the government, Hey, good news, we buy a lot of print circuit ports this year. We bought 'em in America. The government's gonna give you a break on your

Chris: 42:20

Gotcha. Okay. So that's how it works. So it's, it's when you file, when, when oh man, this is poor.

David: 42:25

Yeah. I don't wanna get too d I'm not a, I'm not a tax guy, so I don't wanna get, I don't wanna get too

Chris: 42:29

No, and I'm not going to, but all I'm gonna, all I'm gonna say is poor, poor, outside of the United States, listeners are gonna be so confused because the taxes in the United States are so much more complicated than yours. I promise you. Like everybody I've ever talked to who comes to the United States and they've lived elsewhere, they're like, I don't understand. Why is it this way? It's so complicated, . Anyway but when, when you, there's the filing process at the end of the year, and what you do is you basically say I'm oversimplifying this, but this is how much money I've made. and, and the government tells you, well, this is how much, this is how much money you owe us in taxes. And, and you pay that bill. Or a lot of people will pay it. A lot of businesses will pay it every quarter. And a lot of individual like myself I don't I don't, you know, a lot of individuals who are employed, they will, they'll pay it every single paycheck. They'll, they'll give the government a little bit of their income, every single paycheck. I believe what David is describing here is that a business which oftentimes files quarterly or perhaps yearly, if they're a little bit smaller they will say this is how much money we've made, but this is how much we've spent on circuit boards. And so we get to pay less in taxes because we, we, we sourced our circuit boards from the United States. So there is a financial incentive that, that's super cool to me. I love the idea of that.

David: 43:45

It, it's on the demand side. Right. And I think if you, if you talk about people who, you know, there's, there's obviously differences of opinion politically as to, you know, what kind of direct funding we should give to certain industries. And, you know, there's going to be a debate in Congress as to what the appropriate amount is. There was a debate over where the 52 billion was the right number for the, the semiconductor folks. I think it's harder to oppose a demand side incentive, which is what a tax credit is, which is essentially, you know, I don't by America bill maybe is the simplest way to to, to put it. We think that would diversify supply chains. Now, I should note that we are not the only country engaged in this kind of economic policy. You're already seeing, you're already seeing in Asia, you're already seeing in Europe government stepping in to say, Hey, wait a minute. Hold on. We'll incentivize, you know, production in Barcelona. We'll incentivize production in Tokyo. You know, absolutely other governments are playing. It's a competitive global

Chris: 44:36

You kind of, I mean, you'd be, it'd be, it's better for the whole world to have some manufacturing spread out this way. It's like, imagine if all of your insurance came from like one company and then that company went insolvent and nobody had insurance. That'd be ridiculous. Right., you need to have a spread out a little bit here.

David: 44:54

Yeah. De dependency on any one region dependency on any one country you know, a supply chain that has a single point of failure, right? Is a risky supply chain. And so I think you are seeing more and more purchasers, more and more operations, you know, leaders in the United States saying, you know, wait a minute. If we diversify our sourcing, if we, if we, you know, build a more, I don't wanna say more complex, but more secure and resilient supply chain, we're less likely when a crisis strikes, right, manmade or natural disaster, whatever it might be, to all of a sudden have empty store shelves to all of a sudden tell our customers, well, you thought it was gonna be a month, but now it's gonna be a

Chris: 45:28

Yep. Yep. Very

David: 45:30

all kinds of economic wreckage, right? That results when you en encounter that situation.

Chris: 45:34

Yeah. Very interesting. So, alright, so I guess my, this leads to my next question. This is something you started in 2021. I don't know about if, if you started it, but the P B A started in, in 2021. What, what does this look like for, for those of us who are not government savvy? I, I don't really understand how these things work. Is, is this a you're, you're meeting with Congress people, you're, you're, you're explaining your, your situation and trying to convince them here this is, this is something I've written up. And I would like to see the Congress talk about this and potentially pass it kind of a thing. How, what does that look like?

David: 46:09

Sure. So Washington's a very crowded ecosystem full of people sort of competing for the attention of, of policymakers.

Chris: 46:16

Talk, talk about a single source of

David: 46:17

It. Well, look, you know, the, the federal government is the largest. I, I'm, I'm, I feel pretty confident in saying this, right? It's probably the largest consumer purchaser of a lot of these technologies, right? So it's, you know, we're very directly, you could just say, well, the government's buying this stuff, so of course they have an interest in where it comes from. But, you know, they are juggling thousands of competing demands. And if you wanna say, I'm gonna go in and meet with a member of Congress about printed circuit boards, you're, you're probably sandwiched in between a meeting on, you know, corn growers on the one hand and steal producers on the other hand. And, you know, everybody has a right to sort of, you know, petition petition for a redress of grievances, right? That's the language that's right there in the First Amendment that allows us to go up to Capitol Hill. It's a crowded ecosystem. It's a, it's a complicated and competitive environment. What I would say that we do is, around our three pillars, educate, advocate, and help legislate for our industry. And education is the one that underpins everything. I think if you've been in the micro electronic space for a long time, and I think, you know, a lot of our members have been doing this for 20 or 30 years, they remember, you know, sort of the solid days of 30% made in America. They will tell you that they're very familiar with the technology. You two are obviously very familiar with micro electronics in the ecosystem. Policymakers are not a lawmaker that was elected in 2022, or a lawmaker that was elected in 1982. I can't be sure that when I, you know, hold up this green board that they understand that it's a mix of resin

Chris: 47:38

Yeah.. Fiberglass. Yeah.

David: 47:40

I mean, you know, people still say to me, this is dumb green plastic. And it's like, not at all. Not at all.

Chris: 47:46

Not even close.

David: 47:47

right. The, so the educate part of that mission is really what underpins it. So I'm, you know, how does the rubber meet the road?

Chris: 47:53

And when you say, when you say educate, obviously you're, you're, you're using platforms like our podcast and other articles you've written, but, but who is, who is your, your audience? Is it, is it to try to build momentum so that you get more people to petition or like, what, what, what's going on there?

David: 48:09

You know, so the answer is, you know, we have a, there's a whole ecosystem that sort of shapes, you know, what results in public policy. So on the one hand, yeah, you know, let's start with lawmakers and their staff. They want to be smart. They see a bill in front of them, they see a tax credit, they see direct funding, and they wanna understand, okay, I need to form a position on this. Who's gonna come in and, and, you know, get me smarter on this issue. So yes, we, we do direct lobbying. We go to the Congress and we say, let me tell you about PCBs. Lemme tell you about the, you know, 27 plus states where these are made, you know, the 15,000 plus individuals who are making this stuff, the economic impact it has, you know, we show them the chart showing the slide, the contraction over, over, you know, 25 years, that usually gets their eyes pretty, pretty wide., I like to go into meetings and hold up my cell phone and say, everybody has one of these, right? Well, PCBs make it possible. Did you drive here in a car today? Did you fly here on a plane? This. PCBs, right? So we do that directly. But then of course there's also the media, there's everybody at the Wall Street Journal, at the New York Times, at Politico, at iConnect oh oh seven, who's writing about right, and a pining on micro electronics. We wanna make sure they understand our issues. There's a whole academic community, universities think tanks, the folks doing large reports on where is American manufacturing going in the next two or three decades. The short answer is that there's probably a larger audience that I could talk to in a lifetime about PCBs and they have a lot of competing demands on their time. But I think we've got a great team and we do a good job. I am of course, also talking to industry because the larger our megaphone

Chris: 49:37

is us. Yeah,

David: 49:38

exactly the greater impact we're gonna have. And, and that's why your show is so important. It's why anybody who talks to my members and my potential members is such an important voice because I think there's a lot of folks out there. and they're innovating. They're manufacturing high technology. They're employing hundreds, thousands of Americans doing this kind of work. They might not even know that a dedicated trade association is in Washington every day looking out for them, lobbying on their behalf, looking for money and tax credits for their industry. And I, I do, I talked to folks who founded PCV Shops 20, 30 years ago, and the first time they talked to me is the first time they've heard of the P C B A or the work that we're doing.

Chris: 50:15

Mm.

David: 50:16

that's why it's so important to get the word out.

Chris: 50:17

Well, so in getting the word out, I actually saw a friend of the show looks like Judy Warner is a, is a member,

David: 50:23

Yes. Judy is, is one of our individual members. We love Judy.

Chris: 50:27

She's, she's shop man. Amazing, amazing person. Another friend of the show Callat Callat is who we worked with to make the open source ventilator. We had I don't think we actually had a chance to interview them on the show, but we interviewed the engineer who worked on the open source ventilator with us. There's a bunch of members. So if somebody was interested in, in supporting this effort what's the best way to sort of get started and reach out to you guys? Like,

David: 50:52

So, you know, you can always reach us on our website, pcba a.org g.

Chris: 50:57

do you spell that? No,

David: 50:57

you can you know, just, just like a pc, b a a. We're, we're the only ones right now. I would encourage you to follow us on social media. We've got a growing, you know, presence there, and you'd see most of our content on our LinkedIn and Twitter feeds. You know, people can obviously email me directly and hopefully we can put a link to that in the, in the show notes for today. But it's

Chris: 51:14

Yeah, of course

David: 51:15

David shield@pcba.org. I, I do spend just a ton of time talking to folks in the industry first, most importantly, to hear their concerns, right? How did we get to 4%? What's the thing that you need the most? You know, the talent challenge comes up over and over. You know, the, the fact that we are in so many different critical applications. What, what the government defines as critical infrastructure and people don't even realize how important boards are. What are we gonna do to meet the challenge of chips actually made here in America? How are we gonna handle a packaging issue? You know, when I talk to these folks, They say, okay, well what can we do? And the short answer is, join the association. Let's get to work in Washington with an even louder voice. If I'm at 29 companies and individuals today, I'd love for that to be 59. I'd love for that to be 109. I'd like to capture most of our industry and that louder voice, I think will get us more attention. Your political footprint drives a lot of this, right? Your economic impact drives a lot of this. If you're bigger, if you're more diverse, if you're deeper and wider, I think you're gonna get more attention on your issues. And that's what we have to do. And, and we're fairly young. We're fairly new. Two years is not the long, a long time in the life of associations. But we've

Chris: 52:18

No, it's quite young actually.

David: 52:20

well, yeah, I mean, we've, we've grown from five founding members to 29 today. And you know, my hope is that if we talk again in a few months, it'll be an even bigger number. But I appreciate that budgets are tight, resources are scarce. Folks really won't understand what their investment does and. That's what I spend my days doing is, is talking to folks who build things in America that we depend on about how we can help 'em in Washington.

Chris: 52:43

Brilliant. Brilliant. Well, we appreciate you coming on the show. We're, we're, we appreciate this discussion. I, I found it like when you guys reached out to me, I, my first thought was, boy, we have so many listeners from outside the United States, how are we gonna make sure this is an interesting conversation. I think regardless of where you live in the world, you'll find this interesting because if you are ordering circuit boards or you're designing circuit boards and you're, or you know, you live in France, I guarantee there is a pc, b a A of France. You know, there's gotta be something petitioning their government for, for help and incentives, for ordering boards. And, you know, it's no different. And so hopefully we the listeners found this conversation interesting. What we do like to do, as I've mentioned, . And I, and I, and I warned, thankfully this time I actually warned

Melissa: 53:24

you did, warn. Warn

Chris: 53:25

did. I warned them. I warned , we like to do a, we like to end our show on a, on a silly thing we call a pet peeve of the week. And at this point, it's pet peeve of the every

Melissa: 53:34

Of the

Chris: 53:35

months. Yeah.. But we, we would love to hear yours if you, if you've got one prepared for us. David, do you have, do you have a pet peeve? You gotta get off your chest here,

David: 53:42

Oh man. You know, I, nobody who knows me would say that I don't spend a lot of time complaining about things. It's probably not one of my, one of my preferable qualities. But, you know, one thing that I, I'm reminded of, or one things I'm struck by as we all sort of come out of this, this post pandemic period that we were entered in, is that you know, some of us may have forgotten some of the basics of the, of the workplace and, and some of the things that you know, are just sort of, fundamentals of life and no,

Chris: 54:07

I put deodorant on this morning, David. I put deodorant

David: 54:09

not headed in a bad place. You know, I I wore a suit and tie every day for 20 years, and that's certainly not the standard for everybody. But I've seen enough pajamas now over Zoom. You know, I've probably, I've probably, you

Chris: 54:20

I'm wearing jeans. I got jeans on. I promise.

David: 54:23

As am I, as am I. But I would, I would just say that you know, I think probably we could all use a short refresher course in, in what is work and what is not work. And again, I'm, I'm, as I'm, as I'm working on my, on my couch with my laptop as often as anybody, but I, you know, probably had on shoes and socks when I went to the office for 25 years. And you know, we can all take a crack at that one more time. But maybe, maybe it's not a pet peeve as much as it is. I wanna give people enough grace here. But we're, you know, three years out from March of, of 2020 you know, it's, it's probably trying the whole idea of working from home. It's probably blurred some

Chris: 55:04

Yes,

David: 55:04

It's probably blurred some lines.

Chris: 55:06

It's good

David: 55:07

you know, probably a good idea to ask yourself, am I at work or am I at home?

Chris: 55:12

Yeah. Yeah, it's good. I like that. It reminds me of I may have told this story on the show before, I'm not sure, but my wife used to work at a bank and they had a like a job fair kind of a thing. I'm, I'm not sure what to call it exactly. It was at a local branch, so it wasn't at like a big corporate headquarters, just a local branch looking for more tellers and people to work behind the desk and stuff. And but it was also an active bank, right? So you had customers coming in, but you also had people coming in to Petition for, for work or whatever you wanna say. And so these, these two customers walked in and they're wearing basically pajamas, right? And my wife goes, oh, you know, look you know, I bet you those two are here for the, for the saying to her coworker, I bet you they're here for the, for the open house. Or, gosh, I forgot the term for it. Job fair. And and then they walked up to my wife and they're like, yeah, we're here for the job fair. And my wife gasped and literally started crying cuz she was so embarrassed. Like, you can't wear pajamas to a job interview. I'm sorry. Like , it's not gonna go over well. They did not get hired for the record. They no. They, they were not future coworkers of my

David: 56:19

there is a lot of great work being done in this economy by people of their pajamas. I just ask that you keep it off your telepresence

Chris: 56:26

right. That's

David: 56:27

And you know, I, I will choose to imagine what your home life is like. You don't need to show

Chris: 56:31

Yeah, that's right. That's good. No, that's good.. Wait. It was funny when I was on a I was actually on a not a podcast, a like a conference, like a virtual conference with Judy, with Judy Warner. And they bought us a green screen to put, cuz I think they were worried about what everybody's home home was gonna look like. So we had a green screen put behind us. I haven't used it since. I should, I should have like spaceships and stuff flying around behind me. That'd be pretty sweet.

David: 56:56

Circuit boards.

Chris: 56:57

yeah. Circuit boards. There we

David: 56:58

Circuit boards,

Chris: 56:59

absolutely. I like the idea. David, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for talking about this. What's the best way, I think you mentioned it already, but if you don't mind repeating yourself, what's the best way to reach out to you and the pc? B a a.

David: 57:11

Sure. Absolutely. I would say follow us on social, we're on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. P C B A A, that Printed Circuit Board Association of America. There's just one of us. I'm happy to correspond directly with any of your listeners who have got questions about what we're doing. It's part of that educate, advocate, and legislative mission. And thank you so much what you guys are doing. You know, having an ongoing dialogue about micro electronics concerns and you know, what the state of technology is in the industry, and reaching such a large audience. I'm really lucky that you agreed to talk to me here today, and hopefully when I've got some good news on the legislative front, when we're a little further down the tracks,

Chris: 57:41

That'd be great.

Melissa: 57:42

yeah.

David: 57:42

again and say, Hey, you know, we're, we're here to tell you about the successes that we've achieved for your listeners.

Chris: 57:47

all means, if you have some new information, I think it would be, it would be really interesting to continue to have this conversation and continue to get the word about what's going on out there. So, great. As always, we invite our listeners to reach out to us as well. We'd like to let you know, you can contact us at contact@pickplacepodcast.com. Yes, I love alliteration. Hence pick Place podcast, and . And you can tweet at us as always. Melissa and her crew are at CircuitHub. and myself and our team were at W Assembly because Worthington assembly is too long to type out even for email addresses. So, W Assembly, it is . But as, as we've, we've, we've liked to say lately, at the end of each show, if you know of somebody who you think might be interested in this show, please tell us, tell them about it. It's really kind of the best way to continue to spread this audience and to keep incentivizing us to continue to do the show. If we didn't have listeners, I'm not sure we would continue. As we know, I'd like to get myself tied up in a million different projects, but by all means, please, , tell your friends about it, leave us a review, all that kind of good stuff. And please keep sending in show suggestions. Melissa and I have been talking about some of them and we're putting together some ideas and so we will be addressing them in future episodes once I can get my act together.

Melissa: 59:00

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. We really, really appreciate everyone that continues to listen despite our very long breaks. But we do hope that you will be hearing from us and not the two distant feature this time. Yeah. Like we mentioned, we are playing a recording some stuff. Very, very soon. So yeah. Thanks for listening to the Pick Place podcast. If you like what you heard, consider following us in your favorite podcast app, and please leave us a review on Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast from.

Chris: 59:29

Thanks David and thanks everybody.

David: 59:31

Thank you both.