OPINION:
On April 12, 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower declared a victory the likes of which the United States had never before seen.
Five years prior, during his presidency, the U.S. had announced that the polio vaccine — a genius innovation by Dr. Jonas Salk — was ready for widespread use.
Eisenhower had masterminded the Allied victory in Europe, capped off on V-E Day. He knew what victory meant. That’s why it matters that in 1960, Eisenhower called upon the nation to “make April 12 a new kind of V-Day — vaccination day.”
As America’s 250th anniversary approaches, manufacturers across the U.S. are proud to make our economy strong, our families prosperous and our nation safe. Vaccines are an essential part of that story.
Just as we became the Arsenal of Democracy that Eisenhower led into battle to save the world from tyranny, we became the Arsenal of Health that helped defeat a horrific disease.
Salk’s polio vaccine, scaled by America’s manufacturers, transformed American society as much as the disease had devastated it. Polio had been widespread. Highly contagious and disproportionately affecting children, the disease infected as many as tens of thousands of Americans in a single year.
It is worth remembering the suffering that the vaccine eradicated from North America and most of the world.
Survivors of polio bore lasting scars: children who needed iron lungs to breathe, iron braces to stand or metal crutches to walk.
I would know. My grandmother Jane was one of those children.
Born in 1912, Jane contracted polio at age 2. Over her life, she learned how to walk four times: once before polio, a second time with leg braces, a third time as a teenager without any support (defying the experts) and a fourth time in her 50s, when — after years of pain from the lasting, debilitating effects of the disease — she submitted to a risky surgery.
My grandmother was resilient and optimistic, a product of the Greatest Generation that won the war. The first time I ever saw her cry was when Eisenhower died. She knew, in so many ways, what he had helped free our world from.
The vaccine meant children who would never lose their ability to walk. It meant parents and caregivers who could stay in the workforce. It meant employees who stayed healthy and produced more goods, products and opportunities for American communities. It meant businesses spared from the economic disruption that comes from widespread contagious diseases.
The polio vaccine saved the American public more than $180 billion, and that’s just in treatment costs — to say nothing of the billions of dollars in economic activity it preserved.
Vaccines save lives, strengthen our public health, protect our workforce and safeguard our economy. They demonstrate historic presidential leadership partnering with manufacturers. The innovation and investment have paid off time and again.
As America’s manufacturing champion, President Trump has delivered win after win to make the U.S. the best place in the world to make things — from the rockets that sail to the moon to the shots that go in our arms.
For manufacturers, Salk’s V-Day is a day to celebrate. By protecting the 13 million people who make things in America, vaccines keep our shop floors moving — powering our economy with jobs, opportunities and more investments.
Our industry contributes $3 trillion to the U.S. economy every year, and that output depends on a safe and healthy workforce protected by vaccines.
To drive even more breakthroughs that protect our lives and livelihoods, policymakers must now draw inspiration from Mr. Trump’s Operation Warp Speed.
Like Eisenhower during polio, Mr. Trump during COVID-19 led with a belief in the lifesaving power of science and vaccines. He provided the competitive policies and the regulatory certainty that America needs to drive remarkable innovation. He worked to make sure life-changing discoveries were made in America and made it to the American people.
And these discoveries — transformative, lifesaving vaccines — have enabled the manufacturing workforce to power America’s economic engine, benefiting America’s wealth as much as its health.
That is the formula for victories that would today be unimaginable to people such as my grandmother. We can bring debilitating diseases to an end. We can deliver the next V-Day.
And as we mark America’s 250th anniversary, we can empower our nation’s manufacturers to drive the greatest standard of health and living in American history.
• Jay Timmons is the president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers.
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