ORONO – Competing globally in the manufacturing sector is responsible business, but the United States is losing its advantage by regulatory and tax policies that are adding costs to production, according to the chief executive officer of MeadWestvaco Corp.

It’s a double-edged sword for worldwide companies such as MeadWestvaco, which last year garnered 30 percent of its $7.5 billion in sales revenue from outside the United States.

“We like that,” said John A. Luke Jr., chairman and chief executive officer, about the non-U.S.-generated income during a speech at the Maine Pulp and Paper Foundation’s open house Thursday night.

American businesses need the international marketplace to generate sales and increase their companies’ value to shareholders. However, shifting production overseas, or purchasing products such as pulp and paper from low-cost manufacturers in Southeast Asia or Europe, may threaten the country’s standard of living and eventually could become a national defense issue.

Luke said regardless of whether they like it or not, paper manufacturers are participants in a global marketplace, a business landscape that is “ruthlessly competitive but very good.”

But governmental policies have to change to allow manufacturers to better compete instead of retreat, he said.

Nationwide, the manufacturing sector spends $160 billion a year to comply with local, state and federal regulations, Luke said. The added costs, which come from a “growing regulatory burden,” high taxes, costly litigation and a “less than vigorous trade policy coming from our government,” put U.S. manufacturers at a “22 percent cost disadvantage compared to other developed countries,” Luke said.

“The U.S. does not need to cede its manufacturing leadership to elsewhere in the world,” he said. “It’s no mystery why we have lost those 3 million jobs. The factors are costs.”

Manufacturing, he said, “remains our most important source of wealth-creating innovation.” Every $1 million in manufacturing sales supports eight other manufacturing jobs, and those jobs support six other jobs in sectors such as agriculture and services, he said.

Instead, since 2000, the United States has lost 3 million manufacturing jobs.

“That is one in every six manufacturing jobs,” Luke said. “We as manufacturers are losing our competitive edge in this global economy.”

In Maine, about 30 percent of manufacturing jobs – more than 20,000 high-paying positions – have been lost in recent years. Many of those have been in the pulp and paper industry, and that baffled Jim Robbins, president of Robbins Lumber in Searsmont, who was a speaker at one of numerous seminars presented by the foundation Thursday.

Maine, he said, has 45 percent more forestland now than in 1959 because of sound renewable growth policies. However, no one can get at it to use, and when they do, they’re unable to make any money off the resource.

“Foreign imports are killing us,” he said.

Jennifer Miller, executive vice president of publishing and business for Sappi Fine Papers North America, said Maine has the most attractive, versatile “wood basket” in the nation. But, she added, its price tag is the highest ever. Cost-benefit analyses performed by a number of companies show that money spent getting the wood typically cannot be recovered from the products made with it.

During the seminars, speaker after speaker, from lumber yard presidents to paper company chief executive officers, bemoaned the same problems about operating a business in Maine: high taxes and health care costs, construction costs that are 15 percent to 25 percent higher than other states, and cumbersome rail and road transportation routes.

“I can get paper, and I have gotten paper, from Germany in 12 days,” said Bill Blackmer, vice president of strategic sourcing for Valassis, a Michigan-based publisher of coupon advertisements that are inserted in weekend newspapers. “I usually have to budget 21 days out of Maine.”

He added that when it comes to rating the quality of the paper produced in Maine, “you rank right up there.”

Miller was one of many to mention that Maine has a “capable experienced work force,” but the cost of labor, from workers’ compensation to health care, is higher here than elsewhere.

“It’s not the issues inside the mills, it’s the issues outside the mills that threaten us,” said Debby Feck, general manager of Domtar Industries Inc.’s mill in Woodland-Baileyville.

Domtar exports up to 95 percent of the 400,000 tons of hardwood pulp it produces in Maine, Feck said.

“Yes, China is a huge home for us,” Feck said.

On the other hand, she added, that’s “hurting the other half of our operation, which is paper.”

Domtar, she said, is one of the top 3 low-cost hardwood pulp producers in the country.

“Even with that, we’re not making any money,” Feck said. “If you can be that good, what’s it going to take [to make a profit]?”