Colorado Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Loren Furman said the organization won’t wait for the general election in November and plans to step up policy efforts earlier.

“We’re not going to limit ourselves anymore to just our process in the general election,” Furman told the crowd gathered for the chamber’s Colorado Business Day event at the Weston on Thursday. “We’re going to step it up and get engaged in primary elections. We’re going to identify business leaders and really influence the process early, because that’s what matters.”

Thursday’s program centered on manufacturing, with the National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons delivering the keynote speech.

“We’re prioritizing workforce issues, and it’s not a new issue. It’s critical to the manufacturing industry,” Furman said.

Colorado has more than 4,800 manufacturers, creating 150,000 jobs and contributing more than $27 billion to the Colorado economy annually, Furman said.

She rolled out the chamber’s new “Coolest Thing Made in Colorado” contest for any product made in Colorado. The contest opens in August, and a winner will be announced at the October annual dinner.

“When we survey all of you, our partners statewide, we hear the same exact call to action every time. We need a talent pipeline. We need a strong workforce. We need a healthy tax environment. We need a non-litigious employment environment. We need a competitive cost of doing business,” said Furman.

Timmons’ talk centered on recent legislative wins at the federal level, and one that still needs championing. He told the crowd: “If you only focus on the crises of the past few years, I think it’s easy to overlook the incredible progress that we really have made since that time.”

He called on members to contact federal legislators and urged them to support the passage of the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, which includes $52 billion in federal investments for the domestic semiconductor research, design and manufacturing provisions in the CHIPS Act.

According to the Semiconductor Industry Association: “The share of modern semiconductor manufacturing capacity located in the U.S. has eroded from 37% in 1990 to 12% today, mostly because other countries’ governments have invested ambitiously in chip manufacturing incentives and the U.S. government has not.”

“I like that it’s got bipartisan support,” said Timmons. “There’s some really good stuff in it like anti-counterfeiting measures to STEM workforce development. … If we expand capacity by making these chips here in America, we’re going to have even more high-tech job opportunities.”

An obvious priority for the association is curbing any measure to roll back the tax reforms implemented in 2017. He mentioned the perceived danger of losing those tax breaks at least four times during his speech.

“Tax reform is absolutely the foundation on which we’re going to build this manufacturing decade,” he said. “But if the president, or Congress, are successful in repealing the 2017 tax reforms, or they hit us with some other types of taxes that they’ve concocted like the proposals in the president’s budget, they’re going to pull the rug right out from under us.”

The association is helping fill the talent pipeline by reaching out to younger students with its traveling “Creators Wanted” expo that teaches about manufacturing jobs.

It has traveled to six cities, drew thousands of attendees and “engaged more than 170,000 people who are interested in learning more about manufacturing careers,” Timmons said. “When somebody becomes a part of a manufacturing team, they get a chance to innovate and create solutions to the problems that vex society, to make better lives and improve the lives of everyone.”