ELMIRA, N.Y. (WETM) – New York Congressman Nick Langworthy visited Elmira today to highlight a business that is bringing jobs back from overseas. Rep. Langworthy, who serves New York’s 23rd District, toured Hardinge, Inc. The company describes itself as a leading american manufacturer of high-precision machine tools. Hardinge, Inc. has been operating in Elmira for more than 100 years. Since 2019, the company says it has brought back at least 50 jobs from Taiwan.

“This is a great american success story. I was so inspired, you know, to hear that Hardinge brought those jobs home. There’s not a lot of companies knocking on the door to grow jobs in one of the toughest states to do business. They wanted to do it here. They’ve got skin in the game. They’re here for the long haul, and we need to do things to help there to be more stories like this.” said Langworthy. “We don’t make enough things here anymore, we are far too dependent on the Far East. That has to stop. We need to make more things here.”

Ryan Ervin is the Workholding President and Chief Marketing Officer for Hardinge, Inc. “So we started the process just before COVID in 2019. So overall, we’ve brought about 50 jobs already over. As we continue to ramp up our production, we will continue to add more more jobs here locally. We have over 350 jobs in this building. And again, we’re looking to ramp this up. Our first American made tuning and milling machine that was repatriated, shipped at the end of last year. So 2023 is really a growth mode for us and looking forward to bringing home more manufacturing jobs.”

Ervin says Hardinge was able to repatriate these jobs without any help from the state or federal level. “That’s correct. Yeah, we made the decision that we wanted to focus on a precision platform. We looked and said, hey, we could go the low route and bring a lower quality product to market. But when you look at the industry, the trends that it’s going to semiconductor, we knew we could go to market with a high end solution. Focus on technology, focus on all the things that American manufacturing can bring, and made that decision without any support or any really insight I’ll say from state or federal support.”

“I’ll say we’re in all industries, semiconductor, automotive, medical, and again we are developing the solutions that can go across market across the industry to really make that American manufacturing competitive, and our solutions are at the forefront of bringing that to market.” said Ervin.

Congressman Langworthy says he’s working on legislation to give tax breaks to businesses that bring more jobs back to the U.S. “We’re looking to put together some legislation on the incentivization on a tax basis of repatriation of jobs. I mean, there was a lot of talk a few years ago about how we need to repatriate capital that big corporations have overseas. We need to make there be an incentive for our companies. Our great American companies to bring their jobs back stateside. And that’ll make America stronger. Because we have to have a manufacturing base. We got way too addicted in this country to cheap stuff from China. And that’s how they grew so fast. And now, how their country is so strong and now they’re a great foreign adversary, economically and internationally. We need to have strong American companies that manufacture things here at home. And if we can do it here in Elmira, we can do it anywhere in upstate New York and I look forward to being a full partner with Hardinge and all the other companies that are looking to do the same thing.”