Kickstart: Upskilling in plastics

Finding, training and keeping staff is frequently at the top of challenges facing manufacturing companies.

According to St. Louis public radio, injection molding firm Permian Plastics LLC is taking advantage of a Missouri state government effort to beef up apprentice programs. The small company is part of what's called "upskilling" — taking current employees and giving them the chance to be in a formal apprenticeship program.

The employee gets a Department of Labor certificate they can take anywhere, but Permian President Ben Abbott wants them to stay on, of course.

According to the article, the state has been working for several years on improving its apprenticeships and in November created an Office of Apprenticeship and Work-based Learning.

It's well documented that animals eat plastic. We've all seen pictures of whales washing up on shore with debris in their stomach, and dead birds with plastic in their guts.

National Geographic is taking a deeper dive into the topic, trying to figure out the WHY behind animals eating plastic.

Turns out there's a lot of unanswered questions.

It's thought plastic can be mistaken for food, but it's not clear why some animals would make that mistake but others won't. For whales, some species seem to have natural filters that others lack. Or to some marine life, plastics may smell like anchovies. Hmm. That's interesting. But much remains unclear, according to a Stanford University researcher.

Using tariffs as industrial policy can get complicated. A tariff that helps one company can often hurt another, a situation that's playing out in our print issue this week.

As we're reporting, injection mold makers are mounting a full-court press on the Trump administration to re-impose 25 percent tariffs on imported molds from China. You might remember the US first imposed mold tariffs in July 2018, but then lifted them in December 2018 — a temporary reprieve, lasting a year.

With that year almost up, U.S. mold making companies have been lobbying heavily to restore the tariffs — they say it would help reshore jobs and investment in U.S. mold making.

But wait a minute, say plastics processors and other manufacturers who buy molds — tariffs will make us less globally competitive, putting jobs in our factories at risk.

You can read the back and forth between well-known industry companies and associations.